Journal entry pt:1

January, the month of leftover words & feelings

"I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain." – Sylvia Plath

January 28, 2025

January lingers like the last note of a song played in an empty room—stretching itself out, refusing to dissolve. It is the month that both clings and drifts, hovering in that strange, weightless space between what was and what will be. I have spent these days moving through a quiet haze, neither fully awake nor truly lost in dreams. It is not despair, not quite. More like a dull, persistent hum of waiting, of expectation without direction. I keep expecting something to shift, some invisible threshold to be crossed, but instead, each day passes like the one before it—soft, gray, indistinct, like ink bleeding into water.

The mornings are the worst, not because they bring any particular pain but because they demand something from me, a commitment to wakefulness, to participation. I wake before the sun most days, though I cannot claim it as an achievement. It is not discipline but restlessness, the kind that settles in my bones and refuses to let go. The bed is too vast, an ocean I drift in without anchor, the walls too close, pressing in like an unwelcome embrace. So I slip out and make my way to the living room, curling into the corner of the couch where the silence feels less oppressive. The world outside is still, the streetlights casting dull pools of yellow onto the pavement. The sky is a murky blue, neither night nor morning, like a bruise in the process of healing.

I do not eat breakfast, not because I am avoiding it, but because hunger feels irrelevant in January. My body moves through its routines, but my mind lags behind. Coffee is the only ritual that holds any weight. I move through the steps with precision, a small ceremony of patience: boiling the water, measuring the grounds, waiting. The smell unfurls into the room, rich and dark, a presence all its own, curling through the air like the ghost of something familiar. The first sip is always the same—sharp, slightly bitter, a reminder that I am here, that I am awake, that the world has begun again whether I am ready or not.

The hours slip past in fragments. I read, but my attention drifts. The words blur, their meaning just out of reach, like trying to catch smoke in my hands. Still, I turn the pages, seeking something I cannot name. I revisit Woolf, Plath, Baldwin—writers who understood time in the way I do, as something that folds in on itself, as something felt rather than counted. Their sentences settle into me like old songs, familiar yet always new. Some passages I read aloud, just to hear them fill the room, to break the silence that clings to the edges of everything. I do not know if I am seeking wisdom or companionship, only that their words feel like an anchor in the shifting landscape of this month.

Outside, January moves at its own unhurried pace. The fog drapes itself over the city, thick and unmoving, a heavy coat thrown over the streets, muffling the world into quiet obscurity. It has settled here for days now, pressing against the windows like something alive, something watching. The cold creeps in beneath doors and through the cracks in the walls, lingering in the air like an unfinished thought, curling around my ankles like a stray cat refusing to be ignored. I do not turn on the heat just yet. I let the chill nestle into my skin, let it remind me that I am here, present, still capable of feeling.

I water the plant in the corner of my apartment, the only living thing that shares this space with me. It does not need much, just a little light, a little care. It survives without expectation, without urgency, stretching toward the sun like a prayer. I envy it. There is something peaceful about its quiet persistence, its slow unfolding toward the weak winter sun. I run my fingers over its leaves, wondering if it registers my touch, if it knows I am here, if it understands that I am trying, that we are both just doing our best to keep growing.

Music hums low in the background, a gentle current beneath my thoughts. I sit still, listening, letting the melody coil around me like a ribbon of warmth in the cold room. I trace absentminded patterns on my knee, feeling the rhythm settle into my bones. I consider reaching for my notebook but hesitate, as if the moment might scatter if I move too quickly. Instead, I trace idle shapes on the paper, the ink curling like wisps of thought, half-formed and fleeting. Writing does not ask for clarity—it simply unfolds, like a river carving its way through time, moving forward whether I try to direct it or not.

The act itself is both grounding and disorienting. Each letter I scrawl feels like a thread unraveling from some deeper place, an excavation of thoughts I hadn't realized were buried. I write without pausing to think, allowing my hand to move as if the words had been waiting for me all along. The ink spreads, bleeding slightly into the fibers of the page, like secrets seeping into time itself.

At times, I stop to reread, to decipher the half-legible script that mirrors the state of my mind—uneven, wandering, searching for coherence in the quiet chaos of my own existence. I press my fingers against the paper, as if to anchor myself there, to remind myself that these words, these moments, belong to me.

A draft sneaks in through the window, making the pages flutter. It feels like a whisper, an invitation to let go, to stop trying to shape the thoughts and simply let them spill as they are. I let the pen glide freely, loops and lines stretching outward, an extension of something ineffable. This, too, is a kind of release, a way to move forward without needing to see the path ahead.

By evening, the light has shifted again, turning the walls a deep shade of blue, the color of longing, of almost. The city hums beyond my window, distant but present, a creature stirring in its sleep. I step outside for a moment, just to breathe in the cold air, to remind myself that I exist beyond these walls. The sky is vast and indifferent, the stars sharp and distant, scattered like shattered glass across the night. I close my eyes and let the night settle around me. There is something about the end of January that feels like standing at the edge of something unnamed. Not quite an ending, not yet a beginning. Just this—a pause, a breath, a moment suspended in time.

And perhaps that is enough. Perhaps not every month needs to be a declaration. Perhaps not every day must be filled with meaning. Perhaps, in this quiet, in this stillness, there is something worth holding onto.

Tomorrow will come. The month will end. And I will move forward, even if I do not yet know where I am going.

Till then, xoxo

Mukta<3

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Song of choice is the one currently blasting on my speakers as I write this, enjoy!

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