The entire day, I imagined telling my friend about it. I rehearsed the conversation in my head, smiling at the thought of her reaction. There is a special kind of joy that comes not just from achieving something, but from sharing it with someone whose happiness feels intertwined with yours.

When I finally told her, I expected excitement.

Instead, she tilted her head and laughed lightly.

“That’s it?”

The words were simple, but they landed heavily.

She went on to explain why it wasn’t a big deal, how people did bigger things all the time, how this achievement was only a small step in the grand scheme of things. Maybe she didn’t mean to hurt me. Maybe she thought she was helping me stay grounded. But with every sentence, the excitement I had carefully carried all day seemed to shrink.

By the end of the conversation, I found myself nodding along, almost apologizing for being excited in the first place.

The strange thing about disappointment is that it rarely arrives as a dramatic event. Sometimes it comes quietly. It sits beside you and makes you question whether your joy was justified. It convinces you to fold up your happiness and tuck it away before anyone else can dismiss it.

A few days later, the same achievement came up while talking to another friend.

I mentioned it casually this time.

I wasn’t expecting much.

But before I could finish explaining, his face lit up.

“No way! That’s amazing!”

He asked questions. He wanted details. He reminded me how far I had come and pointed out things I hadn’t even considered. What surprised me most wasn’t his reaction, it was how quickly my excitement returned. The same achievement that had felt small and insignificant a few days earlier suddenly felt meaningful again.

Nothing about the accomplishment had changed.

Only the person listening had.

That realization stayed with me.

I used to think encouragement came from grand speeches and life-changing advice. But sometimes encouragement is simply someone choosing to celebrate with you. Sometimes it is someone treating your joy as something worthy of existing.

Looking back, neither friend changed what I had accomplished. One couldn’t make it smaller, and the other couldn’t make it bigger. Yet their responses shaped the way I felt about it.

Over time, I learned that the people around us often become mirrors. Some mirrors reflect possibility. Others reflect limitation. Some magnify our growth, while others reduce it until we can barely see it ourselves.

The challenge is not deciding which mirror is right. It is remembering that our worth, our progress, and our victories do not change depending on who is looking at them.

Still, there is something beautiful about finding people who clap before the crowd arrives. People who celebrate the first step as much as the hundredth. People who understand that what seems small to the world can feel enormous to the person carrying it.

And perhaps that is one of the quietest forms of kindness, making room for someone else’s joy without measuring it first.

We are taught that love holds on. That it fights, persists, refuses to yield even when things grow difficult. Every story we grow up with insists that love is measured by endurance, the willingness to stay, to repair, to choose someone again and again despite the fractures. So when someone tells me that love can also mean letting go, I cannot help but feel as though the definition has been rewritten without my consent. If love is supposed to be the force that binds, then why does it suddenly become the justification for release?

Letting go does not feel like love from the inside. It feels like standing still while something irreplaceable drifts out of reach. It feels like knowing exactly what you are losing and being powerless to argue against it. People say it is selfless, that it honors the other person’s freedom or happiness. But selflessness, in this context, feels indistinguishable from erasure. You are asked to step aside, to make peace with absence, to accept that your presence is no longer part of someone else’s future. How is that love? How is that anything but grief wearing a quieter face?

There is also an unsettling implication hidden within this idea that love, at its purest, must be willing to disappear. That if you truly care, you will loosen your grip even when every instinct begs you not to. But why should love demand that kind of surrender? Why must it prove itself through loss? It seems cruel that the same feeling that once gave life its colour is now expected to quietly fade for the sake of some higher moral ground.

And yet, the world insists. It insists that clinging too tightly becomes selfish, that holding on can harm the very person you claim to love. It suggests that sometimes, the greatest kindness is absence. I understand the logic, at least in theory. I can see how love might become suffocating if it refuses to adapt, how staying can sometimes deepen wounds instead of healing them. But understanding something intellectually does not soften its emotional reality. Knowing that letting go might be right does not make it feel right.

Perhaps that is the cruelest part of all: the possibility that love and pain are not opposites, but companions. That the act of loving someone deeply might inevitably require you to endure the devastation of losing them, not because you stopped caring, but because you never did. If that is true, then letting go is not an absence of love, but its most agonizing expression. It is love stripped of its comfort, reduced to a quiet decision to endure emptiness so that someone else might be whole.

Still, I struggle to accept it. Because if love can exist in letting go, it becomes something far more fragile than we are ever prepared for. It means that even at its strongest, love cannot guarantee presence. It cannot promise permanence. It can only promise feeling and sometimes, that feeling demands that you walk away with nothing but memories and unanswered questions.

So I remain unconvinced, caught between what I am told and what I feel. Maybe there is love in letting go. Maybe there is something deeply human, even beautiful, in choosing someone else’s happiness over your own longing. But from where I stand, it does not look like love. It looks like loss. It feels like loss. And no matter how gently it is explained, it always will.

I told my friend, “Bro sorry, I am late because first I woke up late, then I was like only 5 minutes late, so I thought I can still manage, then suddenly I remembered I didn’t drink water, then I sat to drink water, then I thought if I drink water I should also eat something light, then I ate something light, then I felt heavy, then I questioned my life choices, then I checked time again, then I panicked, then I left.”

My friend just looked at me and said, “You could have just said ‘I’m coming’.”

That’s when I realised my life is a constant debate between two options:
Should I over explain myself like a government press conference, or remain misunderstood like a mysterious hero in a Tamil movie intro scene?

On one side, over explaining is dangerous. Because once I start, I cannot stop. If someone asks, “Why didn’t you pick up my call?” I don’t say “I was busy.” No no. I go full documentary mode:

“I was busy because I was cooking Maggi, but then I realised I had only one packet, so I started calculating if two people can share one Maggi, then I got emotional thinking about fairness in life, then I forgot the Maggi, then it became soft, then I questioned capitalism.”

By the end of it, the other person is not angry anymore. They are just confused and slightly spiritually awakened.

But then there is the opposite approach: don’t explain anything.

This is even more dangerous in Indian households.

If you come home late and say nothing, suddenly your parents have already planned your entire life:

“She is definitely failing exams.”

“She is definitely roaming with wrong friends.”

“She has joined some secret society in Bangalore.”

“She has forgotten her own culture.”

And you are just standing there like, “No amma, bus was late.”

But at that point, nobody believes “bus was late.” In India, bus being late is not an excuse, it is a lifestyle.

So I am stuck.

If I over explain, I become a TED Talk nobody asked for.
If I don’t explain, I become a mystery character in my own house.

Even simple things are risky.

Someone asks: “Why are you smiling alone?”
Option A: “Nothing, just remembering something funny.” (suspicious)
Option B: “Actually I was thinking about a meme, then that meme reminded me of a video, then that video reminded me of childhood trauma, then…” (therapy session starts immediately)

Even “ok” is dangerous here….

“Ok” can mean:

I agree

I am angry

I am plotting revenge

I didn’t read your message

My phone is in silent and I forgot your existence

So now I live in a constant confusion.

