#like the mannerisms of people who live near the underwater zone is different because they adapt

[sitting-in-thee-corner]

hi its me i'm asking abt your nautolan!! watery districts of coruscant where aquatic aliens live sounds so cool!!!

Ahh Thank you! She's a human doctor whose mum married a nautolan and had twins with him, she has a step-sister her age that she lives with and she is a mad genius who accidently brought a clone trooper back to life because she wanted to see if her medical theory was right and as the clones are technically republic property its not medical malpractice and they can't suspend her license. Her apartment with her step-sister features her sisters room which is full of water is below their hallway with a hatch on the floor so her sister can just flop in. I think of the underwater district as being largely connected with smaller water circuits for the very wealthy and the majority living in an area that is basically Coruscant submerged, due to leaks and the build up of the planet there are a few larger lakes with a gap between the water and the building's above. The community is a bit insular and there are few official crossing points with fancy depressurisers and water drainers to switch between the zones but there are also a lot of just basement doors opening onto it and knowing a shortcut.

[lostinfic]

3. Singapore, summer

Summary: She writes for magazines about luxurious resorts in exotic places and five-star hotels in glamorous cities. He’s photographed devastated war zones, refugee camps and child soldiers. For both of them travel is an escape, but he’s had enough of this grim reality, and she’s had enough of this disconnected fantasy. Perhaps together they can find something in between, something real, and stop running from themselves. Each season, a new destination and a chance to grow closer.

Pairing: Alec Hardy x Hannah Baxter Rating: Mature~ish (for now) Word count: 2.9k

Prologue  |  Chap. 1  |  2  |  Ao3  

Airports are liminal spaces. A limbo of travelers, where one is simultaneously on vacation and not yet, or not anymore. Places of transition, between familiar and foreign, between reality and fantasy. Intermediate structures designed to efficiently direct the flow of resigned travelers and make them spend as much money as possible.

Hannah stood still and let the moving walkway take her in the right direction. The rhythmic thump of the metal plates blended with the white noise of announcements in English, Mandarin and Malay.

Between ads for designer perfume, slim windows offered a glimpse of the purple dusk settling over the runway. Airplane windows multiplied the sunset. Little lights dotted the black tarmac and twinkled evenly.

Every trip lingered like a ghost, following her all the way home. An unidentifiable yet recognizable scent on her clothes, a melody in her head, a taste she would seek out again, but never truly find.

Indonesia, she suspected, would linger even longer.

After Pulau Kesuma, Hannah had explored other parts of the country. But a nagging doubt, sowed in her mind by Alec Hardy, prevented her from entirely enjoying her trip. Every hotel she’d stayed at, especially in Bali, she feared had been set up in the same manner as the Mahal Kita. She noticed details she hadn’t before. These questions were most inconvenient as Hannah endeavored to see only the positive, the fun and beautiful things in life and share them with her readers and followers.

It would have been easier to dismiss these thoughts, hadn’t she looked up Hardy. He was credible, to say the least. A photojournalist featured in every respected periodicals, twice nominated for a Pulitzer prize. A well-traveled man, exposing injustice around the world one picture at a time. His most famous photograph depicted a woman setting herself on fire in the name of freedom. She wondered how he slept at night.

She’d hoped leaving Indonesia meant leaving him behind too, as well as her doubts and mistrust.

But fate had other plans in store.

He was here, in Changi airport, walking just a stone’s throw ahead of her. She recognized his beat-up camera bag, and his scruffy profile confirmed her suspicion. “Fuck.” Hannah turned on her heels and bumped into a pair of glaring, elderly sisters. She couldn’t walk twenty feet in the wrong direction on the moving walkway. Resigned, she faced the right way again, and, of course, that’s when Hardy noticed her. He nodded curtly.

A long, awkward travelator journey followed during which they pretended to look at anything other than each other, but their eyes met a few times.

She’d caught a flight out of Bali with a layover in Singapore. Hardy must have flown in from Jakarta or Sumatra, and would take the same connecting flight to London.

At the end of the moving walkway, she adjusted her pace to stay a few steps behind him. He put a stop to this nonsense and waited for her to catch up to him.

“You’re still alive, then,” she said by way of greeting.

