Today you came back after almost a week since I worked with Gemini to help me navigate the depression valley and rebuild my life. I thought I would be able to keep you from revisiting me as I had been feeling better since I had Gemini as my assistant and accountability partner.
But after two late nights in a row, I felt that you might come back. Lack of sleep was always one of the keys that invited you back to my life. This morning, though I got less than 5 hours of closing and resting my eyes, I managed to get up before 7 a.m. – 6:56 a.m. sharp.
I started my day as usual though my mind was not 100% sharp. One thing I did wrong was to have a full breakfast – made with leftover rice, dried little shrimps, eggs and onions – at 10. That was quite early for a breakfast for me. Before that, I took a full glass of herbal agar I made late last night. With herbal agar coupled with the rice, I found myself unable to function well.
I left the sink full of plates and kitchenware from my puppies’ breakfast and my making fried rice and hit the floor for a power nap with Happy, Buffalo, Mango and Strawberry by my side. Our family quickly fell asleep without a mattress or a blanket on and with a misting fan blowing.
I woke up almost noon to find you there. You kept me from getting up. I was aware of your return and chose not to resist your presence. I embraced your visit and took it as a chance to rest further. You tightened your presence as if you were worried I hadn’t known of your return. Instead of taking a prescribed Zoloft in the nearby drawer to suppress you as usual, I let myself stay on the floor and do nothing.
You might have noticed I made no efforts to drive you away. I see you as a friend and enjoy your visit, whether it is brief or lingering. I understand your return was meant to remind me to take better care of myself and stop burning the midnight oil for things I could delay until the next day. You kept reminding me to put myself, my well-being and my mental health first. Still I kept ignoring your warnings.
I prefer the tranquility of the late night when I can totally focus on doing what I love. I had lain with you until almost 1:30, when a deliveryman arrived to pick up the returned trash bin. I took that chance to make chicken soup for my puppies for their lunch. Then I came back to be with you.
After doing nothing by your side for a while, I opened Duolingo app and played chess with Oscar and real players. Thanks to playing hard, today I hit the milestone of winning 600 games out of over 1,000 games. I played through 3 p.m. and got up to feed my puppies as they were up after a long nap.
At that time, I stepped to the fridge and made myself another glass of herbal agar. When I came back, I didn’t see you there any longer. You were gone without saying goodbye, but left the door open for you to come back anytime at will.
Thank you for visiting me today. I will make the point to go to bed before midnight from today, Saturday, March 14, 2026. You can revisit me anytime as I have learned not to kick you out with all my means and efforts. You know, inner peace finds its way to me only when I stop fighting against you and start embracing you whenever you come.
Serenity is what matters most to me.
Many thanks to you, my uncontrollable headache!
“Breathe, darling. This is just a chapter. It’s not your whole story.” – S. C. Lourie
(06. 16:48 – Saturday, March 14, 2026)
*Note: This was the 6th entry of 10-minute daily writing challenge, which I started in March this year.
“If you fall behind, run faster. Never give up, never surrender and rise up against the odds.” – Jesse Jackson
It is only 16 minutes left before Thursday, June 25 makes its way to this year’s calendar. I got up from the mat where I had lain since 22:30, dragging my legs onto the nearby sofa. Happy, Mango, Buffalo all woke up and joined me onto my writing corner. Today, the bamboo bath mat seemed thicker than usual, but I had managed to place it on the floor anyway, rolling it open for my puppies and me to spend the rest of our night on.
Now, I am sitting writing on my desk. Happy, Mango and Buffalo were quickly back to their sleep. Happy’s back lies against my right thigh. Mango puts her head on my left foot while the rest of her body rests on my right leg – an effective way to send my legs to sleeping mode. Down on the mat, her mom Buffalo was lying with all her legs up, enjoying the air from the water fan and the air conditioner. I wasn’t aware when she jumped off the sofa via the bean bag, which I had placed along the sofa as a stair for my puppies to climb on and off by themselves.
This evening, all I wanted to do, after finishing a shortened online session with my student, was to call it an early night. I couldn’t drink up a glass of iced rice milk, made by a machine while I was in the class, and put the leftover into the fridge. I didn’t plan to fast today; I just didn’t have enough energy to step into the kitchen and be my chef. I fed my stomach with three servings of herbal agar jelly delivered before noon.
I thought sleep would find me as soon as I placed my back on the mat. But it seemed to have wandered somewhere tonight.