Should I explain everything and risk sounding like a documentary narrator who lost control of the script?
Or should I stay quiet and let people assume I have joined politics, engineering, and emotional damage all at once?

Honestly, I think I’ve chosen a third option.

I explain things… but only halfway.
Enough to confuse everyone equally.

Not too clear. Not too silent. Just pure desi chaos balance.

Because in the end, whether you explain or not, one truth remains:

here, you are never misunderstood by accident.
You are misunderstood by default.

I am feeling this kind of devastation, the kind that doesn’t announce itself with shattered glass or raised voices, but settles in slowly, like dust you don’t notice until everything is covered in it. One day, you walk through the same doorway you’ve crossed a thousand times, and something is off. The walls still stand where they always have. The furniture hasn’t moved. The light falls the same way across the floor. And yet, something essential is missing, something you can’t name, but feel in the hollow space it leaves behind.

Home, you realize, was never just a place.

So where do you go when that disappears?

Do you stay, hoping it will return? Do you sit in the same rooms, tracing memories like ghosts, trying to convince yourself that if you just hold on tightly enough, the feeling will come back? Or do you leave, step out into a world that suddenly feels too large, too indifferent and try to build something new from nothing but fragments?

its a particular kind of loneliness in losing a home that still physically exists. Because you can’t grieve it properly. It hasn’t been destroyed. No one else sees the absence. To everyone else, it’s still there intact, recognizable. But to you, it’s like speaking a language that the place has forgotten how to understand.

And so you wander.

Not always in distance, but in spirit. You look for pieces of home in small, unexpected places: in the warmth of a stranger’s kindness, in a song that understands you a little too well, in the fleeting comfort of a late night conversation. You begin to stitch together a new definition of home, one that isn’t rooted in walls or geography, but in moments, in people, in fleeting feelings of belonging.

But even then, something aches.

Because part of you is still standing in that doorway, staring at a place that used to hold you, wondering when it stopped.

Maybe the hardest truth is this: sometimes, you don’t go anywhere. Sometimes, you carry the loss with you. You learn to live with the absence, to make space for it alongside everything else. You become both the person searching for home and the person trying to build it, all at once.

And maybe slowly, imperfectly you realize that home was never meant to be permanent. That it can shift, fracture, rebuild. That it can exist in pieces before it becomes whole again.

Still, the question lingers, soft and relentless:

Where do you go when home no longer feels like home?

Maybe the answer isn’t a place at all.

Maybe it’s the stubborn act of continuing of gathering warmth where you can, of allowing yourself to feel, of believing, even when it hurts, that somewhere along the way, you will find or create something that feels like home again.

I miss the way it smells, like warm bread, old books, and the vague confidence of someone who has their life together. I miss the light coming through the windows at exactly 4:37 p.m., hitting the floor in a way that makes me feel like I have made at least three correct decisions in a row. I miss the sound of nothing being wrong. Not silence nothing being wrong. There’s a difference, and my imaginary home knows it.

This home has plants. Real ones. Alive ones. The kind that aren’t constantly on the brink of calling Child Protective Services on me. The couch is soft but not suspiciously so. It does not swallow you whole or whisper, “You will never leave.” There’s a mug in the kitchen that is my mug, and somehow it is always clean. The fridge contains ingredients that suggest I am the kind of person who cooks, not aspirational groceries purchased during a brief surge of self belief.

This house will be loud in the most generous way, loud with permission, loud with the kind of freedom that doesn’t flinch when you suddenly decide the kitchen is an arena and you are both the performer and the emotionally unstable audience; it will be a house where singing is not something you apologize for or test quietly first but something that erupts mid thought, mid chore, mid existential crisis, where you belt nonsense lyrics, half remembered choruses, dramatic background vocals, and full Broadway level anguish without anyone asking, “Are you okay?” or worse, “Can you not?” because here, noise is not evidence of disorder but proof of aliveness, and sound is allowed to sprawl and echo and crack and repeat itself until it figures out what it’s trying to be.

In this house, you can sing badly, loudly, emotionally, repetitively, off key and off timing and off genre, you can hum while pacing, scream sing while cleaning, whisper sing to yourself like you’re letting yourself in on a secret, and no one will try to shrink it, manage it, measure it, or tame it into something more palatable; no one will restrict your volume or your joy or your grief or your need to make noise just to hear yourself exist. The walls will not wince, the rooms will not judge, the air itself will feel like it’s leaning in instead of recoiling, as if the house understands that this is how you process, how you survive, how you celebrate, how you release the static that builds up when you’ve had to be quiet for too long. This house will hold space for spontaneous concerts, for emotional karaoke at 2 a.m., for the kind of singing that is less about sounding good and more about sounding true, and every note beautiful or busted will land safely, unrestricted, unquestioned, and utterly welcome.

In this home, I am calm in a way that feels earned. I walk around barefoot, emotionally moisturized. I know where my keys are. I have a routine that doesn’t feel like a hostage situation. I wake up and think, Ah yes. This again. I like this. Instead of waking up and immediately negotiating with the universe like, “Okay, but what if we all just lowered our expectations today?”

And the audacity of it all is that I miss this place desperately. I get pangs for it. Real, chest level yearning. I’ll be doing something normal brushing my teeth, staring into the wall and suddenly I’m struck with the grief of not yet being the version of myself who lives there. The grief of not yet having arranged the furniture of my life in a way that doesn’t block the emotional doorway.

People say, “Home is where the heart is,” but my heart is clearly wandering around Zillow with no budget and unrealistic standards. My heart wants crown molding and inner peace. My heart wants a quiet Sunday and a sense of continuity. My heart wants to stop feeling like it’s subletting inside my own life.

One day, I will build this home. Brick by brick. Habit by habit. Boundary by boundary. I will arrive there tired but victorious, carrying a box labeled Miscellaneous Emotional Baggage and a lamp I refuse to throw away for sentimental reasons. And when I finally unlock the door, I will collapse onto the floor, look around, and say, “Oh. So this is what I’ve been missing.”

Until then, I will remain tragically, melodramatically, inconveniently homesick nostalgic for a future that’s taking its sweet time, but absolutely worth the wait.

I remember the first time I noticed this in myself. I was standing on the edge of a decision that, in hindsight, was small, laughably small but in the moment felt enormous. I had something predictable. And just beyond it was something new, exciting, full of possibility. The funny thing? I wanted the new thing. I could practically taste how good it might be. And yet, my mind kept whispering, “But what if you lose what you already have?”

That whisper had weight. It tugged at me, like gravity.

But then something else happened. I started asking a different question: “What if I gain something even better?”

And just like that, the balance shifted, not completely, not magically, but enough.

What I’ve come to realize is that this instinct, to fear loss more than we enjoy gain isn’t a flaw. It’s a feature. It means we care. It means we value what we’ve built, what we’ve loved, what we’ve held onto. That’s actually kind of beautiful. Imagine a world where losing things didn’t matter at all. We’d drift through life untouched, uninvested, unmoved. No thanks.