“I’m very resilient.” They resumed walking towards their gate. “I thought you’d left already. I didn’t see you again at the hotel.”

“Did you look for me?”

He shrugged but he could have been just hiking his bag higher on his shoulder.

Hardy cursed ant she followed his gaze to the departure board: their flight was delayed. Technical difficulty, an airline employee informed them, no idea how long it would take, hours most likely.

Hardy and Hannah sighed and looked at each other.

“Well, there are worse airports to be stuck at,” she said.

“Aye. Gatwick,” he said just as Hannah was naming that airport too.

“Ever been to Qatar? That airport is…”

“A bloody maze,” he said.

They shared a tentative chuckle. Given how they’d left things last time, she hadn’t expected they soon would be completing each other’s sentences.

She nervously swiped her hair away from her face. He winced at the fading bruise on her jaw left by his camera. She suddenly wished he’d touch it again.

“I… I’ve never seen the waterfall here,” he said, looking at his shoes.

“Me neither.”

“Would you…?” He tilted his head in the general direction of the famous indoor waterfall.

“Sure.”

Hardy and Hannah walked past the restaurants, shops, massage chairs and a movie theater on their way to the indoor forest. Many species of palms and flowers grew on five levels leading to a glass and steel dome that reminded her of the British Museum ceiling. The air was moist like in a greenhouse. Sprinklers hissed between the plants. It was night, so lights were dim, only art installations brightened the space: crystal clouds, silver birds, iridescent raindrops.

As they neared the heart of the forest, the waterfall came into view. The world’s tallest indoor waterfall, they called it the Vortex. The ceiling dipped like a funnel and water cascaded down into a pool. Gently phasing colors and shapes were projected onto it.

Jaw slack, Hannah stared. It was simply stunning. She took out of her phone. Now that was something worth posting about.

After a few photos, Hardy sighed impatiently beside her, and when he couldn’t take it anymore, he said, “you’re doing it wrong.” He placed his hands over hers to guide the lens at a better angle. “You want to frame it like that, about two thirds of the photo. And you want to catch the light here. Like that.”

“If you’re so good at it, why don’t you take them yourself? With me in them.”

She tucked her chin in her shoulder and smiled at him with fluttering eyelashes.

He rolled his eyes but agreed.

First she checked herself in a pocket mirror, fluffed her hair, wiped off flecks of mascara. “I look like shit.”

“Nah, you’re… okay.”

“Oh, thanks a lot,” she said sarcastically.

Hannah smiled at the camera and posed for a few more pictures where she gazed in the distance, exposing her best profile. Hardy demonstrated his professionalism, she wanted more photos from him, but decided not to test the limits of his patience.

“Why do you want pictures of that?” he asked when she took back her phone.

“Because it’s beautiful and unique. Why aren’t you taking any?” she replied. “I could pretend to be dying next to it. That’s more your style, isn’t it?” He frowned. She nudged him with her elbow. “Oh, c’mon, it’s a joke. Loosen up.”

He buried his hands in his pockets and shook his head slowly.

“People tell you that all the time, don’t they?” she said softly.

“Aye.”

Hannah averted her eyes and fiddled with the strap of her purse. She hadn’t meant to insult him, in fact, she knew the feeling of constantly being told some “truth” by others.

“You know what I always get?” she began. “My friends say I don’t have a real job, that I don’t live in the real world.”

“I get that too.”

“Right? I mean, it’s not true. I’ve deadlines, and bills, I’ve even got a fucking life insurance. Traveling is the real world.”

Hardy nodded emphatically. “We see more of the bloody real world than them.”

“Yeah!” She smiled, glad they were hitting it off again. “Hey, did you ever find out what was in that building on the beach?”

As they walked up to the second floor, Hardy explained he met a man who used to be in the Navy and participated in the eviction of the families. That man had claimed the building was nothing more than a break room for the security guards. They might have stored booze there, but nothing more scandalous.

Hannah almost said, “good thing you didn’t kill yourself for that,” but knew better this time.

She had kept investigating too, after their night on the beach. But she hesitated to tell him because he might laugh at her strategy.

