EAT YOUR GREENS

Last night I’d gotten home quite late ‘cos the train service ended early and I hadn’t known about it so I had to take the shuttle bus instead which prolonged my route by at least half an hour. And adding half an hour to my original route home is not a joke. At 1ish AM, I asked my sister whether I should do the whole change-out-of-my-work-clothes, wash up and go to bed thing properly or just go to sleep. I told my sister that I read that people who are disciplined get somewhere, get to places in life, but I’m the most disciplined person in my household, and still I haven’t gotten anywhere. I make my bed, wash my dishes/clothes/whatever, keep my room tidy, take my pills, write and read whenever I can, I finish what I start, I commit, and still: here. So she said “go to sleep kak, you’re tired and for all you know, you might die tomorrow, there’s no point in doing all the washing up things” and I said “that’s what you and I wish for every day, but we always live on, don’t give me false hope” and we laughed for a good few minutes. My sister and I are quite depressed people, because there is a lot that has been taught us that I think we inherently want to unlearn but it’s always two steps forward and one back. Every time I unlearn something I think doesn’t agree with me as a person, my family pulls me back and tries to mold me back into the person that they want me to be. One time, I matched with someone on Tinder who was actually pretty decent, and I asked him something like what he wanted in return (I believe he offered me his bathtub because my bio had stated that I like bubble baths) and then he said, “not everything has to be done in exchange for something” and he actually initiated that he understood and empathised with the fact that I might probably have met a lot of men who want things from me. If only everybody believed that you can do things without expecting something in return. I feel like my mother’s parenting style is that way so I grew up believing it, that for having been raised by her in her household, this-this-and-this are what must happen in return, and there is no negotiating about it. Where did this Tinder anecdote even come from? Who knows? I have to mention something about eggs and cars and I thought it was hilarious but the perpetrator would like it to be a secret so it will only live on in our memories, and here as an anonymous mention. This is the time that happened.