The trick, though, is not letting that fear be the loudest voice in the room.

Because here’s the truth: gains are often gentler, but they’re also expansive. They unfold. They surprise you. They build. Loss feels immediate and sharp, but gain? Gain grows roots. It becomes part of you in ways you didn’t even expect.

Over time, I started treating my fear of loss less like a warning siren and more like an overprotective friend. You know the type, always pointing out what could go wrong, just to keep you safe. And instead of arguing with it, I’d say, “I hear you. But I’m going anyway.”

And almost every time, something wonderful happened. Not always what I expected. Not always easy. But always something that added more colour, more depth, more life.

That’s the strange, hopeful paradox, the very fact that we fear losing so much means we’re capable of appreciating so much. And when we gently loosen our grip, just a little, we make room for things we couldn’t have imagined holding in the first place.

So yes, we might always feel that tug, that hesitation, that instinct to protect what we have. But we can also smile at it, take its hand, and step forward anyway.

Because sometimes, the best parts of life are waiting just on the other side of “what if I lose this?” quietly asking, “what if you gain everything?”

Back when I was in college, I had a small, maybe slightly catastrophic crush on this one dude. (There is always one dude.)

And in the middle of that completely calm, very stable emotional period, I wrote this.

I found it recently and had to laugh. Not because it wasn’t real (oh, it was painfully real), but because of how dramatic I was about every tiny interaction.

It’s funny to read it now, knowing how intensely I felt everything and how seriously I took my own overthinking.

Anyway, this was written in that era.

I hope you like it, and maybe see a little bit of your own dramatic crush phase in it too.

I did not mean to like him.

In fact, I specifically scheduled not liking him between 3:00 and 3:45 p.m., right after algebra and before my daily routine of pretending I have my life together. And yet, there he was. Existing. Casually. Offensively.

He has this way of leaning against walls like the wall personally asked him to. Like the wall was going through something and needed emotional support. And I hate that I notice that. I hate that I notice the way he runs his hand through his hair when he’s thinking, like he’s in a coming of age movie directed by the universe itself. I hate that I know his laugh has two stages, the polite “ha” he gives teachers, and the real one that escapes before he can catch it, loud and startled, like even he didn’t expect to be happy.

I do not like him.

I simply have a PhD in Observing Him Against My Will.

It’s not my fault that he squints at the sun like he’s personally offended by it. Or that he says “what?” softly when he didn’t hear something, instead of the aggressive “WHAT?” most boys deploy like a weapon. Or that he listens, actually listens tilting his head slightly, eyebrows pulled together, like your words are delicate and he’s trying not to drop them.

Which is unfortunate. Because I am extremely droppable.

The problem is I can’t like him. For reasons that are very mature and logical and not at all dramatic. Maybe he’s my friend’s ex crush. Maybe he’s emotionally unavailable. Maybe the universe looked at me and said, “You know what would be funny?” But the point is: I cannot like him.

So obviously I do.

Every time he walks into a room, my brain goes, Oh no. It’s him. Act normal. And my body responds by forgetting how arms work. Suddenly I’m hyper aware of my hands. Why are they attached to me like this? Why are there so many fingers? Who approved this design?

And when he talks to me, which he does in a perfectly friendly, normal way that means absolutely nothing, I conduct a full forensic analysis afterward.

He said, “That’s funny.”

But was it?

Did he mean I’M funny? Or the situation? Was it pity- funny? Polite funny? Marriage proposal funny?

I will think about this until 2 a.m. Thank you.

The worst part is how gentle he is without trying. He moves out of people’s way automatically. He remembers small things. Once I mentioned I hate orange flavoured candy and two weeks later he handed me the strawberry ones from a mixed bag without a word. Like it was nothing.

It was not nothing.

It was a microscopic act of kindness that I have stored in a vault in my chest labelled: Evidence He Might Care (Delusional Edition).

And I pretend I don’t feel it. I pretend I’m above it. I roll my eyes when my friends mention him. I say things like, “He’s fine, I guess.” As if my heart doesn’t do a full Broadway musical every time he says my name.

Oh. The way he says my name.

Like it’s a normal collection of syllables and not a spell.

I wish he were awful. I wish he chewed with his mouth open or said “females” unironically or had the personality of drywall. That would make this so much easier. But no. He’s thoughtful. And observant. And annoyingly kind in a quiet way that doesn’t perform itself for applause.

Which means I have to perform indifference like I’m up for an award.

I laugh too casually. I look away too quickly. I say, “Shut up,” when he compliments me, which is my love language for please don’t stop talking.

And the tragedy, because there must be tragedy is that I don’t get to want him. I don’t get to sit in the softness of it. I have to carry it like a secret in my pocket, heavy and warm and slightly embarrassing. Like I stole something fragile and now I’m terrified I’ll drop it.

So I make jokes.

I say, “Obviously I’m immune to him.”
As if my pulse didn’t just do parkour.

I say, “He’s not even my type.”
As if my type isn’t apparently “boy who treats me like I matter.”

I narrate it in my head like it’s a sitcom. Girl falls for boy she can’t have. Cue laugh track. But the laughter sounds suspiciously like deflection.

Because underneath all the drama and sarcasm and theatrical sighing is something soft. Something terrifyingly sincere.

I like the way he exists in a room.
I like the way he pays attention.
I like the way he doesn’t know I like him.

And maybe that’s the safest part.

Because as long as this is a secret, it can stay perfect. Untouched. Unruined by reality. I can keep pretending I don’t care while caring so loudly it echoes.

I don’t like him.

I just notice the way he looks at the sky like it’s explaining something.

And sometimes, when he smiles at me, I have to remind myself to breathe.

But other than that?

Completely indifferent.

It has come to my most reluctant attention, reluctant because I would rather be napping dramatically upon a chaise that society possesses a most peculiar piece of advice. One hears it whispered in drawing rooms, murmured over teacups, and delivered with the solemn gravity of a duke announcing war:

“Sometimes, my dear, one must maintain distance from certain people in order to preserve a good relationship.”

Distance.

A most elegant word, is it not? It sounds dignified. Civilized. As though the relationship in question were a fragile porcelain teacup that must be placed on a very high shelf where absolutely no one may ever touch it.

Yet I, a humble observer of social absurdities, find myself compelled to inquire:

If the relationship can only survive at a distance… why must it survive at all?

Allow me to elaborate.

You see, society insists that if a particular person repeatedly causes one to experience emotions such as exhaustion, confusion, mild rage, or the sudden desire to join a monastery, the solution is simple: maintain a polite distance.

Do not confront them.
Do not question the arrangement.
Simply stand far enough away that the relationship begins to resemble an acquaintance you once met near a samosa stall in 2014.

Marvelous.

