I started my workday two hours late; it’s a dangerous pattern I’m falling into. I just couldn’t get myself out of bed. It isn’t consequential just yet, but it could very easily be. I’m not fasting again today so I had my fix of the infamous “Tik Tok coffee” in the gigantic yellow mug my friend got me. It reminds me of sunshine. I myself haven’t felt the warmth of the sun in weeks. It's my own fault. If I managed my work better, wasted less time, I could take a break in the afternoon, and sit outside.
Someone asked me today how quarantine is going. I never have a good response. The feeling of something happening beyond your control that completely changes your life, it’s a familiar one. My mind doesn’t feel much different. Uncertainty of a future, numbness of mind – be it by suppression of difficult feelings or by forced solitude, it’s not new. What I am trying to say is: I have been disassociated long before this came around, before everyone else caught up with it too.
Later, I got a job rejection email. It was my first full-time, field-related one. While I wasn’t really excited about it during the interview, it’s still disappointing to make it to the final round and not fully make it. When I was kneading aata for mother to make rotis out of it later, I thought about the way things work out. Maybe if I had gotten it, I would have been pressured to accept it and not do something different that I wanted to do instead. Maybe I don’t need options.
It is late and I am back in my room, sitting on the same chair, at the same desk, facing the same empty wall as I do every night, as I have done for hours during the day earlier, attempting to do my work yet again.
By Hajrah Abdul-Rahman,
Virginia,USA.