Hardy expressed some doubts about the man’s testimony, he’d heard rumors of holding cells and weapon storage, but he had no proof. “Can’t demand justice without photographic evidence.”

“Are you disappointed,” she asked.

He leaned on his elbows, on the banister, and looked at a janitor sweeping the floor below. Blue light passed over his features, undulating, as if he was underwater. After a moment, he said, “It’s complicated… helping people.”

She leaned on the banister too, next to him. He stared in the middle distance. She thought he would say more, she wanted him to. She wanted to know why he did it if it was so complicated.

“I kept investigating too,” she admitted, hoping it would cheer him up.

“Did you?”

“I went into town to find the bar where the staff hung out.”

“By yourself?”

“Yeah.”

She was quite chuffed that she’s succeeded to impress him, or at least surprise him.

At this local bar, she met a receptionist, Irene, she’d already befriended at the hotel. She was out with other girls who worked at the Mahal Kita. Hannah paid for food and beverages and asked questions that Irene translated. Two of them had witnessed the armed men evicting families. But they had more to say, namely on the new opportunities the hotel presented to these young women. Jobs other than fishermen's wives, meeting different people, learning another language…

“They’ll change their minds soon enough,” he commented.

Hannah rolled her eyes.

“I know, I know,” he said. “It’s another side of the story. One I didn’t get. Well done, Baxter.”

“Don’t look so pained,” she teased, bumping him with her shoulder.

“Are you going to write about it in your article for Elite Travelers?”

“Of course, my readers expect an honest review.”

“You think your magazine will let you?”

“Yes!”

“I’ll hold you to that.”

He pushed himself off the banister with a groan.

They meandered through the indoor forest, along cobblestone trails that snaked and climbed around the waterfall, between ferns and shrubs. The place was quiet. Once in a while, they crossed other awaiting travelers who wandered around like lost souls. In the near-dark, their phones cast an eerie glow over their faces. Some had found a quiet spot to nap.

Hannah barely noticed them. She even forgot to takes pictures.

As keen travelers are wont to do, she and Hardy exchanged anecdotes from their trips: he was arrested during a protest in Ukraine, she was attacked by a cuddly manta ray in Hawaii, he met the Dalai Lama purely by accident in a bathroom, she sang karaoke with Sylvester Stallone in Tokyo.

“You didn’t,” Hannah said.

“I did.”

“Nooo! You ate monkey balls?”

He shrugged, biting back a smile. “Not that bad. Mind you, my people invented Haggis.”

Hannah laughed. “And all that to see a cave. Was it worth it?”

“Aye. I was the first photographer ever down there. Got me on the cover of Nat Geo.”

“Wow, you must’ve been proud.”

Before she knew it, two hours had passed, her cheeks hurt from laughing, and she couldn’t remember why she’d ever thought him rude.

As annoying as this delay was, she was glad they were stuck together in Singapore. It seemed like neither of them was in a hurry to get back to London.

They’d reached the fifth and last floor. Here there was a park with slides and topiaries shaped like animals and cartoon characters. No child played there at this late hour, and only a few adults had come all the way up. One of the attractions was a long net crossing over the indoor forest like a rope bridge.

Hannah wasn’t normally prone to vertigo, but the net bounced with each step. She grasped Hardy’s shirt to steady herself. He claimed he had seen worse, but she didn’t miss the way he reached for the handrail.

They were in stitches before they’d even crossed halfway. Hannah fell, and fatigue hit her suddenly. She lay on her back. Little tremors of laughter still shook her chest. Hardy sat down next to her. The net cocooned her like a hammock, with the noise of the waterfall and the night sky visible through the glass ceiling, she could almost believe they were somewhere exotic. Almost. An announcement over the PA system disturbed the illusion.

“Any news from the airline?” she asked.

They both checked their phones for messages and the airline app. Still delayed.

Hardy crossed his arms behind his head, and she caught a whiff of his pine-scented deodorant. His ribs rose under his t-shirt with every breath. At first glance, with his scruff, he looked abrasive, but she was starting to know better. He smiled at her, and she became aware of something shifting in the air. She felt it deep within her, a warm tension, and her breath caught in her throat.

“Do you have someone waiting for you in London?” he asked. “A boyfriend or…”

“No. Who has time for that?”