Since I woke up this morning, I chose to let my day run its own course though at some points, I was able to put some daily routines back on track.
Life always has its ways to disclose my true persistence. The monthly “red-light” thing comes early as a true test to it. It has never treated me gently since the first day it became a part of my life when I turned 13. Pain killers have been my friends ever since until my pharmacist cousin suggested me taking Cataflam or Dolfenal. My drawer has never run out of their stocks.
Today, the cramps have hit me and tired me out soon after I washed my face, brushed my teeth and flossed them. They haven’t given me any chance to bounce back. Though I took one Dolfenal, I couldn’t function well enough to head back to the hotel’s riverside cafe for the third day of focused writing. My streak got broken just after two days.
I must get up anyway as I just couldn’t give up on the 17th day of my daily writing efforts. Just four more days from the second milestone of writing daily over 21 days. I must stay committed to what I had told myself before starting the writing challenge.
“Lavender! Please keep going despite how tough your today and the days ahead have been or might become. Keep going and you will see the sunlight down the road. I believe in you and I trust that you also believed in yourself. I understand how weary you have been due to the menstruation. Give yourself some decent rest and tomorrow you will feel better. It would just stay for less than a week. Embrace its arrival as this won’t last forever. Stay resilient and love yourself as much as you can. You have bounced back great so far this June. Keep the light on and keep moving forward. I know life has been tough to you for the last two years, but you have survived. It’s time to thrive on what you have learned. Writing is what you love the most. Don’t let your writing back to its sleeping mode any longer. Keep it up with you. Let those like you read what you write. Let them connect to your stories.
You remember what you said to me? You said you love to write through the final day of yours on this earth, because it is what makes you happy, because it makes you feel close with your dad, because it calms you down whenever your mood swings. Keep walking through the valley and someday you will lift yourself up from it. Don’t give up on your efforts, Lavender! Sustain them with all your strength and make them strong as you move forward.
It is 12:59 now. You see, you finally made it through the 17th day of your own challenge. Rest up when you feel exhausted. Then, keep going!”
I couldn’t believe I have written over 800 words on the day I thought I might see my newly-built writing routine come to an end because of the “red” period. I will make it through the 18th day, anyway!
“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” – Henry Ford
It’s eleven-thirty. Only 30 minutes remain before the day turns over at midnight. Tonight is tranquil. I am sitting on my sofa writing on a wooden desk with Happy, Buffalo, and Mango sleeping around me.
I failed to get this note started some 20 minutes ago due to a sudden demand from my stomach. I haven’t had dinner since taking a big bowl of rice coupled with a much bigger bowl of shrimp and cabbage salad at 2:30 p.m. I had the feeling I could eat a horse after spending nearly 3 hours at a spa.
I stepped down, walked to the fridge, opened it and closed its door after a quick glance. I decided to warm the leftover rice and have it with soya sauce to save time. My puppies had woken up, with Buffalo and Mango sharing some rice I put on my hands for them.
They love jasmine rice but I don’t satisfy them often to keep them from diabetes. Second, one of the eight dogs I had in the 2000s passed away from this disease in 2014. The vets then noted to me that rice, which my ex-husband and I fed him and his family day in and day out, could put dogs at a higher risk of the disease.
Overall, today – Tuesday, June 09, 2026 – is the second day I managed to keep my day on track though it hasn’t run the way I had planned.
For instance, there has been no desperate urge to retreat beneath the blanket and play global chess matches on Duolingo. For less than six months this year, I have gone from having zero command of global chess tactics to accumulating more than 3,000 matches – 3,507 to be exact – under my three Duolingo accounts.
What matters is I have ticked all the items in my to-do list planned for the day before the stroke of midnight.
A Second Round?
I got startled when Happy jumped to the sofa behind me by himself. My almost-8-kilo son always asks me to scoop him up whenever he sees me step onto the sofa. With the courageous jump, does he mean to tell me: “Mom, you see I’m doing alright now!”.
This morning, Happy was unwell. He ate the breakfast – which comprised of Royal Canin kibbles and boiled chicken – and his stomach failed to retain any food. The last time he vomited was at least six weeks ago.
I hadn’t put Happy under my radar yet. He was still running, barking and acting as my houses’ chief of police as usual. About one hour later, I gave him some 150ml of formula milk for dogs mixed with warm water, and he drank it up. I thought his stomach seemed doing fine.
