A night in which the ground still freezes is followed by a day that allows me to wear a top out for the first time in seven months. Luise and I go on a walk on top of the hill, towards the lake and around the hospital. Everyone keeps their distance these days, and having her next to me, an actual human within an arms reach, suddenly feels unreal - and way too intimate.
I brush my hair bending over. I stand like that for many minutes, pressing the bristles into my scalp and feeling the blood flush my cheeks. It's grown so long I can't call it short anymore. I think back to past points of friction and think, 'this would've gone differently had my hair not been short'. It's an unfamiliar sensation, all of it. Having my hair sway against the top of my back, the sun on my feet as I lay outside on the couch, the warm wind around my naked arms.
I think living in that flat under the roof let my paranoia fester uncontrollably. Now that I live with dad again I am so much better. Maybe it is the warmer weather as well or the presence of a great-er evil that I can weigh against my own personal troubles, or maybe it's the cats and their happy little faces when they see me in the morning, but I am better here. I went back there the other day - stuffy air, plantless, with sleep deprivation and coffee overdoses clinging to the corners and dripping from the ceiling - the pipe of functionality rusted and broken under the surface.