”This job will do it to you.”

“I supposed. I haven’t found a man who can handle what I do. Eventually they all want to tie me down to one place… I take it you’re free too.”

“Divorced.”

“Good.”

“Is it?”

“I was just thinking there might be something else we could do to pass the time…” She caressed a spot of skin exposed above his belt.

“Er, I… you— what?”

“Sex.”

“Now?” He looked at the open space around them. “I don’t think…”

Her face flushed with embarrassment and she sat up.

“Yeah, ok, no, don’t worry. Just asking for a friend.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

Hannah was saved from further embarrassment when both their mobiles rang. Two seats were available on a flight to London if they could make it to gate 56 quickly.

They struggled to get up on the net, but once on solid ground, they scampered off towards Terminal 2.

They made it in time, and the attendant handed them their tickets after they’d shown their passports. Hannah walked behind Hardy along the bland corridor leading to the airplane, then down the rows of seats, and it quickly became clear that they would be sitting side by side.

For fourteen hours.

Fourteen hours to ruminate on why he’d turned her down.

Sure they would have missed this flight, but they could be shagging right now. She glanced at her watch. In fact, she could be orgasming right now. Her eyes slid over to him, to his knee and the long fingers tapping nervously on it, then up his leg and, yes, she did look at his crotch.

“D’you mind?” His voice was a mixture of irritation and amusement. Mostly amusement.

“Are you gay?”

He rolled his eyes and opened his laptop.

“Sorry.”

“I’m… flattered. Just not an exhibitionist.”

“What, you think I wanted to do it up there on the nets? There’s a hotel in the airport.”

“Oh.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

“Yeah.”

“So if I were to say, meet me in the loo in two minutes, you’d say no?”

She paused, eyes flitting to the back of the plane, but then he smirked, telling her it was all a joke. She shoved him.

“You’re so full of it.”

The plane started moving up the runway, faster and faster, until it took off. Hundreds of flights, and she still loved that airborne feeling.

They flew over the glass dome of the indoor forest. On the porthole glass, she saw Hardy’s reflection also looking out at the shrinking skyline of Singapore. Did he feel the same bittersweet nostalgia for a place they’d only just left?

He leaned on the armrest, towards her.

“Will you ever come back?” she whispered without taking her eyes off the window.

“Dunno… there are so many places to see.”

*

Just as Hannah crossed the doorstep of her flat, her phone pinged with new emails. She dropped her luggage and checked it immediately.

One email, from her editor, Duncan, urged her to send the article on Pulau Kesuma as soon as possible so they could celebrate her promotion to senior writer. “If the article is good enough ;)”

The second one, was from the communications director at Group Peregrine. Reading the email, she understood that company owned the Mahal Kita resort. They loved what she had done with social media during her stay and were already reaping the benefits. So, they wanted to create a partnership and send her to their resorts all around the world. “Namibia, Costa Rica, Fiji… where would you like to go first, Ms Baxter?”

A wide grin spread on her lips, and she bounced on her feet. A little squeak of joy escaped her throat.

A promotion and a partnership, now that was worth coming back to London for. Time to pop the champagne and buy a new suitcase. Already, she scanned her mental atlas for a new destination.

She was so excited, she needed to tell someone. She scrolled through her contacts: Ben was still sulking, she skipped her mother and sister, her father would be happy for her but still didn’t quite understand her job, Bambi she hadn’t spoken to since her wedding, Duncan maybe. She stopped at Alec Hardy (they’d exchanged contact information before parting ways). His questions about the magazine popped to the forefront of her mind: who paid them? Would they let her write the truth about the resort?

Hannah’s mood did a 180. Her stomach sank and her smile wavered. If he was right, exposing the truth about the resort could cost her this partnership and promotion. Was it worth it?

With a big sigh, she rubbed a hand through her hair and sat on the edge of her bed.

She glanced at the stack of Elite Travelers in her bookcase, hundreds of glossy pages displaying lavish hotels, private villas and suitably-authentic lodges.

Would writing about it really change anything for the island anyway?

Chapter 4: England, summer

[the-bounce-back]

I FEEL GOOD, SOMETIMES I DON’T

I should probably start by saying that this post will be very different from what I’ve previously shared on here.

