This story came to me today. I don't know who's story it is and who needs to hear it but I decided to write it down and publish it for all of you to see. The story is a bit sad but I like to think that it also reflects the topic of hope. Speaking of hope, I hope you realise how wonderful you are 💌

The rain is softly brushing against my window and I have mentally locked myself inside. The door to my soul is almost open but I don't want sadness to knock on it and enter this perfect state of calm. There is a calender on my wall but it's from the year 1939. Does it mean that I live in another dimension, another place, another time? I still see the same days there as everyone else. Yet another Monday that turns into a Friday. But when a year changes I'll take a step back rather than a giant leap of faith forward. Some people like to live in the present, some always think about their future but I find the greatest comfort is in the past.

🦋

The past is always one moment before something happens. The last laughter before a storm, the last ray of sunshine before the dark. I lean forward letting the day bring me some of its energy as I sit at the end of my bed. The end of my bed - the end of my dreams? The line that will separete fantasy from reality. I wish I could be waking up at noon to the sound of water boiling, to the thought of morning tea and a newspaper. Smiling faces gazing up towards me at the table. The atmosphere of an eternal Sunday.

🦋

I have a clock on my wall but it doesn't sound. I can't hear the time go by, I can just sense it. The table is filled with the presence of yesterday. Flowers that used to bloom, pictures of people who used to love and sing, letters that were written to be read in the future but with words that came into our minds in the past. An empty cup that was filled with coffee before work, water before bed and wine during a starry night in August. The mirror is clouded, covered in dust, fingerprints, and dried tears. Once it used to be the worst possible enemy, pointing out every scar, every flaw every stain of shame. Then it just became an object just like anything else. Now it feels like an old friend that you glance back at every now and then and you can almost see a reflection of your youth.

🦋

I always used to judge a book by its cover, thinking that I too was a book among others united by a shelf, seeking the comfort of other books but waiting for a potential reader to pick me up. Some did. Mostly to read what the critics had told or read the introduction. Not many reached the final pages and sometimes I needed to give them little papercuts here and their. Because even if they read my story and I would let them, they kept messing up my pages. I was covered in dirt and my words were hidden. I was shoved aside when the new books with better covers came. But once they returned to me I had no power left in me except the papercuts. Their blood would drip on my page as a reminder of hurt. But once there was a reader who even brought his bookmark. I got to feel appreciated until the story was read and I had no more pages left to give. No more lines, no more words.

🦋

And so the loyal reader left but he left the bookmark with me and it gathers dust on the shelf of memories and I cannot see it, but I'll never stop feeling it. Sometimes the sun would shine on it but I was too afraid to look. I cannot seem to feel the floor under my feet, is this were the reader meets the last word on the last page in a book that isn't able to return to the past anymore?

Hello! As I writer I am often like an abstract expressionist painter. Such as the face of that art movement, Jackson Pollock the famous action painter. I often express my emotions directly rather than trying to illustrate them. I approch my work from all angles and I write without censoring myself. Mistakes are embraced as a part of the creative process. The following text called "Isolation" is an inner narrative on how we might feel like, right now during the quarantine and how our emotions flow from anger to sadness, from joy to depression. I wish that you could see it as an abstract painting. Let your own inner narrative guide you when reading.

//Rebecka

If you would be stuck in a prison cell after commiting a crime would you just sit there thinking about what is wrong and what is right, from morning to night? Or would your mind and body just try to survive, one day at the time? We humans like to think of ourselves as fighters and survivors, but are we really? This isolation of ours brings out our true nature, as individuals and as a large collective. No matter if we like it or not. I need a little spark of inspiration! Each hour and minute might begin to feel the same. Each passing day seems to slowly fade away. The concept of time has gone far away. Beyond this galaxy and perhaps even the universe that we call ours - the thing that made us feel safe. There is sunshine outside my window and a message in my phone. Which call should I answer? Sometimes I just don't know.

