How to Be Reluctantly Optimistic: Starting Your Day

An insider's account of surviving life in the crevices. Not a self-help series.

So my day was begun with opening my eyes. To the sound of Jim Henson as Kermit the Frog singing “I don’t want to live on the moon”. At a time when the sky was just dark enough to still see the moon, if one wants to, but a tinge of sun rays hinting the end of night. I don’t close my window curtain all the way anymore, I wanted to be able to see the changing colour from the spot on my bed where I usually sleep.

The dream from last night had not completely gone away from the dark space inside my skull. Even if it was not particularly exciting, it was a state of mind I would like to stay in.

I cannot remember now what it was. It is shrinking gradually, as if it were about to implode into, well, nothing really.

 

“Though I’d like to look down at the earth from above

I would miss all the faces of the people I love

So although I may go I’ll be coming home soon

Cause I don’t want to live on the moon”

 

S**t. Henson wrote songs with the relatable lexicon of a smart four-year-old and the emotional precision of a century-old wise woman.

Imagine the Queen of Thorn with an acoustic guitar.

 

Kermit the Frog often compels me to examine closely the feeling of jealousy. 

Home-envy.

I pulled up my duvet to cover my breath. My freezing cheeks thawed with the warmth of every exhale.

 

And the song would restart. Sometimes I would let it play, just to make myself feel again the painful emptiness upon listening to the words.

“Masochist”, I would tell myself. “I hope something good happens today.”

And then I pressed STOP on the screen.