In all honesty, I was unsure if I should even post this at all. When I started this blog, my vision for it was that it was going to be a hub for infinite good vibes, positive energy and empowerment for myself and whoever ended up reading it to combat and eventually overcome depression, anxiety, emotionally harmful thoughts and so on. But I’m realising now that I’ve made a bit of a mistake in my approach.

So far, I’ve been writing about aspects of my mental health that I’ve already overcome, accepted and healed from - hence why I’ve been able to write my advice with so much self-assurance and positivity. Writing about things within my comfort zone and knowing that my learning from my experiences has helped people has undeniably made me feel really great lately. However - behind the scenes, to put it dramatically and in true Liv style - the past couple weeks have been really, really sh*t for me.

It’s hard for me to even write this, because it forces me to acknowledge that things really aren’t okay right now. I kept convincing myself that I shouldn’t put it on here, because it really goes against the light and fun tone I’ve been able to maintain from the start. But after much thought, I remembered something very important:

As much as I wish that the positivity and self-confidence I’ve been feeling for the past couple months could magically erase the years of mental health issues, it just doesn’t add up or make sense. Of course there will be be bad days, slumps, insecurities and irrational thoughts from time to time that manage to rear their ugly heads - it’s a part of the healing process. It makes perfect logical sense, because it’s how we overcome these times that end up proving how strong and resilient we have become.

I say that, like I haven’t been in denial that a slump has been looming for a while now. I’ve been so obsessed with this happiness and positivity that I’ve been feeling, that I’ve literally forced myself to ignore the huge red flags that everything was going to go to sh*t very soon. I tried to rationalise that the feeling of unease in my stomach was due to the novelty of moving and securing this job has begun to wear off, and that text book near-panic attacks were just due to me being tIrEd or hUnGrY.

I’ve decided to write about this, because I also want to normalise the hard and sh*t parts of healing. I want people to know that having bad days is okay, not being a ray of f*cking sunshine all the time is okay, having meltdowns is okay, that not feeling okay is okay - as cringe as that may sound. I also want to show that not having all the answers all the time, winging it and having a well deserved whine and moan is fine, too - and that’s essentially what this post is going to be about. I need to f*cking vent.

These past couple of weeks have been hell for me, to put it lightly, and as earlier mentioned, I chose to ignore every single sign that a slump was pending. When I’d come home from work with a gnawing feeling in my stomach that something bad was going to happen, I’d just binge eat a bunch of junk food and then go to sleep so I didn’t have to think. Whenever I’d be dangerously close to realising that the happiness I’ve been feeling is slowly but surely crumbling, I’d find myself forcing myself to banter and laugh about the whole situation so that I could mask how shit I was feeling about myself. And when I had two separate anxiety-attacks - which I haven’t had in ages - I forced myself to make light of them and make jokes.

Honestly. I feel like such an idiot for not taking them seriously. The first one was me waking up at my mates house after her birthday party with an insanely high heart rate and in a cold sweat. I was the only one awake at the time and I was actually really scared of dealing with it alone, so I ended up leaving. I later made light of it by saying that it was probably just because I was still drunk, that I’m a drama queen and that I was definitely feeling better after sleeping in my own bed.

The second one happened literally a couple days later. I blacked out and almost fainted on my commute into work. I‘ve experienced lightheadedness and dizziness before, but this was definitely different. My vision was blurry, I was seeing black dots around me, the music I was listening to kind of faded out and sounded muffled - like I was underwater - and my legs were shaking like mad. If I hadn’t had something to cling very tightly to, I’m very convinced that I would’ve passed out and fallen. I still can’t remember how I managed to stumble off the train at the right stop, but when I finally got some fresh air and my senses stabilised, I noticed how much of a cold sweat I was in.

Most normal people would’ve realised that they needed a time out at this point, but not I - I was forcing myself to believe that I was still happy, that everything was okay, that I just needed to ensure that I got a good night's sleep and eat something. I only told my housemate, my sister and my mum what had happened, made jokes about not wanting to go on WebMD because it’d tell me my brain is hemorrhaging… and then went about my day.

