Parched

I have a decision to make daily: is the glass half-full, or half-empty?

Social media doesn’t help with this necessarily. I wake up every day to a reminder that I am trapped in my home indefinitely but then I begin to scroll through posts about productivity and my insides grow heavy with expectations and self-defeat. People are baking and cooking and dancing and singing and creating and working and I am sitting here counting how many joints am I smoking? Writers thrive off of solitude, so why such a negative attitude? I have bragged about being a introvert, a homebody, and used it as the perfect excuse to get out of any gathering or party, but now when I have all the time in the world to sit in front of a screen, I suddenly miss dancing myself into whirlwind of booze, sweat and ecstasy.

Of course there are days where this feels like a fantasy; to revert from an adult back to summer vacation mornings at the age of thirteen. I revel in the lack of a routine, changing out of my pajamas at three and substituting an entire meal with just munchies. I spend hours swinging on a hammock with my favourite books to reread or I can simply lie there and hear the world breathe. I’ve been able to catch up on movies, have devoured numerous trashy TV series, and after three years, I baked my brother’s favourite brownies in his memory. I’ve been able to break away from my strict routine and for the first time in years, it feels justified to be lazy.

But this is to last indefinitely and I am, after all, a Naqvi. Our work ethic is unforgiving and we thrive off perfecting details and giving up our sleep. I was raised to push myself and to work hard and sincerely, but that can be hard to do when you’re unemployed and the entire world plunges into emergency. My therapist told me I don’t have to decide anything, but social media keeps reminding me to check in on myself and determine how I feel. It tries to motivate me with pictures of artists and yogis, and then it placates me with preachy quotes that try to distill a year’s worth of therapy into a two-liner that’s catchy.

I have to make a decision daily: in the wake of this dystopian world, is my glass half-full or half-empty? I am swimming back and forth trying to measure it to a T, but what would that even signify to me? In a world as depleted as ours, is it worth getting stuck on quantity? If my glass has any water at all, I am blessed enough already. And on most days, that’s enough to offer me sanity.