The Cocoon.

Half a cabbage, half an onion, and a handful of old coriander. She washed them all and cut them up at midnight. I cough and talk away with the voice I have left as my friend makes the salad.

I watch as it's made—cut and fresh, all packaged up for the next day. My laugh resembles a scream at this point, but she doesn't seem to notice.

She leaves the salad in the fridge, and we go our separate ways—or we try to. We keep dropping each other off at our rooms, shouting "good night" in every other language we know, maybe to make it last longer.

Sleep claims us both, though I sleep a little longer, regretting missing my first hour. I lose my voice too, but she laughs at my laugh. I smile hard, feeling like a rich man in the movies as I walk next to her, simply laughing at something she said. She laughs twice as hard when I do. 

I use it as my party trick all day—the loss of my voice, not complete, twisting and turning to make a high-pitched imitation of my hoarsely lost voice at times.

It's fun for a while until my throat strains, but I keep talking. I know I shouldn't, but I do.

Later, we have lunch. She crushes the Wai Wai noodles with the flavoring packets, adds them to the vegetables she cut the day before, and sprinkles in some spicy chili flakes and salt concoction. We eat a lot of it. It's tasty.

Even though we didn't have all the ingredients, it was worth it.

I've been learning to be more spontaneous lately. By this, I don't mean burning my tongue, but maybe I do. I wouldn't have known it to such an extent if I hadn't gone to get tea, something I previously never did outside my house. It's always comfortable to stay in your cocoon.

To turn into a butterfly in your cocoon and never fly will only wither your wings away. Just saying yes to certain things I wouldn't have said yes to before, being persistent and insistent on opportunities. No one's here to advertise for me.

I have to do it for myself, make mistakes along the way. While I'm saying yes to new things, I'm also saying no to a few. The latter is just as hard because I feel like I'm losing something, losing what it could be.

But I backed out of something today, and it was quite nerve-wracking. It wasn't something I wanted to do again, had no interest in after trying it once, and it had proven to be not as joyful and quite hectic with the schedule I have in place.

My friend and I had momos before all this. Five momos, three and a half for each. It was nice. We had this fresh bun covered in sugar syrup as dessert.

She bought it from the bakery next to the pharmacy after we bought some prescription medicine. I finally got myself a check-up at the clinic. There's not much to it; I need to take medication and inhale steam.

Hopefully, it gets better. Tomorrow is a holiday, and I don't know what to do. Perhaps get ahead with my readings as I've been putting them off for a while, just like this particular blog post.

The cocoon will wither away this year.