One must imagine this relationship functioning much like a rare tropical plant. It must not receive too much sunlight (conversation), too much water (honesty), or too much proximity (existence). Should any of these occur, the plant immediately wilts and begins producing passive aggressive vines.

And so we are advised to maintain distance.

Distance at family gatherings.
Distance in conversations.
Distance in emotional investment.

Eventually one maintains so much distance that the relationship begins to resemble a historical monument: respected, rarely visited, and mostly maintained out of social obligation.

“Ah yes,” one says politely, dusting it off once a year. “Still standing, I see.”

But here lies the question that keeps me awake at night, aside from my dramatic overthinking and a scandalous amount of tea.

If a relationship requires distance in order to be peaceful…

If closeness results in arguments, irritation, and the distinct urge to throw a decorative cushion…

If speaking honestly causes tremors greater than a royal scandal…

If spending more than ten minutes together threatens the stability of the entire social order…

Then one must ask, with all the politeness society demands and all the sarcasm one can muster:

Why are we preserving this relationship like a priceless antique?

Relationships, dear reader, are not meant to function like fragile museum artifacts labeled:

“Do Not Touch. Do Not Approach. Maintain Minimum 10 Feet Distance.”

A good relationship should be like a lively ball, messy, warm, occasionally chaotic, but full of laughter and conversation.

Not like a diplomatic treaty between two mildly irritated kingdoms.

And yet society insists that distance equals maturity.
Distance equals wisdom.
Distance equals maintaining harmony.

But sometimes, whisper it softly that distance is simply polite avoidance wearing a very respectable hat.

And perhaps, just perhaps, if a relationship collapses the moment two people stand closer than socially mandated arm’s length…

then the relationship itself may be doing the collapsing.

Not you.

But alas, society will continue offering its elegant advice, and we shall all nod wisely while secretly wondering whether the true solution is not distance…

but honesty, boundaries, or occasionally walking away with theatrical dignity.

Until the next social absurdity presents itself,

I remain,
Your most observant and dramatically exhausted narrator.

There is something strangely mechanical about surviving. My heart beats without asking me if I want it to. My lungs fill and empty like obedient servants. The sun rises, the world stirs, and I rise with it, not because I am certain I want to live, but because I have not yet figured out how to stop living. Survival, I have learned, is not always bravery. Sometimes it is simply inertia.

Every day feels like walking across a thin bridge suspended over nothingness. Below me is a vast silence where no expectations exist, no comparisons, no disappointments. Above me is the noise of the world: ambition, joy, success, purpose. I move carefully, afraid that any misstep will confirm what I already fear that I was never meant to belong here in the first place.

I watch people laugh in cafes, argue about trivial things, make plans for futures that stretch decades ahead. They speak of retirement, of children, of vacations not yet taken. I struggle to imagine next week. The idea of long term survival feels like trying to carry a mountain in my hands. I am exhausted by the mere concept of enduring.

Sometimes I wonder if existing is an accident I have not yet corrected. The world moves so confidently, as though it assumes everyone agrees to participate. I never remember signing that agreement. I do not remember asking to feel this deeply, to bruise so easily against small disappointments, to carry an unnamed heaviness that makes even breathing feel like labor.

There are moments small, almost cruelly brief when the light shifts. A song catches me unexpectedly. The sky turns a shade of orange so tender it feels personal. A stranger holds a door open. In those fragile seconds, I sense something like belonging. But it fades. It always fades. And I am left questioning whether those flickers are enough to justify the long corridors of doubt.

Survival is often described as strength. People tell stories of resilience with triumphant endings, as though endurance automatically transforms into meaning. But what if survival is just repetition? What if it is waking up each morning not because you are inspired, but because the alternative feels too definitive? There is no applause for quiet endurance. No medals for brushing your teeth when your body feels like stone.

I question my existence not because I want to dramatize my pain, but because I genuinely cannot locate the thread that ties me securely to this world. I feel like a loose stitch in a vast tapestry, one that could be pulled free without altering the pattern. I fear that if I disappeared, the world would simply tighten around the absence and move on.

And yet, I am still here.

That is the contradiction that keeps me suspended between despair and something softer. If I truly did not belong, would I still be breathing? Would my heart still insist on beating? There must be some quiet defiance inside me a stubborn ember that refuses to extinguish itself. I do not feel brave. I feel tired. But tiredness, I am learning, is not the same as defeat.

Every day I question my existence. Every day I doubt the purpose of surviving. But every day, in spite of myself, I continue. I place my feet on the floor. I swallow the air. I move through the hours.

Perhaps survival is not about certainty. Perhaps it is about choosing, over and over again, to remain even when the reasons are unclear. Perhaps the fact that I keep asking these questions means I am still searching for something worth staying for.

And maybe, just maybe, the act of surviving in the absence of answers is its own quiet, aching form of hope.

Sometimes the hardest thing is staying quiet.

It’s swallowing words that scorch your throat like wildfire, letting them burn holes inside you because speaking them would only start another war. It’s biting your tongue so hard you taste blood, choosing silence even when your soul is begging to scream.

It’s smiling while your chest feels like it’s caving in, like your ribs can’t hold the weight of everything you’re pretending doesn’t hurt. It’s laughing at jokes that bruise you, nodding along while something inside you quietly shatters.

It’s sitting in rooms that steal the oxygen from your lungs, rooms so heavy with tension you feel yourself disappearing inch by inch, yet you stay. Because leaving isn’t an option. Because survival sometimes means enduring what is slowly killing you.

It’s learning the sharp edges of people’s behaviour, the tone, the looks, the silence, the cruelty and reshaping yourself around them so you don’t get cut as deeply. It’s shrinking, softening, apologizing for things that were never your fault, just to keep the peace.

It’s going to bed every night exhausted not from the world, but from pretending you’re okay in it. And waking up to do it all over again because surviving another day feels like the only victory you’re allowed to have.

And no one sees that battle.

They don’t see how much it costs you to be “strong.”
They don’t see the silent funerals you hold for the pieces of yourself you had to bury just to survive. They don’t see the nights you lie awake staring at the ceiling, your heart aching so loudly it feels like it might crack your ribs open. They call you strong because you don’t break in front of them, never realizing you break alone, quietly, where no one can hear the sound.

They don’t see how heavy it is to carry toxicity on your shoulders, how it clings to you like soaked clothes you can’t peel off. How every cruel word replays in your head long after the room goes quiet. How you replay conversations, wondering how you could have been smaller, softer, less human just to avoid the next wound. You carry it in your posture, in your exhaustion, in the way your smile trembles if it lasts too long.

They don’t see how tired you are.
Not the kind of tired sleep can fix but the kind that settles into your bones. The kind that makes breathing feel like a chore. The kind that makes you wish, just for a moment, that you didn’t have to be the strong one anymore. That someone would notice the cracks in your voice. That someone would say, “You don’t have to hold it all together. You can fall apart here.”

But instead, you keep standing.
Even when your knees are shaking.
Even when your heart is begging for rest.

But surviving it? That takes a different kind of courage.