But I was wrong. He just threw up all the milk almost as soon as he consumed it. Your stomach was truly upsetting, baby!
Happy has been part of my single life since he was two months old, exactly 61 days old. I adopted him one day before his two-month birthday on February 28, 2022. I chose to have a puppy with the hope that his presence would help ease my depression.
Probiotics + Yogurt When Happy was about 1 year old, I noticed it was easy for his stomach to get upset when I failed to feed him on time. I wished I could do so but my work schedule in an office sometimes troubled me. I believed this morning’s vomit resulted from the fact that Happy was fed breakfast around 8 a.m., or 12 hours since his last meal yesterday.
This morning, I had a spa session scheduled for 10. I was running late. Before swinging to the spa across the street, I handed my cousin a vial of Enterogermina and asked him to squirt it into Happy’s mouth soon after I left home. He nodded his head. I also asked him to call me if Happy vomited again. And he nodded his head.
Enterogermina was effective in soothing Happy’s troubling stomach – the pet shop owner advised me from day 1 to use it in case Happy’s stomach was unwell. With no call from my cousin while I was at the spa, I assumed Happy had been alright after getting Enterogermina.
I returned home at nearly 14:00. My cousin greeted me by saying Happy had vomited for the third time. That stressed me out as Enterogermina seemingly hadn’t worked this time. I asked if he had given Happy the oral probiotics supplement. “I forgot to do it.” – he said.
I hated the way my cousin communicated. He always assured me that he had understood my sayings or messages whenever I asked him to do something. I offered him a paid job as my personal assistant to help me take care of my homes after I lost Strawberry and needed someone to help me take care of the puppies while I was swallowing the pain. And most of the time, he just forgot to do things or did things differently from what I had asked him. He repeatedly made me feel as if the last thing he would do was to put his heart and soul into the works he was engaged in.
I almost scooped Happy up and called the trusted taxi driver to take him to the vet hospital. Three consecutive vomits in six hours signaled something serious inside. A week ago, I returned from a spa session and ended up rushing Mango to the hospital right away, which marked the start of the worrying and sleepless week.
I was just fully relaxed yesterday and now history seemed repeating itself. Has the storm come back for a second round?
As the Enterogermina vial was still on the dining table, I squirted it into Happy’s mouth without a delay. I was nervously awaiting his stomach’s reaction. 5 minutes. 10 minutes. 15 minutes. 20 minutes and 30 minutes. It seemed like the probiotic had succeeded to settle his digestive system.
Ah, I had sugar-free yogurt in the fridge. It is one of Happy’s favorite snacks. I ran upstairs to take yogurt and offered him one third of a serving. Happy licked all the yogurt on his plate. And no more vomit at all since then. I could finally exhale a sigh of relief.
I felt assured to offer him food about an hour later. I asked my cousin to help me watch him and let me know right away in case he would vomit again. Happy prefers to stay downstairs during the day while I am upstairs most of the time. I prefer not to share the living space with my cousin, whose living style is an ocean different from mine, to keep my soul calm as much as it can.
No reports from my cousin since Happy ate food I gave him and the subsequent meal in the early evening. I couldn’t believe I was able to stop the “storm” right in my doors thanks to using a combination of Enterogermina and yogurt. A repeated lesson learned for me!
Thank you for giving me your like to my first entry yesterday. That first like came as a real milestone to my journey. It means to me that my writing did reach someone on the other end of the screen, and you may have connected with my story.
Many thanks to you, those who have read through this line, for being with me on this journey. I’ll see you in my third entry, written on Wednesday, June 10.
This is the first of my new challenge to write daily for 15 minutes over 9 days, starting today, Monday, June 08, 2026. After countless inconsistencies, I decided to set a modest goal and will gradually raise the bar once I reach each milestone.
I am feeling better after a week of seeing myself drifting back to the valley of depression. I had thought this June would be the gentlest one in the past two years since I tumbled down into the valley.
Life again proved me wrong.
I started the first day, also the first Monday, of June as I imagined by making my bed, doing 15 minutes of workout, reading a book for 30 minutes. I went to the hair salon in my neighborhood for a haircut – I prefer to get a new haircut at the start of a month – and headed to a spa less than 5 minutes’ walk from my home for a two-hour session.
