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Hugging Yourself.

It's about 11:20 p.m. I don't have much to write about today as usual. It's probably because I wrote quite a bit on a subject I was interested in yesterday. Today was a rather uneventful day. I woke up late for classes, but I was kind of glad I did. I usually wake up late with a guilty feeling at the loss of attendance and the lessons.

But coughing up a fit while my chest feels heavy with phlegm wasn't really ideal in aiding any sort of concentration. I used a vaporizer for the first time today. It's an equipment specially made for steam inhalation to loosen the phlegm/mucus in your body.

This might be a disgusting topic for some, I suppose. Regardless, this reminded me of when my mother used to bring a big blue bucket filled with hot water from the tap and place it on top of the washing machine. That might have damaged the washing machine, or maybe I have a bad memory.

She would drop a little bit of Vicks salve into the hot water. I would inhale the steam, forgetting to take off my glasses, with a towel over my head.

It's not that I miss this. Because why would one wish for such sickness again? It's the feeling of being taken care of that I crave, I suppose. I don't feel it generally, thrown into some distraction throughout the year. But when I am sick, I become a child.

I curve into a fetal position, yearning for the warmth and comfort I felt before as a faceless person fluttered the blanket over my body and let it drop only when it perfectly covered me. When I used to get fed food from my parents' hand. It's not even that I want it again. Not that physicality, it's that feeling.

Somehow being sick and so physically vulnerable forces you to ask for help, which I tend to avoid doing. I am working on it, though. To ask for help because there's nothing else you are capable of doing. To show such vulnerability on a physical level. Where you can't cover it up as it's seen and felt.

This is just a fever, as well. I asked my friend to accompany me to the main gate to get a package. She came with me. It's simple, and it seems stupid. But to ask is to admit. It's to accept, and what's so wrong with it?

Especially at such a small level. I am talking to myself at this point. This friend and I went to George chettan's kada, as she called it. We sat on shaky stools, stared at the unsafe building constructions, and talked about a multitude of topics as we drank the tea.

Talking of tea, my tongue is better now. I can't seem to stay away from tea. It feels like a hot drink that has a purpose other than to melt away my unfortunate build-up of disgust in my lungs and chest. Phlegm enters the conversation again.

I can't tell myself to drink hot water because that seems so medical. I have to know that I am doing a certain action to recover. What's so wrong with it, I wonder. But my body doesn't accept it unless I convince myself it has some other purpose. Like when you look away from the computer so it loads faster.

It will still load the same as you look at it. To look at things as they are and accept them is a step. Just a step, but it's the first step. It starts everything, and perhaps is one of the hardest ones to do.

To get started. To just eat the frog, as Mark Twain once said. I have begun, I suppose, nauseous, drinking hot water, taking care of myself. It's a weird funny feeling that you become the only arms you can wrap around your body.

Of course, your friends and all the people around you still exist. But in a metaphoric sense. In living away from your parents, learning to be independent. It's not that you can't get the hug, it's to learn how to get it from yourself. To be the one who takes care and the one who is being taken care of, all at once.

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