Still, and this is important tolerating something doesn’t mean you deserve it. Enduring it doesn’t mean it’s okay. Being strong enough to handle poison doesn’t mean you should have to drink it forever.

Sometimes you tolerate because you’re building your escape.

Sometimes you tolerate because you’re protecting something bigger.

Sometimes you tolerate because you’re healing quietly and waiting for your moment.

But please remember: your softness is not weakness. Your silence is not surrender. And this season of enduring does not define your forever.

You are not made to live in toxicity.

You are just surviving it right now.

And surviving is not the same as belonging there.

It doesn’t happen all at once. It happens in small, well intentioned choices. You stay a little longer than you should. You explain yourself one more time. You soften your boundaries because you tell yourself that love means patience, that care means endurance, that showing up means never leaving, even when leaving would be the most honest thing you could do.

You begin to confuse self respect with selfishness. You tell yourself that your discomfort is temporary, that their needs are heavier than yours, that if you just love harder, listen better, give more, things will eventually balance out. So you give. You give your time, your emotional labour, your silence, your dignity. You give until your needs feel embarrassing to ask for and your standards feel negotiable.

And somewhere along the way, you stop asking the most important question: What am I receiving in return?

Not grand gestures. Not promises. Not potential. But real, tangible care. Mutual effort. Consideration that doesn’t need to be begged for. Respect that doesn’t disappear when it becomes inconvenient.

When you lose self respect in the name of caring, the cost is subtle but devastating. You start measuring your worth by how useful you are to someone else. You become hyper aware of their moods and strangely disconnected from your own. You tolerate things you once swore you never would not because they changed, but because you did.

And the hardest truth is this: love that requires you to shrink is not love that nourishes you. Care that asks you to self-abandon is not care, it’s extraction.

One day you look at yourself and realize you have been showing up faithfully for someone who only meets you halfway when it suits them. You have been loyal to a connection that is inconsistent with your values. You have been protecting someone else’s comfort at the expense of your own peace.

That’s usually when the grief hits, not just for the relationship, but for the version of yourself who deserved better and kept hoping it would come.

Self respect doesn’t mean you stop caring. It means you stop disappearing. It means you recognize that love should not feel like self betrayal. That showing up should go both ways. That you are not asking for too much you were simply asking the wrong person.

And when you finally choose yourself, it won’t feel triumphant at first. It will feel lonely. Quiet. Unfamiliar. But slowly, you will remember what it’s like to stand in your own truth without apology. To give without losing yourself. To care without compromise.

And this time, when you show up, it will be for someone who shows up for you too starting with yourself.

There was a time dark times, truly when my entire will to live depended on whether my phone buzzed. Not even rang. Buzzed. A vibration. A whisper of electricity saying, “You still matter.” And that buzz? It had exactly one acceptable source: you.

Then came no contact.

Which sounds peaceful, like a spa treatment. Like herbal tea. Like silence and growth. Lies. It was actually more like being locked in a room with my thoughts and a phone that suddenly became a traitor.

The first morning of no contact, I woke up and instinctively grabbed my phone like a raccoon grabbing something shiny. I checked notifications. Nothing. Refreshed. Nothing. Refreshed again, because maybe the universe was buffering. Still nothing.

I stared at the screen the way people stare at loading bars, convinced that if I waited long enough, something magical would appear. It did not. But shockingly? I survived.

I brushed my teeth without you. Ate breakfast without you. Walked outside without checking if you’d posted anything cryptic like “Some people never change” which, for the record, used to ruin my entire week. I went hours without you, and no sirens went off. No one from the government showed up to confiscate my phone for excessive refreshing. The world kept spinning. Rude, honestly.

By noon, I realized something horrifying: I was… fine.

Not “rom com fine.” Not “posting thirst traps and pretending I’m healed” fine. Just regular fine. Functional fine. Like a person who pays taxes and buys groceries and doesn’t emotionally spiral because someone didn’t say “hi.”

Before no contact, I lived in a state of romantic suspense. Every notification was a potential plot twist. Was it you? Was this the moment you’d finally realize I was the love of your life and text, “Hey, sorry I disappeared emotionally for weeks. Want to get married?”

Spoiler alert: it never was.

It was always my mom. Or a group chat arguing about where to eat. Or a spam email congratulating me on winning a contest I absolutely did not enter.

And yet, I waited. I hoped. I reread old messages like they were ancient texts containing secret meanings. “LOL” became a thesis. A period at the end of a sentence felt personal. I was an FBI agent assigned to a case called Why Don’t You Love Me Back.

But now? I don’t stalk you anymore. I don’t “accidentally” check your socials like I tripped and fell into your profile at 2 a.m. I don’t wait for a message or a call that will never come. I don’t interpret silence like it’s Morse code spelling out my worth.

I go out without thinking about you. I laugh without wondering if you’d find it cute. I do things without imagining how I’d tell you about them later, because there is no later. And instead of that feeling like loss, it feels like… space. Like finally taking off shoes that were two sizes too small and convincing myself they just needed breaking in.

The funniest part? I didn’t crumble. I didn’t collapse. I didn’t turn into a Victorian child fainting onto a couch because my heart couldn’t bear the pain. I simply lived.

Little by little, I’m learning to let go of what was never mine. And wow, that lesson was expensive emotionally, but at least now I get a personality upgrade.

No contact didn’t make me cold. It didn’t make me bitter. It made me free and slightly funnier, because apparently all this emotional damage came with a sense of humor.

So yes. I can wake up and go all day without you. I can be fine without you. And the most dramatic plot twist of all?

I always could.

Every morning I wake up and choose violence against my own nervous system.

Specifically, I choose hope.

Not real hope, mind you. Not the sturdy, respectable kind that wears sensible shoes and has a retirement plan. I mean hopebait the flimsy, clickbait adjacent optimism that whispers, “Today might be different 👀” and then vanishes like a man who said he “wasn’t ready for a relationship.”

I am both the fisherman and the fish. I cast the line. I bite. I cry.

It starts immediately after I wake up, when my brain still soft, unguarded, and damp from sleep decides to lie to me. I open my eyes and think, “Today could be the day everything clicks.” Why? No reason. No evidence. No prior success. Just vibes. Just audacity.

I check my phone like a pilgrim approaching a holy site. Maybe someone texted me with life changing news. Maybe I got an email titled “We Have Been Waiting for YOU” instead of “Following Up on My Previous Email (Again)”. Maybe my bank account mysteriously replenished itself out of respect.

None of this happens, obviously. But the fact that I expect it? That’s the disease.

I hopebait myself at college too. I sit down and think, “This will be the day I am productive, focused, and emotionally stable.” I open a document. I type one sentence. I reread it seventeen times. I decide it’s ugly. I google something completely unrelated. Three hours pass. I emerge from the trance having learned one fun fact about octopuses and nothing about my actual responsibilities.

And still still I think, “It’s okay. The afternoon will save me.”

The afternoon does not save me. The afternoon has never saved anyone.

