I got new coffee at the start of this month, from the same company, with six variants: different roasts, different grains, and different intensities, each named after an animal. You can hardly tell the difference between Luna & Baza, unless you drink coffee regularly, or if you drink light roast followed by dark.
My house is in a different state right now, somewhere between the dark, panic-y, people running around the city looking for/calming mummy & light, jolly, playing pretend doctor with baby R while Goldie barks into the sun. This grey middle is silent, no one goes missing, and no one yells profanities or cries. You may confuse it for calm, but up close it has cracks. All feelings are suspended. No one reads to each other or laughs out loud or decides the dinner menu. We just stay silently in our own corners of the house. R takes the room with the beds, I go into the study, papa takes the TV & mummy is on the couch.
It’s like the start of a horror movie, it has a potent air of menace. Our house feels heavy from what is being thought of but seldom said, the little chinks that can burst a grenade. We never leave her alone. We ask her questions, but she doesn’t answer. She doesn’t smile or talk & when she does, she says hateful things. I can hear her spirit dying in her voice. But her eyes hold the paranoia & aggression, the hint that the medicines are not working. No one has the energy to pick up the slacking end & inspire, to talk through it, shake her. We are all dead & living, happy that we aren’t at the aggressive end.
Every once in a while we stumble upon casual normalcy when chopping vegetables with papa, fighting over who will make coffee with R, when mummy buys Crocs that have ‘Fun’ written on them! I stay up till 3 am in the morning to have a few unburdened hours. Goldie & I stay cozy in the bed too small for us, like a litter nestled together for warmth. I put on my socks & look at happy photos of the hills. I sleep on his belly & read, till it’s too late to be awake & I promise myself that when it gets better, I will ask someone for a massage, paint my nails red, pick up my painting brush, start a savings account, remember to put flowers in my hair often & order better coffee.