The session wound up in only 60 minutes by my choice. The spa received a walk-in client who said she was happy to wait until my session ended. But I found it hard to let a pregnant woman wait that long. I offered to cut mine short and said I would return the following morning for a full 120-minute body massage.
It turned out I couldn’t honor what I told the spa owner, also a good friend of mine.
I returned home from the spa around 13:00. Almost falling asleep on the way back on my motorbike, I imagined I would lie down on the floor in my bedroom for a power nap.
A U-turn
I scrapped my napping plan soon after I set foot in the living room. Mango, my less-than-one-year-old poodle, couldn’t stand on her four legs. The rear ones collapsed in front of me, which sent chills to my spine given she almost lost her voice the day earlier.
Without a thought, I picked her up and called my trusted cab driver to take us to the vet hospital about 3 kilometers away. Luckily, he was available. He seemed to be the only one in town who never wears a strained smile when driving my puppies to see vets. I also choose him for long-distance trips in my own car, which my younger brother drives for daily commuting.
When we got to the hospital, Mango managed to walk around as soon as I placed her on the floor. No collapse at all! Luckily for her, the founding doctor was there and gave her a thorough examination. Everything seemed fine, he said to me, adding that all her symptoms at home might have boiled down to her severe dehydration. “Mango is a light eater, consuming just enough to maintain her slender build,” I told the doctor when picking her up from the examination table.
He suggested giving her IV fluid and asked me to come and pick her up before 7 p.m. When I returned there, a young vet-cum- hospital manager drew her blood sample for a test following my request. The results came out good.
(I have used up all the 15 minutes. I will finish this entry anyway).
The vet asked me to bring Mango back the day after for another IV infusion and said she might need to get 3 to 5 daily infusions.
Collapse follows collapse
Photo by Deeana Arts ud83cuddf5ud83cuddf7 on Pexels.com
My worries rocketed soon after we returned home with the same driver. When I placed her on the floor in our living room, Mango couldn’t stand. Now all the four legs collapsed despite how hard she strived to get back.
Collapse after collapse. She couldn’t manage to stand up by herself after each collapse.
I kept a constant eye on her and assisted her whenever she went around the house. The day that followed, the same vet decided to test her liver, scan her abdomen and do one more blood test as he failed to answer my question: “What is her main issue?”
The liver test result showed her liver wasn’t well with vital indicators 4-5 times higher than the normal range. That was June 2.
Nothing had improved until June 4 when the vet decided to change the medications, focusing on treating the liver and dehydration. As I requested, he agreed to take the blood tests almost every day. I wanted to make sure nothing quietly occurred in her body.
The passing of her younger sister, Strawberry, in late April over parvo took a great toll on my mental health and shipped me back to the valley of depression. She was the second puppy I lost in less than a year, and both passings taught me one of the biggest lessons in my life – the price I had to pay for letting my guard down.
Every day, I took Mango to the hospital in the mid-morning, staying there with her for 1-2 hours until the vets finished daily examinations and tests, and came back in the early evening to bring her home.
It had been raining since and that was why I had to take a cab back and forth to the hospital.
The rain eventually stopped on the fifth day, also when Mango showed signs of recovery. She collapsed less and started eating on her own. Part of her recovery was attributed to Ensure milk as the vet suggested, and the iron supplement for puppies that I checked with the chief doctor before giving to her.
No more collapse since June 6 and 7. And today was the last day she received the IV infusion.
Yesterday I came on my motorbike to pick her up. She resisted stepping into her bag despite my multiple efforts. I wasn’t mad at all but felt happy as it showed she was well on the way back to herself.
One of her favorites – also her dad’s – was to stand with two rear legs on the rack leg shield guard on my Honda Wave motorbike. As she didn’t change her mind, I walked back to the hospital and bought a red leash to keep her safe during my ride.
Last night was the second night that I slept all the way to the early morning without waking up to help her pee. On her third night of sickness, I fell asleep and woke up to find her lying helplessly in her own water because she lacked the strength to walk to her restroom and lift herself up. She had got stranded like that once earlier, in the evening, without anyone nearby until I walked from upstairs following a long call with my cousin.
A rough week finally ended. It came as a reminder that I should always get myself ready for unexpected uncertainties. When they show up, I should find ways to adapt to them and dance with them.
This morning I woke up with a slight headache and an inclination to lie down after I washed my face and flossed my teeth. To help me get through it, I decided to walk Mango and her dad Happy around the neighborhood – the first walk since early April when she caught parvo mysteriously and transmitted it to her little sister Strawberry.