Right now I’m really torn, because I really want to internally punch myself up for not listening to my body...but at the same time I’m trying to be kInDeR tO mYsElF and fOrGiVe MySeLf for not following my own advice. Who even am I?

With all jokes aside and the background for this post out of the way, let me get very real.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been having this feeling of unease for a while now. This is a classic sign of anxiety - feeling that since things are seemingly too good to be true, something terrible must be coming up to ruin the peace. Since I know that when I usually feel like this it’s just down to irrational thinking, I kept suppressing the feeling and convincing myself that I was gucci.

Only this time, the feeling was real. I received some potentially life-changing news last week, that really rattled me to my core. I don’t even want to share what it is at this point, because I’m worried that discussing it openly on here will manifest it more than I already have by telling the few people I trust. All you as a reader needs to know is that it was heartbreaking and very illusion-shattering, and it definitely pushed me over the edge that I had no idea I was so close to.

The interesting thing about receiving bad news is that the way you take it onboard says a lot about your mental state. If you’re in a good place mentally - much like I was a couple weeks ago - chances are that you’ll be able to deal with it in a healthy manner and feel very assured that things will turn out fine, at least after the initial shock. But unfortunately, since I’ve spent the past couple of weeks convinced that something bad is going to happen, it’s really just sent me in this massive downward spiral.

When I get sad - like, really, really sad - my usual composed and collected self goes out of the window and my mind goes down a very irrational and self-deprecating path. My first thought when I heard the bad news was that it was my fault - I felt like I had literally spoken and willed it into existence, and blamed myself. Of course, it’s easy for me to see the irrationality of this feeling as I’m writing about it within a short window of sanity before the next emotional downswing comes. But when I let myself just be sad, I really and truly blame myself, and I don’t even know how to stop it.

The problem with me is that I struggle a lot with separating different things going on in my mind when I’m feeling like sh*t. I can never be in my feelings about one isolated thing - once the waterworks start, I really just feel sad about everything until I feel like there’s literally no point to my life anymore, and I start contemplating whether this life really and truly is even worth all this stress. The phrase “when it rains, it pours” is even an understatement, because why am I being attacked by this storm from a million different directions?

The maddest thing is that I feel like I deserve it, even though it literally makes no sense. I find myself thinking that this sh*t is all happening because I’ve made such a big deal out of putting my own mental and emotional wellbeing above my own family and friends - and now I’m being punished for it. I’m not entirely sure how or why this concept that I’m being punished has even manifested itself in my mind, but lately it’s really been taking over and literally poisoned my thoughts.

It’s my own fault that my relationship that my family is strained - I was the one who decided to move away.

My family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances don’t really care about me, or particularly like me for that matter - they just tolerate me because I’m there. It wouldn’t make any difference to them if I lived or died.

The pride, confidence and success I’ve been feeling careerwise lately is going to come crashing down any second now, because I don’t even really have the brains or resilience to make it like that. I’m an imposter, and people will soon realise it.

The immense loneliness I feel from time to time is there because deep down I know that the people I deem important in my life only see me as a background character in theirs.

I’m putting up a front that the failure of my last relationship it was all for the best and that I learned and grew from it, but deep down I know I’ll probably never fully be ok again. And even if I was to, I’d never be capable of loving them back because I’ve become too emotionally apathetic to feel anything for anyone again.

This confidence in my beauty that I’ve been feeling lately is all a scam. Deep down I know that I’m hideous, and no amount of healthy eating, working out, positive affirmations or glowing up will ever be capable of changing that.

...you get the point. It was actually really hard to type those out - as mentioned earlier in my blog, putting words to feelings you usually keep buried inside is genuinely traumatising. The thing is, when I read back what I’ve written when I’m in a good frame of mind I know it’s all rubbish. I know that my family and friends are proud of me and my success. I know that I matter. I know that the loneliness is my head messing with me and unresolved issues, because I’m surrounded by amazing friends. I know that when the time is right and I’m emotionally ready, I’ll settle down with someone on my wavelength that actually deserves me. I know that I’m very beautiful.

