dear reader

i tried the watermelon today. it is zero sugar, and a shocking red can. it is finished by 12:31 and i am asleep an hour later than that. 

E is a name on a snapchat handle and an email. i say i will not help him anymore, and still send him reminders for deadlines and dissertations and daily life. 

my little brother is not eating again. it has been a year-and-a-bit since he was in hospital. he says he does not want to be sent away, and skips snacks and plays rugby. 

there are thirteen tabs open on my computer for two assessments and i click through all of them at once. i write reams of reflexivity and cut it all down to fit a word count. i do not understand what i am saying. 

i feel like i am repenting for something i have not done. 

if i fill my days with bending over for others, will i be forgiven? I am waiting for the wave to peak, for burn out to envelope me completely. i snap at E, and hold his hand through every daily chore and beg for him to do each and every one. my grandmother is taken into hospital, my sister is starting therapy, my brother goes missing for hours, my mother is ill. another block is placed upon the tower, and complete ruin hesistates over my head before backing down once again. 

my friend tells me im on the edge of burnout, academically and socially, and i pull myself from bed at 10 not 9. i learn to knit, bury myself in nostalgic media and pretend i do not see the tower wobble. 

i dreamt of a lighthouse, just past the kitchen window we people-watch from. strangers walked the streets, and the shops were overflowing with trailing plants and flowers, but i reached for a phone to take a picture of its huge searching lights in the sky. 

my friend has gone home, but not to the one we share. i try to convince him to stay away, but he promises to return by sunday. i hope he doesn’t come back. 

it’s grey outside, in the real world now, and i have so much work to do. 

you were stuck in my head for days, the chorus of a lament i heard when i was fourteen. it was hours before i could remember the name, to search for it and re-listen to the whole tune. my memory of you is better than the real thing. can you be called a love song when the love is unrequited and destined to end? can i write about a love song, without giving the name because i am embarrassed of it? 

it is raining. as i write, it’s begun snowing in wet gusts. it is february. 

putin has declared war on ukraine. a friend messages me when she hears the news on her lunchbreak, ‘don’t let E see the news’. E has not seen the news since i blocked his view of the news-stand in the off-licence when we went in for energy drinks on tuesday afternoon. 

the radio at work announced the first hints of russia’s invasion on sunday, while i was sweeping. it interrupts the retro sunday show, outbreaks of war between abba’s gimme! gimme! gimme! and presley’s can’t help falling in love. a volunteer fears her marine son’s safety if a war breaks out. i am convinced russia will not go further. 

the bakery across the street gives us free bread, a brown sourdough loaf that we claim as a victory. i have a new jumper, and it smells of the winter sparkle fabric softener i love. there are jokes on social media of the incoming war draft, and posts that rebuff the memes, warning of the displacement and murder of real people. there is nothing to do but university assessments and readings.