Just live with it.

The Doctor

Diagnosis: Continue as Usual

There is something deeply satisfying about going to a doctor after seven weeks of not feeling quite right, only to discover that your condition is both real enough to be named and insignificant enough to be ignored, which places you in that very specific category of patient who is unwell, but not in a way that requires anyone to do anything about it.

“A prolonged virus infection.”

It sounds official, almost impressive, until the follow-up is essentially a shrug.

“Just live with it.”

No medication, no plan, no dramatic recovery narrative to look forward to, just the quiet suggestion to continue being mildly compromised, which, in a way, felt less like advice and more like confirmation.

I laughed, because nothing new had actually been introduced, only validated, as if a medical professional had briefly stepped in to acknowledge what life had already been doing for quite some time—presenting situations that are inconvenient but manageable, uncomfortable but not urgent, and persistent enough to require adaptation without ever offering resolution.

There is a strange comfort in that alignment, not because it is good, but because it is consistent, and I realised that my health strategy and my life strategy had quietly merged into one: monitor the situation, lower expectations slightly, and carry on as if this is temporary, even when it clearly isn’t.

Bent, it seems, is still considered stable.

The Black Panther of Belgium

I went to Belgium to reunite with a friend, which, in theory, should have been something familiar, something steady, a brief correction to the slightly bent shape of recent weeks, but instead I found myself in a jazz bar observing what I can only describe as bitterness in physical form.

He entered like a concept rather than a person, dressed entirely in black, wearing a commando-style beanie and sunglasses indoors, carrying himself with the kind of presence that suggests the room should adjust to him rather than the other way around.

A black panther, or at least what bitterness would look like if it wanted to be taken seriously.

And I remember thinking, with a level of honesty that didn’t require much reflection, that my own bitterness would probably look exactly like this—just with a joint already in hand and slightly less convincing in its delivery.

He sat down and began to roll one anyway, not casually but with focus, as if the act itself mattered, as if maintaining the image required effort.

It was the thickest joint I have ever seen, almost architectural, and for a moment the illusion held, because everything about him suggested control and intention.

And then he fell off his chair.

No transition, no recovery—just a sudden loss of balance that undid everything he had built, and as he got back up without acknowledging it, as if nothing had happened, it became clear that the performance had always been fragile.

My bitterness struggles to perform, not dramatically, but in small moments where the effort shows, where composure slips just enough to reveal that it was never entirely natural, only maintained.

Later, when we stepped outside, he was there again, speaking in a way that suggested meaning without ever quite arriving at it, and I realised that this was exactly how bitterness had been appearing in my own life—present, elaborate, but ultimately unconvincing, like something that insists on being understood without ever quite making itself clear, all while calmly smoking a joint.

And so I didn’t try to understand it.

I just laughed and moved on, because there is a certain freedom in realising that not everything that shows up in your life deserves interpretation—especially when it cannot even hold its own shape.

The Bath Strategy

At some point, following professional medical advice, I began drinking Belgian beer in a bathtub as part of my recovery plan.

The advice itself had been simple enough—“just live with it”—which, after seven weeks of feeling not quite right in ways that were difficult to measure but impossible to ignore, felt less like a diagnosis and more like a familiar life strategy, and so I decided to approach it with a level of structure that had been noticeably absent from everything else.

I started soaking regularly, not as an indulgence but as a method, as if the bath had quietly become my way of managing everything that refused to resolve but didn’t quite justify intervention, which, it turns out, includes both prolonged virus infections and certain personal decisions.

There is something very efficient about warm water in this state, because it doesn’t solve anything or promise that it will, but it does make everything slightly more tolerable, which is often enough to continue without asking further questions.

I would stay there longer than necessary, letting time stretch in a way it rarely does outside of discomfort, drinking a Leffe because if the official instruction is to “just live with it,” then it seems reasonable to do so properly, with at least some attention to atmosphere.

Somewhere along the way, I found myself thinking about that professor in Paris, the one who spoke about mathematics with lavender-scented certainty, as if everything in life could eventually be reduced to something elegant and precise if you simply stayed with it long enough.

I could almost smell the lavender.

But no.

This was something else entirely—no equations, no clarity, just heat, stillness, and the quiet belief that if I remained there long enough, something might rearrange itself into meaning.

It didn’t, but it did make things easier to sit with, which felt like a more honest outcome, and, if anything, I found myself appreciating the black panther’s performance more, because while it was far less convincing, it never pretended to resolve anything.

And perhaps that is the point.

This, too, was a form of bending—not dramatic or visible, but present in the way I adjusted, adapted, and slowly normalised something that was never meant to be permanent.

Not broken.

