10. Write a letter to your future self

Dear older me,

I hope you are someone I can be proud of.

Love,

Me

13. Write about something you absolutely love

I have been lacking positivity in my life as of late. I haven’t been in a negative slump, but I am just stuck in this weird, weird, really weird neutral territory where everything just slides off of my shoulders (although I fear maybe everything is really just piling up into an increasingly insurmountable mountain). The good thing is that I still appreciate the beauty in this world, I just haven’t really been filling up on any of it.

Okay, so now that I have given that introduction, let me go on with this prompt where I will talk about multiple things I absolutely love to bring on the positivity.

I absolutely love running my tongue over clean, freshly brushed teeth. I am doing that right now as I type this up. That sweet, minty fresh tang in my mouth is quite nice.

I absolutely love the late hours of the night (or the early hours of morning, whatever suits your fancy). I like having the house to myself, where everyone is asleep and everything is quiet. It is the only time I feel like I can breath at home. I don’t feel so trapped and suffocated. I can just sit on my bed with my computer, listening to Nirvana and The Strokes without interruption.

I absolutely love getting out of the house. Walking out the front door just brings an instant feeling of relief. I breath in fresh air and step out, and my anxiety goes out the door with me, into the air higher and higher until it is a tiny speck of a thing. I absolutely love walking outside. I absolutely love exploring. I’ve realized that adventures don’t have to be anything extreme. Walking into a store you’ve never been in is an adventure. Reading a book that challenges your mind is an adventure. Listening to a band for the first time is an adventure. Hell, I had no idea when I listened to Nirvana for the first time just what an experience it would be.

I absolutely love naps. I love waking up in the late afternoon or early evening with that mixture of tiredness and refreshment that I can feel in my shoulders and in my bones and in the blinking of my eyes. I love waking up knowing that the day has not just started or that the day is not yet over. I love knowing that the day is merely continuing.

I absolutely love remembering my dreams. I absolutely love when bits of dreams float to you at random intervals in the day. Maybe that car or that tree or that shop caused a flickering of remembrance in your brain. I fully believe that dreams are a key to unlocking a person, and so my dreams fascinate me to no end.

I absolutely love learning little, random facts.

I absolutely love eyes and lips and hands. I absolutely love the human body.

I absolutely love the way you can be transported back to a previous time. I love remembering that you will never become too old to remember what it was like to be young. I played Poison today, and it was honestly the most fun I have had in awhile. It reminded me of days once filled with four square and tetherball, recesses spent playing Sharks and Minnows and Bump. It reminded me of how I used to feel, that happy thumping inside my chest as I shouted and ran with everyone else every time someone made a basket. That happiness. I remembered it so clearly right then and there, that feeling of feeling good. A feeling from elementary school that I apparently had not felt in a long fucking time.

I love being alive. That is what I love the most. The distortion of my sense of reality aside, I love life. I love living. I can’t let myself forget that.

7. Write a short poem

There is no shock

No jolt of electricity

My hand is numb as before

Blandest - Nirvana

You’re my favorite of my saviors

You’re my favorite

Oh no

You’re my favorite of my favors

You’re my razor

Oh no

Hey

And the situation wasn’t quite as intense as I thought

I need you around to remind me what not to become

And the situation wasn’t quite as intense as I thought

I need you around to remind me what not to become

Come, come

I think I know what my problem is. I keep looking at my life like it’s a story. It’s just a silly story and not my life. I am not me. I am not myself. I am just some random girl in some random, silly story I just happen to be very, very connected to. I know that this is not some story and that it is my fucking life, but I cannot seem to drill that in my head hard enough. I just look at my life with neutrality and sometimes amusement because it just doesn’t feel like my life at all. It’s all a story. I would close the book and leave, but I can’t. So I wait patiently for the pages to continue turning, feigning interest in what will happen next. Sometimes I am genuinely interested. That boy, for instance. Wondering if this girl that is me but doesn’t feel like me will actually get her shit together, become a nurse, then join Doctors Without Borders. Wondering if I will be alright.

Hey so that was terrible and obviously me pretending like I actually came up with something when really it is just a part of my life at the moment and not a silly story. Rarely can I call anything I write fiction. But hey, I felt a teensy bit less passionless as I was typing that up. It felt good. It’s terrible, but I feel kind of good.