I’ve begun burning a Gemini candle my mother gave me nearly a year ago, and even though they have become my constant companions, the fingers and fog at the forefront of my brain are beginning to subside.

For as long as my recent memory serves me, there has been an index finger stood solidly at the front of my mind. It puts me in situations such as these—situations where I have three days to finish a span of Geology assignments I was originally given a week to do. Situations where I sit down to write an English essay and, despite my love for the subject and my knowledge that all doubt is in my mind, I simply cannot put pen to paper. Situations where I arrive home and burn my Gemini candle and sleep instead of facing the oncoming traffic of my constantly shifting life.

And no matter how many times I talk about it with others and hear melodious calls of agreement or read and re-read this New York Times article on the nature of languishing, I cannot help but feel alone. That is the essence of these feelings. While familiar to me like my best of friends, the fingers and the fog are the ones leading me with promises of sweetness into pits of sour. I want sweetness, and I’m beginning to question if that is too much to ask.

Nevertheless, I’ve begun receiving hugs again—not from the cold and unfeeling fingers, but rather the warm and inviting arms that have shown me nothing but love. Whether new friends I’ve just come to adore, or kindred spirits I’ve held dear for far too long to estimate, their faces fill my weekend days and weekday nights with bliss.

We sit perched on black leather couches and eat butterscotch cake leftover from birthday celebrations. We stand around broadening countertops and fill notecards with words of love, taking our free time to partake in online quizzes and plan out the hot girl summers we will hopefully spend by one another’s side. We cry in heaps in the middle of expansively decorated rooms, and our pain is shared and partially synonymous.

And while it seems obvious to look to one’s friends when all that is seen is flying appendages and wavering mist, something about this conclusion was harder to reach. It was the horizon I could not see—the horizon that’s light was dimming with each day that passed.

But instead of dimming, it is brightening. It is expanding despite my tears and moving past my ingrained discomforts. And while there will always be a finger somewhere within my mind, hopefully it’ll soon cease its incessant attack upon my motivation.

Hopefully I will finish my Geology homework, and hopefully each day will be as saccharine as the last three have revealed the world to be.