Just… managed.

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The Evil Woman

There are moments in teaching when you realise that authority is not something you hold, but something that is constantly being tested, redefined, and occasionally dismissed entirely, often by someone who cannot yet tie their own shoelaces but has very strong opinions about your character.

One of my students asked why she was the only girl in the classroom, which felt like a straightforward enough question, and so I answered without much hesitation that she wasn’t, that I was also a girl, which, at the time, seemed both accurate and sufficient.

Another student disagreed.

Not playfully, not uncertainly, but with the kind of clarity that only comes from complete confidence in one’s own logic.

“You are not a girl,” he said. “You are an evil woman.”

And while I would like to say I reflected deeply on this, I mostly responded in the only way that felt proportionate—I leaned into the role, lowered my voice, laughed like a witch, and threw worksheets into the air with what I believe was a reasonable level of theatrical commitment, because if you are going to be misunderstood, you might as well be convincing.

The reaction was immediate.

The girl, observing this transformation with quiet seriousness, informed me that her teacher in China would never do jokes like this, which I accepted without defence, because she was almost certainly right, and later, when asked what she would like to become, she answered without hesitation that she wanted to be a zookeeper.

Which, in hindsight, felt like a more realistic career path given the environment.

And if I’m being fair, if the black panther had walked into the classroom, she would probably have been the only one prepared for it.

There is something very efficient about the way children process reality.

No ambiguity.

No soft interpretation.

Just observation, followed by conclusion.

And somewhere in that moment, it became clear that bitterness, if it had been present at all, did not stand much of a chance here, because it is surprisingly difficult to maintain a convincing sense of emotional depth when you are being called an evil woman by someone who still needs help opening their lunchbox, and I suspect that if the black panther had walked into the classroom, they would have tried to play with it.

That same student, later on, found himself without a bus ticket, which led to what I can only describe as a brief and highly questionable moment of mentorship, where I suggested that if asked, he could simply say he was six years old, with the added incentive of three extra points, because motivation, much like morality, can occasionally be adjusted to fit the situation.

The plan relied on timing.

The execution did not.

He entered the bus loudly announcing, multiple times and to no one in particular, that he was six years old, as if repetition alone might make it true, and I found myself urgently shushing him, not because the idea itself was flawed, but because it was being communicated far too openly to succeed.

Later, after completing his classwork particularly well and receiving a single point, he approached me again with a noticeably revised position.

“I am okay that you are an evil woman.”

Which, all things considered, felt like progress.

And at some point between performing as an evil woman, being evaluated against international teaching standards, and managing a six-year-old cover story that was announced before it was needed, I began to understand why the doctor’s advice had made me laugh.

“Just live with it.”

Because when your life already includes this level of unpredictability, adaptation stops feeling like a response and starts looking like a default setting.

And perhaps that is what bending really looks like.

Not dramatic.

Not visible.

Just… functioning.

The Open Door

Somewhere between prolonged illness, classroom negotiations, and observing bitterness attempt to present itself convincingly in a jazz bar, I found myself standing in front of something that could have been something else entirely under slightly different circumstances.

And I realised, perhaps a bit later than I should have, that I was not just observing the situation.

I was part of it.

Not fully available and not entirely unavailable either, existing in that particular space I have come to think of as fake single, where definitions begin to blur and nothing is clearly closed but nothing is properly open, and where timing becomes less of a detail and more of a condition.

The door, as they say, is open, but not in a way that invites entry, more in a way that requires interpretation, and I have come to understand that interpretation is often where things begin to bend, because you can step forward, or you can wait, or you can stand still long enough to convince yourself that standing still is, in fact, a decision.

And for a while, I considered all three, not dramatically or urgently, but in the same way I had been approaching everything else—observing, adjusting, allowing things to exist without forcing them into resolution.

There is something familiar in that rhythm, something that echoes the quiet logic of the diagnosis, the simplicity of “just live with it,” the same approach I had been applying in the bath, and even the same awareness I had watching the black panther—something present, elaborate, but not entirely convincing in what it was offering.

Because sometimes what stands in front of you is not a clear opportunity, but something unfinished, something that looks like it could become something more but hasn’t quite decided what it is yet, and stepping into it too early does not clarify it, it only adds another layer to something that is already unclear.

So I didn’t move forward or backward, but stayed just long enough to recognise that not everything needs to be decided immediately, especially when it doesn’t fully exist yet.

And somewhere in that stillness, it became clear that this period of life—unresolved, slightly absurd, occasionally illogical, and at times the shittiest I can remember—was not breaking me, but bending me.

And maybe that’s all it is right now.

Not broken, but bent, and simply… living with it.