functioning feelings

11 Oct, 2025

The collision of my menstrual phase with the start of a new medication, one with depressive side effects, made my skin a little thinner this week. If it’s not the backache, it’s tears.

Ten reasons:

1. When I couldn’t make the Fibonacci function work.
2. When I read Mahmoud Darwish’s poem And He Returned In A Shroud.
3. When I was learning how to chuck on the ukulele and couldn't get it to work.
4. When I rummaged through my treasured childhood box and found letters from people I haven’t spoken to in a decade.
5. When my grandmother said she was glad I left that good-for-nothing Britannia.
6. When I read the last chapter of Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun.
7. When I felt guilty after I felt lonely because my loneliness is a self-inflicted injury.
8. When I thought about people who never got the honour of a funeral.
9. When I watched a posthumous video of Jane Goodall saying that we all have a purpose in life, and that our lives matter even if we never figure it out.
10. When I learned that Mahmoud Darwish died in Houston, Texas.