I am grateful, I am kind, I try my very best, put on that beautiful smile. Each day I have to fight the laziness in my mind. My brain and body wish to sleep. Wanting to become one with those mainstream doxa following zombies that surround us all the time! But each day the sun will rise and shine all over the prison inside my mind. It is me who fights! It is me who fights with the power of my own mind! Do I really want to cry? or do I want to start again and try? Anything it takes to survive, this insane narrative that could turn my mind into a prison if I let it do so. I seek freedom like it would be a place someone could travel to. I seem to associate freedom with another place and another time, when really all it is... It is a product of the mind. And one day I'll begin to dance and sing, letting my spirit fly, feeling sky high. The other I fall against the earth, feeling the growned as a comfortable warmt underneath me, hugging me, caring for me, showing me uncondintional love, the greatest love there is. Then I begin to raise, rising from the ashes, not afraid of starting all over again. A new beginning could also be and end, an end of something that I would not want to befriend.

In the middle of this isolation I try my best to strive. But no matter how hard I try sometimes the streets outside are just as empty as my mind. I search for solutions, an inner light, logic, visions, fire. How far can I go, how many times can one person start over? Fall asleep, stay awake, do something important and then repeat. Sometimes the room feels larger, sometimes I feel like I should shrink. I dream of people holding hands, children running in the streets, open libraries and grabbing something to eat. I have opened The Bible and other good books, I have stared at my own writings like it was a horcrux. How deep must I fall to accept myself, how far must I reach in order to find all of the answers that we as humans seek. I try to survive, I always do, I try to be my own sun and so should you.

We live in a time filled with perhaps and what if. What if this and that, perhaps I should clean! Perhaps there is no use of being clean or having a clean environment. What does it matter if it can't be seen? Does it matter how I feel, should I become dramatic and start to scream? I want us to be safe and stay at home but at the same time I just wish we could go! I want to run away to never return. Perhaps the outside holds some new things to learn. I'm sorry that I'm negative, I'm sorry if I'm too positive, sorry if I'm too neutral. This situation is so dada! Such a clear form of dadaism. The now that we live in is nothing but all and nothing and both of those in the exact same time. Hahaa, no but it isn't a lie! You and me, we just have to try. Doing whatever it takes to survive.

So tell me how are you today? Is there anything I could do to make the pain go away? For long I can't stay, I am afraid, I must return back home and there I shall remain. Until this isolation will end and all of the trouble surrounding us has gone away. Just please sail away. Sail away, until you aren't present in our lives all of these nights and all of these days. Stay at home, stay safe that is what they say. But they don't know me and the powers of my mind I am afraid. It has already traveled through space and time and it shall continue to do so, for the rest of my life.

- We are gathered here for our annual meeting regarding time and how people perceive it. Because I am the present I suggest that we take a look at how people view time right now after we have entered a new decade and of course, a new year. Thoughts?

- Well I'm not trying to be nostalgic or anything but I remember the present suggesting the exact same thing the last time when a decade changed and the time before that and the time before that! Isn't it a little old fashioned to go back in time like that?

- I must say that I as the future,agree with the past!

- But how can that be? said the present. You guys live in different spaces of time.

- Don't we know it! But dear present moment, me and the past need to depend on eachother. What didn't work in the past will probably not work in the future either although, future has this unknown element that neither me, you, the past or anyone else can figure out until it happens. The unknown lives within me. But nowadays people think about me more than the past. People want to see what life will be like in 10 years, if they are married, having a great career or traveling around the world or more general things such as "have we found a solution to stop climate change and if so does everyone follow it anyways". My point being that maybe we shall remind people that what has changed in the past reflects the present but doesn't define it but what happens in the present will define the future.

- I do not understand, said the present.

- No you don't, of course you don't, said the past, for you are always stuck in the present! But I can say for sure that people in the past have responded well to solutions by the future but they have also responded badly, so it might be equal to taking a risk.

- Ah, risks! Without risks the present would not have a past or a future! the future screams.

- Why can't we be living in the present moment! the present shouted.

- Because in exactly one second a moment of the present has become the past, the past reminded everyone.

But then space and time became silent until the next change of a decade.