Knee-Deep in Candy Floss by Mehr Walia (20, India)

It's taken twenty springs and autumns, and I've only now come to accept it. I am an absent-minded pessimist who lets sadness seep in every now and then, but actively tries not to bring it up in conversation. The walk we took after our evening class, I don't recall the name of your new basketball team or what I said when you told me your dog was sick. I remember the crackle of leaves underneath our boots, the out-of-ordinary red of your nose, and the shock of your frost-bitten fingertips touching my forehead to release the stress creases. I won't remember the road we need to take but I remember the sequence of songs we need to play along a car ride. I can lie still beneath the open sky and engage in hour long games of pareidolia - a candy floss machine that poofs up a high necked poodle or a distorted pineapple formed of panicky clouds. Nothing cancels pessimism like escapism.

---

But when life creaks in through the door ajar, is it okay to feel this angry with yourself on a daily basis? What would you do if basic compassion, human skin, emotions and ideas around us weren't price-tagged and put up on shelves for display? Is it the tough love with yourself that takes you an extra mile or does it rob you of the primal things a human does for living - eating, breathing, exploring?