Wall painting 🎨

hello dear, how are you doing? miss you 🤍

After visiting Llandudno on Saturday, I had trouble sleeping again that night that I think I only fell asleep at 4am. But thankfully the next day was Sunday, so I get to be more relaxed.

After listening to the online Sunday service replay from my church in the morning, I went out to the city centre of Manchester while my parents attended church nearby. I went for a coffee and did some shopping, then my parents picked me up to go back home.

I started feeling a lot of emotions again in the evening after taking a nap (it really is a cycle), and this time I know one of them that I felt the most intense is loneliness. I shared before how I feel like my friends text with me less when I am here. It feels even more obvious when it’s towards the late afternoon because people are all in bed in HK, and my world really just becomes really quiet. Sometimes I quite enjoy that silence, but sometimes it also makes me feel even more isolated, and I would start to have thoughts like my friends aren’t thinking much about me, that’s why they didn’t reply me or they rarely initiate a chat with me to see how I’m doing.

But yesterday as I started to get into that same loop of thinking again, I recognised that this is my unhealthy pattern of thinking that stems from my depression and isolation tendency. I tried to break through them by telling myself to think of it from a different perspective. Perhaps they do think of me too, it’s just they might be too busy or tired to reach out, or they also might not know how to initiate a chat with me.

So I decided to message out to a few friends last night, including Vienna, the trip leader from my Vietnam trip (her name is Danielle), another girl from the trip, my chinese doctor, and my brother. I just shared with them something random, then said I thought about them and wonder how they are doing. The only one I didn’t message was Edison. I do text him for the past few weeks, but he’s been quite lukewarm, so I thought maybe I over texted him and he just needs some space.

I wanted to journal this down and share with you because I want to acknowledge myself for trying to break my own pattern of thinking and take the initiative to reach out to some friends despite my struggles. It’s not an easy step for me.

And today, I stayed home mainly because my parents wanted me to help paint the wall in our sitting room. And in fact, the last time I painted a wall was with you 😊 It was a very sweet memory, so I did think about you a bit extra today. I even remember you helped take a photo of me with the wall that we painted :)

I got some photos too with the wall today, but taken by my dad, I think I looked a bit cheeky, hehe.