But the power of the mind really is a force to be reckoned with. It’s terrifying. It really has me thinking so irrationally and doubting my own knowledge, and it’s so emotionally draining. Furthermore, it convinces me that I’m the only person in the world feeling like this, that I’m some sort of emotional outcast that’s carrying this huge burden in secret. I literally feel like I can’t tell anyone how I truly feel anymore because - even though I preach about being unapologetic about feelings - I’m terrified that I’ll be judged, thought to be overdramatic or labelled as attention-seeking.

I think the horrible and most frustrating part of this whole slump business is the three states of mind I differentiate between until it passes. I’m either balanced, really f*cking numb or really f*cking sad.

The balanced part - not to be confused with actually being content - is the state of mind that I force myself to be in when I’m at work or need to interact with people and feel relatively normal. People don’t even know - or care - enough to see that I’m constantly having to fight myself to not be affected by anything that could trigger the other two mindstates.

The sadness that takes over from time to time is the hardest to deal with because it’s so unpredictable. I’ll just be going about my day at work, sitting on the bus, hanging out with friends, watching a movie alone when I suddenly just feel tears coming. Most of the time I don’t even know why it’s coming because it seemingly doesn’t even have a trigger. All I know is that it’s really f*cking hard to keep the tears back, and if I let the tears come I know it will go on for a really long time.

The third and final one - the numbness - is definitely the most scary one of the three simply because it’s so out of character for me. I’ve been a quite sensitive person my entire life - as in no stranger to crying and getting in my feelings - so when these feelings began to emerge I was worried that there was something wrong with me or that I had snapped. Well, I would’ve been worried if I had been capable of feeling it at the time. As someone that’s used to crying whenever things get hard, suddenly feeling numb, empty and unbothered by all the sh*t that’s going on is a massive red flag. The first time I felt it - in conjunction with ending things with my ex - my therapist theorised that it was my brains way of protecting and repairing itself from the overwhelming amount of sadness I had been feeling. I’m no neurologist so I don’t know if this is correct - but it would make sense if that was the case. The numbness, apathy and lack of emotion was a blessing at first, but I soon noticed that it actually makes me not even give a f*ck about my family, friends, job, body or health either - which simply isn’t me. In the long run, the lack of emotion really ended up taking a toll on my health. I was drinking very excessively at this point in time and tried other substances that I know for a fact I wouldn’t have dreamt of trying otherwise - simply because I didn’t care if I lived or died anymore.

Luckily my periods of numbness aren’t as bad as that anymore. I’d like to think that it’s because I have become more resilient and mentally strong since then, but I’m not even sure anymore. All I know is that when I lie in bed at night and try to allow myself to cry to let out all the pent up emotions, the tears don’t even come. That’s how I know that something is very wrong.

Whenever I feel myself slipping into this rotation of mindstates, I desperately try to find a way to get out of it because I’m scared of how long it is going to last this time. You might as well call me Solange, because I literally try to work, laugh, sex, joke, eat, drink, shop, clean, read, cry, sleep, pray, ignore and - as you can see - write it away. Sometimes I’m able to distract myself for brief periods of time, but as soon as the good feeling wears off I’m just back to feeling like sh*t again. I’m scared now that all the positivity that I’ve been feeling in conjunction with moving and starting a new job is beginning to wear off, and that going back to constantly having this underlying sense of sadness and loneliness will fully take over my life again.

Unfortunately, only time will tell. And much like Solange implies, I can’t keep trying to avoid confronting my problems.  I’m just going to have to ride this sh*t out, hope for the best and force myself to stay positive, even though it all feels really hopeless right now. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to revisit this post and share the lessons and solutions I’ve been able to devise by going through it - after all, that’s what I’ve been doing in my previous posts. But I don’t know when that will be.

I could go on writing about this forever, but my mind tends to go around in circles when I feel like this and I feel like I’d just be repeating myself. Although the purpose of this post was for me to have an outlet for my emotions before I ended up snapping and going full on Mrs. Hyde, I hope that me sharing how I’ve been feeling can let whoever might be going through a similar period know that they aren’t alone, regardless of how lonely and alienated the sadness makes them feel.

I want to round up this post with a short list of tips for whoever can relate to this post, on how I personally try to make these episodes at least slightly easier to deal with (Because is it even a Bounce Back post if it doesn’t have tips in bullet points? I don’t think so):

Time your productivity with your emotional upswings.

