My microwaved Thai food tastes like someone once heard a rumor about red curry, based on a memory within a dream. It’s Thai food, certainly, but several times diluted from reality.

It cooks in five minutes, though, and that’s a blessing today. The world is in the time-out corner so I shouldn’t be so concerned with shaving seconds from minutes, but life happens, life happens, life happens. Sometimes twice as quickly as you want it to. Sometimes it happens so quickly that it feels like it leaves you behind and I guess that’s a form of purgatory, too.

My mind is buried in the clouds today, and in the dirt, but as I make funeral arrangements, I realize how many places aren’t allowing burials anymore, so I pull myself out of it.

I’m a little out of it.

I’m a little out of sugar, too, which means, I am not out, but I will be if I make a treat. I shouldn’t be baking. My brain has not dealt well with the adventures of today.

I keep trying to flush my hair brush. I’ve misspelled most of the words I’ve typed here. And the knobs, la!

Have I explained how easy it is to lose an understanding of knobs? Showers and sinks and doors make little sense in the face of brain injury.

I am mostly recovered from my strokes, which means of course, that I am not recovered. Most days, the mostly carries me through to the other side. Today, not so much.

Today I saw myself in the mirror and for an honest three seconds thought, “She looks nice, but she’s standing so close without a mask.”

At least I look nice? To myself?

I have no idea what I look like to other people, which isn’t a problem of today, or purgatory, or strokes, or life. I look like my parents in the same way that my microwaved curry tasted like Thai food. Yes, but also no. Mamasaur looks nice, I think, if children can be trusted to know these things, and I think they can. My dad did not look nice, but he looked pleased about not looking nice, and that’s not the same thing, but it’s very similar. Just a few dilutions of reality away.

Today was a quintessentially bad day because it contained all the right elements of one, but it was a classically good day because I have loved ones who love me back. And love me big.

And because I love myself, I am writing this post, even though I am exhausted, because I promised myself. And you should keep promises, especially those made to people you love.

Of course, if you flip that thought pancake, you could just as easily say that you should be forgiving of promises broken by people you love because that’s a way of showing love. In which case, this blog post isn’t required so much as a suggestion.

But it’s too late now. Life tried to happen right past me, but I grabbed onto to its coattails and flung myself back into these pancakes with a re-write.

But life says “no backsies”, so let’s call this a free write.

Let’s pretend it would cost nothing to let go.