Fireworks on a Bad Monday

To all the people looking for ways to make their own bad Mondays better, or just someone who understands -

I hope this feels like a warm hug.

So it's one of those absolute rock-bottom terrible days. You wake up and just five minutes back to consciousness, you want to cry. You look in the mirror and run your index finger gently over your swollen eyelids, memories of shaking and sobbing on the bed till 2 am resurfacing in your morning-fresh, ready-for-a-return-to-melancholy mind.

(Now, it is 22:43 pm on the same Monday. You are smiling to yourself over and over as the fireworks keep begging for your attention outside your window and you are more than happy to give it away.)

But still, you wouldn't miss a cup of masala chai for anything. So you sit beside the window, the pre-winter wind crisp on your unbathed skin. You flip the pages of God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, mesmerized, as you sip the perennially over-sweet tea your grandmother makes every morning. You nod along half-heartedly to something she says. You drift back to your bedroom, suddenly weightless.

(On 22:45 pm, you gaze affixed, still, at every passing firework. Every single one seems to stretch out a fish hook to your pupils and hold your vision taut so you can't look away till every dying ember is gone. The same hook pulls at your smile lines to remind them they are still there, to remind them they are real after a day of your face forgetting all about them.)

On the bed, you shake again. It is a chin-wobbling, shoulder-shaking, back-arching kind of crying. It is bloodshot eyes with leftover kajal in old tattered pajamas kind of crying. Your self-esteem has plummeted and plunged into waters you have only grazed the surface of before. The grief you didn't know was stitched into your bones, its threads have started to come loose, unravelling in strands of tears down your cheeks.

Suddenly, you're uncool. You're pathetic. You're disgusting and lonely and unfit for love. Your body has started to feel distant and incomplete again. The mirror is smirking at you - eyebrows raised, mouth curled up in a malevolent grimace - because it can see through your averted eyes that you're going back to default settings, to insecurity. And the worst of all is that you feel rotten from the insides, like there are worms crawling over you, like you're caked with mud and dirt and worse things.

(I won't tell you why you're feeling all of this. We've all felt like this sometime, and we all have our reasons. You can fill in the blanks with yours.)

(23:17 pm, fireworks still raging. You are alright now. You sit on your father's desk and the mirror just smiled at you. A real smile. An I-think-you're-so-beautiful smile. A you're-going-to-be-alright smile.)

But in the afternoon, it feels like the end of the world. You spiral like never before. On days like this, rationality slips silently out of your arms like you were a bad mother and your body was too hostile to give it a good enough home. Then the pests begin to infect your mind - the feelings, the cursed feelings, the wretched overthinking, the emotional whirlwind you always let get the best of you. And worst of all - the why-am-I-never-good-enough? An everyday question, like a memorized dance routine, like muscle memory.

(23:26 pm. Your eyes follow the glittering cinders as low and as far as they go. You try to catch them just before they disappear, like you're hanging on to every last crumb of joy the world is kind enough to give you.

Today, of all days, you know how important that is.)

But then...

A friend makes you laugh on a video call. You take a nap, feeling something rising inside of you already. When you wake up, you have your second cup of chai.

And then, you decide to stop feeling sorry for yourself.

And somehow, miraculously... it actually works.

You put on some famously 'uncool' music that you unabashedly scream along to, like Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo. You embrace what all those 'cool' kids hate and you sing and you let the 'basic' pop music seep through your bones and heal that angsty 17-year-old howling inside of you.

You begin to design your blog, this blog, something you've wanted to do for ages.

And you write. You write and you write and you write.

(23:45 pm and your heart is full. Your heart is full because you filled it up, because you used your own two hands to coddle it and caress it back to love. Because you had the courage to lift yourself up when all the other hands outstretched towards you were too difficult to reach. Because you decided to turn this bad Monday sunny side up.)

Your mother teaches you how to make pasta over the phone. You have never cooked before, but god, as you watch the onion and tomato sizzling and hissing with the oil, as your fusilli pasta rises in the boiling water, as you add the sauces and shred the cheese and put it into the white-and-blue pasta bowl your mother loves so much, you couldn't be prouder of yourself.

You settle in to rewatch Modern Family as you eat something you made all by yourself. And right now, you are comfortable. All by yourself.

And it may be a tiny, insignificant thing in someone else's dictionary, but for you... You conquered the world today.

So it's 12:00 am now. The day is done. The bad Monday is over.

As the last of the fireworks disappear, their shimmering ashes seem to wink at you, seem to say "My job is done here. You're going to be okay on your own now. You're your own party and your own firework, your own beam-of-light-in-the-darkness and your own cheesy pasta dinner date.

You are a lot of things, all on your own."

And as the very last ember of the firework fades, it whispers,

"The night sky has got nothin' on me and you."