Skip to main content

Red Pill, White Pill.

The red pill is a capsule. The white one isn’t. The medicine has already been making me feel better. My friend, who just came back from his trip, said I sounded like a dead man. I wonder if the dead speak and if they truly sound like me.

My other friend says I sound better today. She said I spoke in TV static noises yesterday. As she said that, I recalled our family's gray TV box. It's not so old, but the noises make it seem old. I can't quite describe it. It fluctuated from a screech to a hush, like the sound when your ear is covered by your pillow and your blanket brushes against it.

This is a poor description. But I don't hear those sounds anymore. The chaotic world has become both noiseless and noisy. There's a lesson we are learning about how we need noise to function, as even a few moments of silence will make us reflect and ponder.

Even as I am writing this, I put on music so I won't feel myself thinking. It's easier to write this way—I feel like I am not thinking, yet I am writing as I think. A few songs, exactly twenty minutes, starting at 11:20 pm. I've got the formula down. It doesn’t feel genuine, but it feels better.

Better than the blog post of rainy reflections. I kept writing about how I couldn’t write. I had to sit and think and feel the frustration build. Now I hear the music, and my thoughts flow, yet I feel some justice is done to writing only if I have a eureka moment—a point where I reflect and discover something.

Even if the rest of the page isn’t as good, I suppose it depends on what you write for. This, I mindlessly write for the sake of consistency. I want to know that I can do it—keep going for a while before it or I break apart. It’s been a while, after all.

I swallow the pills. The red one lingers longer on my tongue, and the temptation to see the powder by pulling the cover apart is too much, so I resort to feeling what's inside. But the sensation of it melting on my tongue is unpleasant, so I put the white one next to it and swallow them both with some water.

Red pill or white pill? Prebiotic and antibiotic. I have to take both. I don’t have a choice. I want to get better.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Varuthaayi.

"വരാം," ഞാൻ പറയുമ്പോൾ, "പോകാം" എന്ന് പറയാനുള്ള ആ പേടി. My legs prickle like the seeds of a strawberry, and I feel like tearing myself apart today. I keep picking at the wound that heals every two days, only for it to break open again—blood and flesh. I feel trapped in my own skin, my body will never be what I want it to be. There are things I’m supposed to become, but time is slipping away. I applied for many things. I have sent my name into the void—eight, ten, how many more? They have to call me today. If not, I won’t be who I need to be. Tomorrow, I’ll be hopeless again. I can’t hold on to who I am, so how will time hold on to me? I eat the yellow as if it might bring some joy. One piece is thin and crispy, the bite sounds, and I feel it. The next is thick and bland—someone like me must have cut it. One is unexpectedly sweet, even though it isn’t brown like I expected. How it lies to me. I look in the mirror, I look away. Another is too salty. I eat 250 grams of ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is It Casual Now?

There’s a line that sits between us—a hesitation that hangs in the air. Let my silence speak. It’s awkward, yes, but it’s real. Why should I feel bad for you when the hurt is mine to carry? I can see where you’re coming from, but the choice was yours. If the words were empty, why let them out? If you didn’t mean it, why not say so? Just don’t say it at all, or let me know it was never meant to hold weight. But now, I find myself asking—is this what we’ve come to? Has it all become casual, something to brush off like it was nothing? Letting things go because it’s easier than facing the truth?  If that’s the case, then maybe that line I drew wasn’t just a pause. Maybe it was a boundary, a way to protect what’s left of something real. Something that matters. Because once it’s all casual, what’s left but empty gestures and hollow promises?  I wonder if this is how it starts—when words lose their weight and actions feel more like habits than choices. When we start ignoring the smal...
Post a Comment
Read more

Where's My Present?

"True consistency isn’t about frequency—it’s about identity. It is about becoming the kind of person who does what needs to be done, no matter what." For a long time, I thought I knew what I wanted. I chased internships, opportunities, and the validation that came with them. These things were within reach, yet the more I pursued them, the more they felt disconnected from who I was.  It wasn’t that they were bad opportunities—they were, by most standards, great ones. And I wouldn't pass them up if I did get them. But they weren’t my purpose, I realize. They didn’t align with the person I wanted to become.  I had let them define so much of what I did, and in that pursuit, I lost sight of the deeper question: What do I actually want? Ironically, chasing them helped me realize that they were never my end goal to begin with.   Yet, the pressure I put on myself was unbearable. The competitiveness I internalized made failure feel worse than death itself. Fear reduced me to ...
Post a Comment
Read more