Okay, universe, I'm crying 'uncle'. STOP

A little hope is more dangerous than a big hope. Big hopes are easily quenchable, you know somewhere in the back of your head that it could all blow up and you’ll be left back at square one. A little hope on the other hand, never quite leaves you, and niggles and niggles away at the back of your mind, leaving you exhilarated and butterfly-tummied at the oddest moments. It’s not easy to push away a little hope. It’s like a mosquito versus a snake. It stays under your skin, itching and you have to keep scratching at it. There is no anti-venom.

A little hope is not worth wallowing over when it’s proven to not exist, no one—least of all yourself—will get the sort of misery the abandonment of a little hope causes. The vanishing of a little hope annoys you more than makes you sad, it makes you dislike the world and get cross and snarly inside. A little hope gives you pleasure—not the same sort of pleasure a big hope does—not a rainbows and puppy dogs pleasure, but a muted sort of feeling that life is not quite as bad at it seemed after all. It’s not toe curling or sunshine on a cloudy day inspiring, but it is hope. Killing the little hope often makes you shrug your shoulders and go, ‘Oh well, what’re you going to do?’ and yet, and yet you feel as though there will be no big hopes, no hopes of any kind at all, because the little hope can very easily feel like a big hope under the right circumstances.

Of course, if you’re a cynic like me, you’ve made provisions for the end of a little hope too. I’m having a shitty week. Completely, one hundred per cent shitty. It started, to be fair, with only a sixty per cent shittiness—with this nasty flu, but then as all other areas of my life began to roller coaster downhill with the same alarming rapidity—I sit here Friday evening and wonder if it could possibly get any worse. Seriously, in the history of bad luck weeks, I think mine deserves to be up there in the hall of fame. They should have halls of fame for bad weeks. It might make us feel a little better about ourselves. Two days for this week to end, and the only thing not affected—yet—is my social life. Watch that also go now. I’m betting by Sunday, I will officially be inching towards the D-Cold Total in my purse and thinking of ending it all. (Although, I don’t think D Cold Total can kill you with an overdose, only seriously fuck with your liver). No, none of these downward spiraling things are anything I can talk about here, but I’m sure you can marginally guess, excluding my social life, what the other aspects of my life are. Yeah. Just about everything I’m afraid. And the only thing I can whine about online is that I did a really hot salt water gargle and scalded my tongue. This sucks. There are days when I’m proud of having so many people reading this thing and other days when I wish no one did. Then I could whine to complete strangers and tell them EXACTLY how terrible my week has been, blow by blow, point by point, maybe get some good advice, and instead? I’m reduced to being fucking diplomatic and not stepping on any toes or anything. AAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

To top it all off, troll blogs and comments are back, just when you thought they went out with 2003. Nope, there are still people who love to hate you, just because you’re a woman, just because you write about going out and having fun because OH MY GOD GOD FORBID AN INDIAN WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ANY FUN OR TURN DOWN ANYONE ELSE AND SHE’S SO FUCKING UGLY DUDES HOW DARE SHE SPURN ANY ADVANCES SHE SHOULD BE HAPPY WITH WHAT SHE IS GETTING. Chootiyas.

I’m tired. I’m tired of coughing and having to blow my nose every five seconds and breathing through my mouth. I’m tired of trying. I’m tired of being upbeat and optimistic and assuming everything’s going to be all right (rockabye) when it never is, really, is it? I’m tired of fighting to make my case, I’m tired of selling myself to people, I’m just generally tired. I want comfort, a backrub, an evening of not talking with people who won’t expect me to talk, I want compliments, I want to be nineteen again, I want to go home and yet I don’t want to sell out, I want my mummy.