Sometimes other people's voices sound in my head. 🎶 It's not scary - it's just an echo of other people's conversations that you pick up on the streets, in line, on the bus. 🚌 All these words settle inside, and when there are too many of them, it becomes cramped. 🌀

I always knew that fatigue cannot be cured with dreams. 💤 Fatigue is cured with rituals. Some people go jogging in the morning, some turn off their phones and close the curtains, and I once came up with lemonade for myself. 🧊

When I was about seventeen, I worked part-time handing out leaflets near a movie theater. 🎬 Hot summer, sticky fingers from advertising leaflets, dry throat, and only enough money for a cafe - for the smallest glass of water. 💧 And then I bought a lemon for the first time, cut it for two with the same tired girl, poured cold water from the fountain - and that's it. The most delicious lemonade in my life. Maybe that's why I still like this taste - a little prickly, a little sharp, but honest. 🍹

Since then, I always have a couple of lemons at home. 🏠 I like to make lemonade not for guests, but for myself. Sometimes I add ginger - it invigorates more than coffee. ☕ Sometimes - a little honey, if the day was too prickly. 🐝 Sometimes, I throw in mint or a couple of berries. 🫐 But the basis is always the same: cold water, lemon slices, a spoonful of patience and silence. 🤫

At such moments, I think that this drink is like my internal filter. 🌈 With each sip, I exhale someone else's and return my own. Sometimes I drink lemonade straight from the can, sitting on the windowsill. 🪟 Without napkins, without a straw, without beautifully cut ice. Just to feel that I can still be simple. 💛

My friends laugh when they see my "stock" of lemons. 😄 But I don't spend them on decor. I spend them on a little "thank you" to myself. 🙏 For surviving the day, not saying too much, keeping the warmth inside. 🔥

Probably, everyone has their own recipe for "homecoming". 🏡 For some it's a blanket and a TV series, for others it's hot chocolate or the sound of a bathtub. 🛁 And for me it's lemonade. Small, simple, cold and honest. The way I want to be myself. 🌼