Before I Forget

I have become one of those people with a routine. Not because I have somewhere to be every morning, but because the absence of one turns out to be surprisingly difficult to romanticise. Every productivity influencer on the internet will tell you routines are liberating. They reduce decision fatigue. They help you optimise your day. They create discipline. I, on the other hand, have discovered that routines are mostly useful because they stop you from accidentally opening Link

Somewhere in the world, a little girl is folding scraps of old cloth because she doesn’t have a sanitary pad. Somewhere else, another stays home from school because someone convinced her that bleeding makes her dirty. And somewhere in between those two realities is me, sitting in my OBGYN’s waiting room, staring at a noticeboard covered in pink paper and frilly ribbons reminding women to book their smear tests, get the HPV vaccine, and look after themselves. Every time I walk

It is 4:09 a.m. There is something about writing at this hour, in the Notes app, on a weekday night, from my childhood bed, that feels embarrassingly nostalgic. The room is mostly the same. The same wardrobe with the slightly stubborn drawer. The ceiling is the same one I used to stare at while calculating how little sleep I could get away with before school the next morning. Tonight feels strangely similar. The difference, I suppose, is that back then I was trying to figure