Hopebaiting is especially vicious at night. That’s when I romanticize the future like it’s an indie film starring a hotter, calmer version of me. I imagine myself waking up early. Drinking water. Being the kind of person who “goes on walks” and “has boundaries.” I see myself thriving. Glowing. Owning matching storage containers.

I whisper, “Tomorrow.”

Tomorrow hears me and laughs.

I also hopebait myself socially. I convince myself I won’t overthink a single interaction. That I’ll be cool, casual, unbothered. That I won’t replay a conversation from six years ago where I said “you too” when the waiter said “enjoy your meal.”

Reader, I replay it anyway.

Hopebaiting is when I open a dating app thinking, “Maybe this time it’ll be normal.” Hopebaiting is when I say, “I’ll just check one notification,” and emerge forty five minutes later with lower self esteem and a sudden urge to reinvent my personality.

The drama of it all is that I act shocked every single time.

Oh? Disappointment? Here? In this economy?

I clutch my chest like a Victorian child with the vapors. I stagger. I monologue. I tell myself I will never hope again. I will become a realist. A stoic. A person who expects nothing and is therefore immune to pain.

This lasts approximately twelve minutes.

Then I see something mildly encouraging a motivational quote, a job posting I’m 30% qualified for, a stranger’s success story that starts with “I never thought it would happen to me, but ” and I’m back. I’m leaning forward. I’m invested. I’m emotionally overextended.

What if…?

That question is my downfall.

Because hopebaiting isn’t just optimism. It’s theatrics. It’s building a mental acceptance speech before the award is even nominated. It’s planning how you’ll explain your success in interviews that do not exist. It’s feeling pre nostalgic for a future memory that hasn’t happened and may legally never happen.

And yet.

AND YET.

Despite everything despite the patterns, the data, the lived experience, I wake up every day and do it again. I line up my little hopes like bowling pins and roll a ball made of pure delusion straight at them.

Because somewhere deep inside me is a feral belief that one day the hope will be right.

One day the click will not be bait.
One day the optimism will pay rent.
One day “this might be the day” will actually be the day.

Until then, I will continue hopebaiting myself daily, dramatically, with full commitment and zero lessons learned.

I am nothing if not consistent.

I’ve recently accepted a difficult truth about myself: I am incapable of reading novels like a normal, emotionally stable adult. Some people read to relax. Some read to escape. I read to hallucinate romance into my real life like an underpaid screenwriter on a deadline.

See, I love novels every kind, really. Historical fiction, murder mysteries, fantasy with too many apostrophes in the character names. But above all genres, towering above the rest like a swoony, slow motion bookshelf hero, is the rom com.

Rom coms are my emotional support muffins. They are my comfort food, my serotonin dispenser, my number one method of avoiding the crushing reality that my actual romantic life has the same activity level as a museum on a Monday morning.

Whenever I open a rom com, I’m instantly transported to a world where everyone meets cute instead of meeting awkward. A world where falling in love involves witty banter, not typing “haha yeah same” into a text bubble and immediately regretting my entire existence. A world where the barista doesn’t just hand me my coffee but also notices the quirky twinkle in my eye, instead of the “I haven’t slept since Wednesday” glaze that I apparently give off.

Because here’s the thing: being single while loving rom coms is a hazardous sport. I can’t walk down the street without expecting the wind to blow my hair in a cinematic swirl, only for it to actually smack me directly in the mouth. If someone bumps into me at the grocery store, my brain immediately whispers: OMG is this a meet cute? Meanwhile, the person who bumped me is just trying to grab a family sized box of Raisin Bran.

I’ll over romanticize literally anything not because I’m desperate, but because my imagination is a full time employee with no boundaries, no breaks, and absolutely no chill. I once made unnecessary eye contact with a stranger who held the door open for me, and my brain, being the theatrical mastermind it is, immediately drafted a 12 chapter soft focus montage about the symbolism of that moment. Not a relationship, not a shared future just the sheer cinematic potential of a door holding scene. My imagination added warm lighting, emotional background music, and probably a slow pan for dramatic effect.

Spoiler: the poor guy wasn’t my future anything. He was just trying to exit a building like a normal human while my brain turned the moment into an Oscar nominated short film.

But then tragically, catastrophically, with all the subtlety of a soap opera villain ripping off their disguise reality has the absolute audacity to exist. It doesn’t creep in gently; oh no, it swan dives into my fantasies like it’s trying to win an Olympic medal for Ruining the Vibe. And little by little, like a slow, painful WiFi disconnection, I’m forced to confront the heartbreaking, soul shattering, eyebrow twitching truth: all these perfect, caring, emotionally available, communicative, therapy attending, green flag waving men ONLY live in novels. ONLY. IN. BOOKS.

In fiction, the love interest apologizes correctly, listens deeply, remembers birthdays, and knows the difference between teal and turquoise. In real life? The closest I’ve gotten to a green flag is a guy who didn’t interrupt me while I was speaking once because he was too busy eating a sandwich. The bar is so low it’s not even a bar anymore; it’s a fossil.

Romantic, cinematic moments? They don’t happen in my grocery store, unless you count the time a guy reached for the same yogurt as me, looked me dead in the eye, and said, “Oh sorry,” with the emotional warmth of a malfunctioning vending machine. They don’t happen at my bus stop either, unless fate intended for my soulmate to be a man aggressively munching that roasted corn at 8 AM. And they DEFINITELY don’t happen with the guy who asked where the bathrooms were, because he did not follow up with “Also, may I accompany you on a spontaneous, whimsical journey of love and shared vulnerability?” No. He just wanted the bathroom.

My imagination may be ultra super mega high definition 4D IMAX with surround sound and bonus features, but real life? Real life is like: “Calm down. You’re not in a rom com. You’re not the quirky heroine. You’re just in line at supermarket behind someone returning the hair serum” And there I stand, clutching my basket of discounted snacks, realizing with the dramatic weight of a season finale cliff hanger that the green flag men aren’t late. They’re not hiding. They’re not stuck in traffic on their way to me.

They were simply never real in the first place.

Do I know this is ridiculous? Yes. Does that stop me? Absolutely not. Because loving rom coms means believing no, knowing that love can be found anywhere: in coffee shops, in bookstores, in the frozen food aisle between peas and chicken nuggets. And even if I haven’t found it yet, the possibilities are endless.

Until then, I will continue to live vicariously through fictional characters who fall in love after one (1) well timed joke and a single moment of prolonged eye contact.

Is this healthy? Probably not.

Is this who I am? Absolutely.

And honestly? I wouldn’t have it any other way.

People hand out assurance the way you toss someone a crumpled tissue when their whole world is spilling out of them hurriedly, halfheartedly, as if the thin paper could possibly absorb the flood. “It’ll be fine.” “I’m not going anywhere.” “You won’t lose me.” These lines tumble out of people almost on reflex, like buttons being pushed on a machine that’s been programmed for emotional emergencies. I’ve heard those promises whispered in the dark, tossed casually over shoulders, even muttered through clenched teeth when someone was trying to convince themselves more than me. And the truth is, I’ve said them too. I’ve delivered those soft lies with my voice trembling, hoping they would be enough to hold someone together even when I wasn’t sure I could keep them from breaking.