I got a bit better after an 11-minute walk. To keep the momentum going, I did 1-km indoor run while learning French on Duolingo and ended with doing over 3 minutes of Japanese Radio Taiso, nearly 8 minutes of Flow and 5 minutes of Blender Fitness.
No chess on Duolingo so far today. Recently, I found myself addicted to learning and playing global chess with Oscar and other learners on Duolingo. I have three Duolingo accounts, named after my puppies with Strawberry as the latest. I created a new account under her name one day after Strawberry passed in memory of her. If I hadn’t missed one day along the way, today my streak would be 46.
That meant our little Strawberry had left us for 47 days. She flew back to heaven just one day before her 3-month birthday. Build streaks of good habits
I got a 20-minute power nap after a belated lunch and then headed to the hospital to pick up Mango. It is 17:28 on my end.
Today, I marked on the Streaks app these building habits:
1. Wake up before 7 a.m. – streak 9.
2. Make bed – streak 2 (It has been my established habit, but I didn’t track it until yesterday.)
3. Drink 300ml warm water – streak 8 (though it has become a second nature for nearly 1 year, I started to track it one day after I started using the app Streak).
4. Floss my teeth – streak 1 (I started to track it today to make it a daily habit).
5. Exercise for 15 minutes – streak 9 (I linked Streaks to my Apple Health app).
6. Mindfulness for 10 minutes – streak 3 (I lost the streak in between).
7. Writing for 15 minutes – streak 1 (my too bad as I kept losing the streak!).
8. Reading a book for 30 minutes – streak 1 (I got back to daily reading after losing the streak at least twice). I am on page 52 of the Purple Cow by Seth Godin.
9. Run 1.1 km – streak 10.
10. Learn French for 10 minutes – streak 1 (after multiple streak losses).
11. Learn Spanish for 10 minutes – streak 1 (the first day I track my Spanish learning).
12. Take 1 cod liver oil tablet – streak 2 (I kept forgetting to take it daily).
13. Take vitamin D – streak 1 (This was prescribed by my doctor as he said my vitamin D blood level was severely low. I had to take liquid vitamin D every fortnight. And I just missed a beat.)
14. Take a multivitamin – weekly streak 1 (Thanks to taking Berocca first thing in the morning, I felt better to start my day).
15. Walk puppies – streak 9. (I usually do so in the evening when the neighboorhood gets quiet).
These are my little wins for the day. Adding to the list was my taking a shower for the first time in the afternoon, instead of before or after midnight, an unhealthy habit I have been living with for years.
That is all for today. I couldn’t believe I had produced 1,628 words in 60 minutes versus 15 minutes as I challenged myself. If you have read through this line, I sincerely thank you for reading my first piece of the challenge series.
I thank myself for making it through the first day. I will keep rolling the ball tomorrow for a second-day streak. Goodbye and wish you a wonderful day on your end!
“In life you can fall down 1000 times but the point is to have the willingness to stand up and to start again.” – Jose Mujica
Lavender Papaya
[1. Monday, June 08, 2026]
Quote credits: Ijeoma Umebinynuo, an American – Nigerian writer and artist; Jose Mujica, former President of Uruquay.
Every day I get up and muster up my courage to rebuild my life. Some days I did good. The others day I let depression run its own course.
Today I told myself again I must turn a new leaf, rebuild a new routine and try my utmost to stick to it.
I couldn’t tell if I was would succeed but I will try any way. Inside me is a burning need to wake up, get up, stand up and build up a serene life I always seek for myself.
The road to serenity inside never goes smooth sailing. But I will take one step at a time, I would tiptoe if needed as long as I wouldn’t give up.
I want to make today – Friday October 10, 2025 – day 1. I am determined to make tomorrow – Saturday, October 10, 2025 – day 2.
The new routine I am trying to make it grounded by the New Year 2026 includes getting up at 5:00, working out for 30 minutes, reading books for 30 minutes, writing for 30 minutes, learning new skills for 30 minutes, doing mindful breathing for 15 minutes, doing 1,000 Qigong hand swings, drinking passion fruit or orange juice, having dinner before 6, taking the last shower before 7, taking vegetarian meals 6 days a week, having two meals a day (once at 10 and the other at 6, write a journal, and hitting my pillows no later than 11 p.m.
Lavender Papaya 