Dear CIROS #5
ps: here’s a compilation of songs that have made me feel alive in a *magistral sunset and vivifying breeze* type of way lately
Dear CIROS is an online initiative to link students together in the unprecedented times and isolating distance we live in today.
Dear writer #4,
Somehow your Mac Miller lyrics from last week resonated on multiple levels with the weird period of my life that the past weeks have been. As classes and most of what makes my everyday literally stopped from one day to the other, so did my surroundings, and now it has been weeks that we have been playing (too much) Mac Miller on repeat (in the morning, in the shower, in the sun, in the kitchen, on Spotify or even on Youtube), especially the acoustic versions of Small Worlds and 2009. Both your letter and those songs got me thinking of how crazy it is that despite the distance and differences, we still can find ourselves relating to others through tiny details. Now I wonder what you, Writer #6, will have elected as the soundtrack of your past weeks ?
Although the changes of my life settings have not been as drastic as moving back home like some of you, moving from living alone in a studio to sharing an apartment with my friends in order to cope with self-quarantine and social distancing has led me to dream less for various reasons.
Despite finding myself talking much more about dreams: over breakfast with my newfound flatmates, when trying to analyze what worries my subconscious and triggers my panic attacks, and finally when realizing one or two weeks in, that I could not remember my dreams anymore. This came as a shocking realization to me since I have always analyzed my dreams, try to link their symbolisms and the people present in them to my reality in order to understand my awakened self better. Yet my new smoking habits have offered me a sweet break from my deafening thoughts and sadly managed to take away my nightly therapies.
Truth is until a week ago, this self-quarantine was to me, a synonym of denial and unhealthy coping mechanisms. I’ve always been one to struggle with anxiety and insomnia, and few weeks before the start of this pandemic, I had just started to get back on my feet from months of depression and everything still feels like a too fragile equilibrium.
Typing the word “depression” on my keyboard feels like slapping a huge chunk of taboo and shame on my screen. I’m usually seen as the social-butterfly-always-out type but when I triggered and lose sight of my comfort zone, it is between two social events or when I get home at night that the weight of all my social interactions that day is slammed on my shoulder and i withdraw from the outside world.
Unfortunately, me and my coping mechanisms jumped on the excuse of this global outbreak to sink into denial, out of fear but also out of relief to be as far away from my home country where the reality of all things (family, pandemic, distance from friends) would hit me much harder.
Like Ilka, I wonder how others are coping with this new-normal and what are the negative habits you’ve caught yourself getting trapped into lately? Personally, I’d like to slowly slip out of my hibernation and catch up on my lectures, readings, sleep, meditating schedules.
Sending all the positivity I can find around me and spreading as much as I can onto all of youse,
— Anonymous, still The Hague for a while.
ps: here’s a compilation of songs that have made me feel alive in a *magistral sunset and vivifying breeze* type of way lately:
(Note from Kai: I’ve compiled them into a Spotify playlist)
Make me a star - Rocci
San Sebastian - Madrid, Leiva
Novacane - Frank Ocean
Autre espèce - Disiz La Peste
Yellow - Rich Brian (for some reasons the start of this song feels like finally touching the ground after a long and turbulent flight)
Hello - Lionel Richie
Trigger Protection Mantra - Jhene Aiko
Dance 4 Eternity - Kid Cudi
Space Oddity - David Bowie
Neither do I - Stwo
God is love - Peter CottonTale
Renee’s song - Bazzi
and all the Mac Miller and Jhene Aikoo songs you can find on this earth.
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