But here’s the strange, almost contradictory thing something I didn’t understand until life pressed my face right up against it: even though we live in a world drowning in small, sugar coated lies, there is a deeper truth pulsing beneath them, steady and stubborn, like an underground river that refuses to dry up no matter how many storms pass overhead. People toss reassurance around like confetti, but beneath all that glitter and noise, something heavier, quieter, far more unshakeable exists. It hums underneath every promise, every apology, every “I’m trying” that sounds too soft to believe.

It is the truth no one says out loud because it’s too sacred, too raw, too vulnerable to risk being mishandled: people do not give up on the ones they truly love. They may get tired. They may step back. They may fall silent in the doorway or turn away when they don’t know how to save you or themselves. But the love? The real kind? It digs its nails in. It roots itself in the corners of the heart where logic cannot reach.

And I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it. Even in the moments where I was sure someone had let go of me completely, I later discovered the thread was still there, thin but unbroken, stretched painfully but never snapped. Love, the real kind, is stubborn. Almost irrational. It clings in ways that human beings rarely admit. It keeps checking the door even after it’s been slammed. It keeps hoping at 3 a.m. when everything looks hopeless. It keeps choosing, again and again, even when the choosing hurts.

People don’t talk about this truth because it’s messy. It contradicts the cynicism we wrap ourselves in. But I’ve learned through heartbreak, through reunion, through the quiet spaces in between that real love is relentless. It doesn’t quit. It doesn’t vanish. It doesn’t give up, even when every sensible part of you thinks it should.

It just keeps moving, silently, like that river beneath the earth hidden, steady, unstoppable.

The world tries to convince us otherwise. It teaches us to doubt, to prepare for loss before loss arrives, to believe that people are fickle and fragile, that affection has an expiration date. And so whenever someone looks into our eyes and says “I’m here,” we brace ourselves for the moment they won’t be. Maybe that’s why reassurance so often feels fake because we’re expecting it to fail us.

But love doesn’t operate on the same terms as reassurance. Reassurance is a statement; love is a behavior. Reassurance is the spark; love is the flame that continues burning when no one is watching. People who love you may get tired, frustrated, overwhelmed. They may step back, they may fall silent, they may need space. But giving up? Truly giving up? That is something love is simply incapable of doing.

Love is stubborn in ways people rarely talk about. It waits at doors left half open. It returns to conversations that ended badly. It listens through hurt. It checks on you at 2 A.M. even after a long day. It remembers how you take your coffee, what makes you shut down, what makes you breathe easier. Love does not abandon it adjusts. It shifts shape to match the weight of the moment, but it does not leave.

The fake assurance we receive from others doesn’t come from deceit; it comes from fear. Humans promise permanence because they are terrified you might feel insecure for even a moment. They don’t realize that real love, the deep kind, doesn’t need promises. It proves itself over time, in the messy silence between the words.

I used to resent the hollowness of reassurance. Now I see it differently. Those words the ones that sometimes feel fake are often the best people can offer when the truth is too big to capture. The truth that when they love you, really love you, they will hold on. Maybe clumsily, maybe imperfectly, but persistently.

And maybe that is the most comforting part: not the promises people make, but the ones they keep without ever speaking them.

There were days this year when I felt astonishingly alive, so aware of my own pulse that it seemed to echo in everything around me. Those were the mornings when I woke up with an inexplicable sense of hope, even if nothing special was happening. I’d look at the sky too blue, almost suspiciously perfect and think, maybe this year is finally turning into something good. I had moments of deep connection, too: conversations that stretched late into the night, laughter that left my ribs aching, small gestures from people who reminded me that I am not as alone as I sometimes convince myself I am.

This year, somehow, I found myself swept into an endless tide of faces and voices, drifting from one conversation to another like a leaf caught in a river. I barely understood, meeting people in cafes with too bright lights and in parks where the wind felt like it carried secrets from somewhere else, laughing at jokes that didn’t always land and sharing stories that I didn’t always know how to end, and yet, amidst the whirl of introductions, fleeting friendships, and late night exchanges that felt almost conspiratorial in their intimacy, there was this strange, gnawing undercurrent of loneliness, like standing in the middle of a crowded room and realizing that the air between everyone else’s heartbeats somehow didn’t reach mine, like my own thoughts were echoes bouncing off walls that no one else could see, but even in that ache, even in the quiet spaces between handshakes and hugs and “nice to meet you” smiles that faded too quickly into memory, I would never, not for a second, regret having met anyone, not for a moment wish any conversation back into silence, because every single encounter, no matter how brief or bizarre or dissonant, left a mark a shimmer of human connection, a fragment of understanding, a memory that even loneliness couldn’t fully erase, and so I carried all of it with me, the laughter and the silence, the warm embraces and the empty pauses, knowing that the paradox of being alone while surrounded by people had somehow become one of the richest experiences of my life, a strange, intoxicating gift that I would cling to long after the year itself had slipped away.

But then came the other days.

Days when I felt like the year was some sort of cosmic joke, a puzzle box I didn’t have the patience or the tools to solve. Plans unraveled. People left. Unexpected disappointments carved tiny hollows in me. And even when things technically went “right,” something felt slightly misaligned, as if life was playing my favorite song just a little out of tune. I’d catch myself thinking, Is this growth, or just exhaustion with prettier packaging?

This year, somehow, I found myself stepping into a world that I had always imagined could only be navigated with someone beside me, and yet, step by cautious step, I began to do things alone terrifying, exhilarating, strangely liberating things like going to a cafe at midday, ordering a coffee without rehearsing a conversation or glancing around for a familiar face, sitting by the window and watching people pass by as if I were a quiet observer of a universe I had always felt just outside of my reach; like wandering through aisles of a store, touching items I might buy or might not, carrying my own basket, making decisions without asking anyone, without feeling guilty, without that old pit of worry in my stomach telling me that being alone meant being awkward or invisible; and each of these small acts, which I had spent years imagining as impossible, became little rebellions against my own anxieties, little proofs that I could exist fully without accompaniment, little moments of strange pride that built and built. And for the very first time, teaching me that solitude is not emptiness, that being alone does not have to be lonely, that the world, vast and loud and impatient, could actually be mine to navigate on my own terms, and with every solo cup of coffee, every shopping trip, every quiet walk through streets that felt unfamiliar but welcoming, I felt a strange, soaring sense of freedom, as if I had finally found a part of myself that had been waiting patiently, quietly, for the courage to step into the world alone and, to my astonishment, realize I was absolutely fine, and even a little proud, standing there in the middle of everything, entirely, completely, by myself.

