Letter 16 of 19

Hello 2019,

There's load shedding at home. This is an intentional power shutdown where electricity supply is stopped. It happens across the globe actually. I think they call it brown outs. I'm not sure how long it will be out for. I never really know when I'm back in my home village. It could be hours. This load shedding issue is one of the things my fellow countrymen complain about. You would swear it's our biggest problem. Regardless of the politics, it does bring its bit of inconvenience.

Another inconvenience today is that I don't really feel like talking to you 2019. I wish you could have been switched off with the electricity and then we wake up to 2020. It doesn't work like that though? Does it? The adulting gig comes without that bubble. On these streets you stick things out and you see them through.

I'm having one of your challenging days. I feel like my emotional system is overwhelmed and I too need to shut down some parts in order to function. The trouble is picking which to switch off. The trick is that it's not like I can eeny, meeny, miney mo myself out of moments like this. They always feel like they have a domino effect. This one falls, trips the other and causes it to fall...the rest is history.

Last year, in Letter 14, I was telling 2018 how she introduced me to parts of myself that I didn't know existed. This year, 2019, I think you turned things up a notch and I got to venture deeper into this. I sat in the darkness that you've brought, lit the candle and as I watched through the flame I've had to think. In silence. You'll be amazed at how much natural sound electricity distracts us from.

I'm listening to the birds chirp outside my window, my stomach growls from time to time and the wind is wrestling with trees. My thoughts are drifting to things I've learnt about myself on your timeline that make days like this one of those bitter pills to swallow.  Being an empath isn't glamorous. Being an empath who doesn't even fully understand what it means to be one is a mess. My problem solving skills need polishing. A lot of it. My bottling things up ability is not a healthy defence mechanism, it's toxic. I need to understand myself better. Yes, I know the actual list is longer 2019 but Rome was not built in one day.

I don't like days like today and that's okay. I may even prefer days when my immune system is acting up over them but despite it all I'm grateful for them. Funny enough, I hope that 2020 is filled with them. Well, maybe not filled entirely. Maybe just that I hope it has them too.

I hope it's filled with moments when I am fully present on "purple" days. I hope it's filled with accepting that liking "purple" days doesn't mean that I'm not a die hard fan of "blue" days. No. It's an anchor on the strong respect that "red" is just as valid as "blue". I am not an island...