If you’re anything like me, the particularly bad feelings come and go in waves. When you can feel that you’re in a good-ish state of mind, make sure you address all your responsibilities, chores and other things you need to do. Don’t worry too much about the amount of extra time it ends up taking - taking slightly longer on a task is much better than doing it when you’re in a sh*t mood and would honestly just want to off yourself. For reference, it’s taken me two weeks to write this blog post just because I didn’t want to write it while being miserable - because I knew it wouldn’t be very helpful, would make me feel worse and probably wouldn’t make much sense.

Don’t neglect yourself.

Luckily I have a full time job now that doesn’t allow me to fall into patterns of self-neglect anymore. But if I didn’t, I’m positive that I’d just be in bed taking depression naps, netflixing, ignoring everyone and either overeating or not eating at all. In fact, that’s literally me on weekends when I don’t have plans. Not healthy or helpful at all, in other words.

A shower (or even better...a bubble bath), brushing your teeth, leaving your room, eXeRcIsE, fresh air and a cheeky cuppa really does do wonders in terms of mood-lifting. I promise that giving yourself that extra push to do at least 3 of those things will make you at least feel like you’ve done something with your day so you don’t have to be so hard on yourself for being a lazy sh*t.

Keep your living space clean (!!!)

Fun fact - I may or may not have burst into tears after coming home from work the other day and seeing that there was a whole lot of sh*t on my unmade bed and on the floor. On my good days I’m usually a bit (a lot) of a neat freak, so when my living space is disgusting it really just is a reflection and a brutal reminder of how bad my state of mind is. Of course, I had no one but myself to blame for the mess but it really ended up being the last drop that sent me over the edge.

If you at the very least make sure your floor, bed and other areas you know you’re going to want to wallow in self pity in later on are tidy, it really does make a huge difference. One less thing to have a meltdown over; we stan.

Force yourself to believe that it will pass.

This is really difficult when you literally feel like you want to play in traffic. But try your best to remember other times in the past where you felt like your life was falling apart and appreciate that the lessons you learnt from that have made you slightly more resilient this time around, even though it may not feel so.

For example - regardless of how terrible I feel right now, I remember times when I couldn’t even brave leaving my bed to go to uni or work...and that was for a lot less bullsh*t than what I’m going through now. Furthermore, the more of these episodes I have, the easier it is to convince myself that it will, in fact, pass. It always does. You just have to ride it out.

Don’t isolate yourself.

I thought I’d finish with the one that’s the most challenging (for me). I’m naturally a bit of a loner - always have been. Going to other people to talk about how much I’m struggling has never come naturally for me - it’s not really until my adult life that I’ve learnt to understand the importance and benefits of talking to others. Furthermore, when my brain tells me that my family and friends don’t even f*ck with me like that, it really is a huge challenge to overcome that feeling of insecurity and reach out to the people that supposedly hAtE mE. I’d rather just stay in bed and protect my feelings by just being alone and then cry about feeling lonely. Make it make sense, please.

Of course, this is far from healthy and it is imperative to learn how to break away from this pattern of thinking. Nowadays I force myself to leave my room and annoy my housemate, force myself to grace my friends with my comedic abilities so I can at least try to have a laugh, and force myself to reach out to family members that I’ve managed to convince myself don’t really want to talk to me.

It really does make a massive difference and I promise you that you will be positively surprised. It really makes you remember that it’s all in your head and makes you more able to disregard the feelings when they come and try to attack you.

Whew enfant. I definitely feel better now. Apologies in advance for the rambling and the probable confusion, but to be honest no one really forced you to read it. I don’t really know how to end a post like this, so I’ll just finish up by reminding whoever needs to hear it (including myself) that these feelings are normal and will pass, as well as that feeling like this doesn’t imply weakness or a lessening of worth.

Keep telling yourself that until you believe it.

In the meantime, I’m going to try my best to keep my head above water and keep dishing out posts about how to get through times like this. Fear not, I still have loads of ideas that I want to share - and I’m not letting a sh*tty couple weeks ruin the good thing I’ve started.

Love,

Liv