Week 9, 2026: Push notification war
My days are fixed to a 5am start. Three coffees under the duvet, reading into the sunrise. I alternate walks and runs for exercise but the routine stays the same. Sunscreen. Moisturizer on elbows and knees. Cheap perfume. Bond repair oil that I was influenced into buying by a Redditor with nice hair. Hair up in a high bun with the help of a boar bristle brush and a triple XL scrunchie. The first few mornings, the sun rises through the fog and it’s beautiful.
The traffic lights on the street leading to the beach give the red signal a shorter lifespan at this time of day because people are trying to get to work. The beach feels like it is all mine. It is just me and the stray cats and the gardeners and the fellow runners. There is enough space for each of us to feel like it is all ours. I often wish I could just exist between 5am and 9am. By the time it gets to 9am, I feel that I have had a day. Reading, journaling, saying hello to the birds, jogging, people-watching. It feels enough.
I have been tracking my moods for the past couple of years using Apple’s State of Mind tool. There is a sliding scale that lets you rate your mood. It moves from Very Pleasant to Pleasant to Slightly Pleasant to Neutral to all the shades of Unpleasant. My records tell me that the last Very Unpleasant Day was in July and the last time I had two in a single week was in December 2024. That was the week that pushed me to sobriety.
That was the last time until this week. The brain blues are back. I sat with my thoughts as long as I could before drowning them out with other people’s voices. Radio Al Hara in the background, a book on attachment theory in the foreground. In my morning constitutionals, I pay attention to other people as a diversion. The beach witnesses endless acts of kindness. I wonder if it has anything to do with it being a grave. I watch neighbors and tourists pick up litter from the shore, fill the bowls of stray cats with water, tip the gardener for keeping our streets trim and proper, teach their toddlers how to walk in the water. There is so much fucking good in the world and I am sorry to forget it sometimes.
I went to my uncle’s for dinner on Thursday night. Nine of us in the flat, plates flying in and out of view like a prop comedy act. I saw my cousins for the first time in many years. The boy towers over me now, a sweet guy in college for medicine. His younger sisters are tweens. One of them sat next to me but dared not make eye contact. Her father says we look alike and I kind of see it. We have the same smile. And we both liked math at the age of twelve. Except she’s still twelve and I am not. She’s learning Korean and hates using the computer. I could’ve gotten to know her more. We could’ve exchanged words in French and Korean. I could’ve told her I’ve just learned that ‘to remember’ is ‘se souvenir’. I didn’t do any of that. I just thought about how memories really are like souvenirs. Je me souviens de tout.
Weekend. I found out from a friend texting me ‘Hey are u ok’ that Iran was firing missiles and drones at several cities, including mine. I had just had a morning so wonderful that I had to note it down. The magical ritual to a good morning: A walk in the fishing area on the beach, where migrants like to lend their labor-free mornings to hope. ABBA and Nourine in the earbuds. A big soak of hope and percussion, followed by news of missile strikes. I haven’t seen anything with my eyes, not debris nor reactionary media, so I feel fine. Come evening, my brother and I watch Back To The Future and eat pizza.
Several emergency alerts go off in the early hours of Sunday with the instruction to seek immediate shelter and steer clear of windows, doors and open areas. If being woken by shrill alert noises doesn’t make it real, the loud boom! noise at noon does. Good Scott! Probably the sound of another missile being intercepted. I check the news from time to time to see if explosions are still being heard in my city and if the civilian death toll has increased.
My friend just had a baby, a beautiful baby boy. He sent me a video of him cooing and called him a legend. It made me so emotional. He is the first of my friends to have a baby and the third to get married. I’ve been invited to two weddings this year, in Lebanon and India.
It will be okay.