one of my personal experiences written in story form:
Tried not to think about it, time slipping by. What was happening to me? Why was I so emptied of energy? I had it before.
I said this to myself as Yulia Zivert's voice blasted through my gummy earbuds, while working on the rooftop of the hotel I was currently employed at. Gazing at Salt Lake, I felt the afternoon sluggishness in my bones, despite having two sugary coffees that morning. Roots Coffee, Blue Copper, I don't remember. But it was the caffeinated state that kept me up throughout the day. I pressed the forward button to change the song on my Spotify playlist.
I let the combination of sounds burn into my brain. Glancing again at Salt Lake City, the sun painted its golden hues upon the burnt bricks of the vintage warehouses and against the afternoon mountain haze. Wiping the dusty windows, my mind, with every attempt, receded farther and farther away from the American West, while each word of russian, blew up my eardrums, transporting me to the East.
I embraced that completely. Before, I would have wanted to mold myself too much into a persona that didn't entirely fit me, but after each month, losing energy, I decided to go back to those activities that I had done before, those activities which afforded me sparkles of euphoria and energetic emotions in times of stress, such as learning languages, creative writing, and pilates. Those activities transported me to a different state. So I continued to listen to russian electronic in order to drown out the emotion stored inside of me, sometimes after an awkward date last night or a stilted conversation from a Meetup event.