You don’t see it coming—the feeling. It won’t visit you for days, for weeks. Sometimes, it wouldn’t visit you for months. You can’t see it. It comes right after you get back home or disconnect the phone or in the middle of the night. It comes on its own.
It starts from a thought, but now you know, so you put the water to boil with as much as a hint of its arrival. The kettle starts gurgling and bubbling, and as you hear the steam rise from it, you also feel the feeling growing inside you. It’s coming, and you know it too well now. So, you walk in your dark apartment with only a dim lamp from your bedroom lighting your path. You walk the same way as you think—in circles—until it arrives.
Then, you sit on the floor, pressing your back against the wall, breathing as deeply as possible. A hot minute later, the kettle clicks; the water has reached its boiling point. You breathe; deep but weak breaths. Nothing makes sense, and gravity feels ever so powerful, and so you find yourself sinking. Before you know it, you pour yourself on the cold floor as some tears pour out of your eyes. You wonder where they came from. “”But I’ve been so happy lately””, you tell yourself. You lie there.
Minutes pass, then you start to take the control back, slowly. You open your eyes, and it leaves right as it had come—on its own. You get up; the gravity doesn’t entirely pull you down anymore. You walk to the kitchen counter and pick the kettle up. The water has reached the perfect temperature, so you pour it on a teabag in a mug.
You take the tea and walk back to your couch. You sit on it and turn some music on. It mumbles in the background as you sip away. You know it too well now. It came, and it passed. It’s all over—the tea, the day, the song, the feeling. You know this all too well. You’ve done this a hundred times now. You pass out on the couch, exhausted.