2025 taught me things I didn’t know I needed to learn, and forced me into lessons I never wanted. It asked me to show up for myself in ways I’d been avoiding. It brought change in slow waves and in sudden storms. It gave me reasons to celebrate and reasons to grieve sometimes in the same week, sometimes in the same hour. I kept waiting for it to decide what kind of year it wanted to be, but it never did. Maybe the point was that I had to decide how to meet it, even when my footing felt unstable.

2025 also found me, once again, navigating its labyrinth as a solitary soul in matters of the heart, stumbling through the talking stage like a ghost circling a door I could never quite open, exchanging messages that felt electric one moment and painfully empty the next, reading between the lines of emojis and late night texts as if they were ancient prophecies, hoping for a spark that never quite ignited, feeling the pull of connection and the weight of disappointment at the same time, as if the universe was teasing me with glimpses of what could be while insisting I stay on the outside, watching couples pass me on the street with their quiet, effortless intimacy and wondering if I would ever be allowed such simplicity, yet somehow, despite the sting of unrequited potential and the endless echo of “almosts” that lingered in my mind like songs I couldn’t stop playing, I kept moving forward, kept laughing in conversations that never led anywhere, kept showing up in my own life with the same stubborn heartbeat that refused to break under the weight of longing, and in this way, I survived, I endured, I passed through yet another year without a hand to hold, without a promise to call my own, without crossing the threshold of intimacy that I had so desperately imagined, and in the strange, paradoxical way that only life can manage, I was both proud and exasperated, heartbroken and resilient, aware that this pattern might repeat again, yet strangely comforted by the fact that even in the endless loop of singlehood and talking stage limbo, I had proven, once more, that I could survive could exist fully, vibrantly, painfully, joyfully all on my own, carrying the weight of my own heart with both tenderness and stubborn defiance.

Looking back, maybe this year wasn’t meant to be categorized. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to be filed under “good” or “bad,” or “successful” or “difficult.” Maybe it was meant to be lived in its messy totality: the contradictions, the whiplash shifts, the tenderness tucked between the chaos.

So here at the end of it, I’m choosing to call 2025 what it truly was: a mixed blessing. A mosaic of small heartbreaks. A reminder that life rarely fits neatly into the boxes we prepare for it. And even though I still don’t know if I liked this year, I can say with a strange sort of gratitude that it changed me. And maybe that’s enough.

But how long must I keep bleeding proof?
How many times must I swear my heart is yours
before you stop asking if it ever was?

I’ve stayed when storms cracked the walls,
when leaving would’ve been easier than breathing.
Yet somehow, my presence still feels like a test
I can never pass.

You ask if I’m loyal
but loyalty, to me, was the nights I didn’t sleep
because I was too busy holding us together
with shaking hands and fading faith.

I wonder now,
is staying love,
or is it just another wound I keep open
to show you that I still care?

Because maybe loving someone
who doubts you
isn’t devotion
it’s slow destruction.

And I’m so tired
of proving
what should’ve already been believed.

This city has been the backdrop of every version of me. I’ve watched it change and swell, just as I did, both of us growing older and more complicated with time. I remember being a little girl clutching my mom’s hand as we crossed MG Road, the lights dazzling my eyes, the noise thrilling instead of exhausting me. I remember the smell of fresh filter coffee wafting from old cafés that have probably been replaced by glassy new ones now, and the way the rain would come without warning hard, unapologetic turning the streets into silver mirrors. Back then, everything about this city felt like a promise. I thought I would bloom here, that I would carve a life so vivid it would make my childhood dreams look pale. But now, even after all these years, I find myself drifting through the same streets that once felt like home, and they don’t recognize me anymore. Somewhere between school mornings and college deadlines, between being the girl who dreamed under trees and the one who scrolls through her phone to fill the silence, I lost something maybe the wonder, maybe the softness, maybe myself. Bangalore hasn’t changed as much as I have, and that realization hurts in a way I can’t quite put into words.

Now, I wake up every morning with this strange heaviness pressing against my chest, like the weight of a dream I can’t remember. The first thing I do is reach for my phone not because I care, but because it’s easier than facing my own thoughts. I scroll and scroll, watching other people’s lives unfold in fragments smiling faces, birthday dinners, sunsets filtered into perfection and somewhere inside me, something quietly aches. It’s like everyone else is living in color while I’m stuck in grayscale. I look at the faces of people I used to laugh with, the ones who once made my stomach hurt from giggling over the smallest things, and I can’t help but wonder when our conversations became so hollow. We talk, but it feels like we’re all acting, rehearsing our lines in this play called “being okay.”

I laugh when I’m supposed to, I smile when someone meets my eyes, but it’s all muscle memory now mechanical, practiced, detached. There are moments when someone’s telling a story, and I catch myself drifting, watching their mouth move but not hearing a word. I nod anyway, pretending to be present, pretending to belong. Even in a crowded room filled with people I once called friends, I feel invisible like a ghost haunting my own life. I watch myself from somewhere outside, sitting among them, smiling, nodding, existing, but not feeling.

Sometimes, it terrifies me this emptiness that’s settled inside me like a quiet stranger who refuses to leave. It’s not that anything is wrong, not exactly. It’s just that nothing feels right anymore. I used to crave connection, laughter, belonging now I crave silence, just so I can hear what’s left of me beneath all this noise. And yet, even in silence, I can’t find her the girl who once laughed too loudly, who believed in friendship like it was a kind of magic. I think she’s still here somewhere, trapped under all this pretending, calling out for help in a voice I no longer recognize.

College feels like a blur of expectations. Everyone’s rushing somewhere placements, internships, relationships and I can’t even figure out what I’m running toward. Sometimes I catch my reflection in the mirror after a long day and don’t recognize myself. My eyes look tired, not from lack of sleep but from carrying a weight I can’t name.

There was a time when I used to write poetry just for the sake of feeling something. Not for anyone to read just for me. I would scribble random thoughts in the margins of my notebooks, in the backs of receipts, on the corners of old newspapers anything I could find when my mind was too full to stay quiet. I wrote about everything: the color of the evening sky, the ache of missing someone I hadn’t even met, the way sunlight spilled across my desk like it was trying to touch me. Back then, words were my refuge. They made sense when nothing else did. I could sit for hours, lost in a sentence, rearranging words until they felt like a heartbeat mine, steady and alive.

But now, when I try to write, nothing comes. The pen feels heavier than it should. The page stares back at me like it’s waiting for someone else someone I no longer am. I trace the outlines of words that never arrive. My thoughts feel scattered, distant, like stars in a sky that used to be mine but isn’t anymore. Sometimes I open my old journals and see pieces of a girl who felt too deeply, who believed that writing could save her. And I wonder when I stopped being her.

Maybe this is what growing up is not just learning and moving forward, but shedding parts of yourself so quietly you don’t even notice until one day you look around and realize you’ve become someone you don’t fully know. Maybe it’s about forgetting the things that once made your soul feel warm, the small rituals that used to hold you together. I tell myself it’s normal, that everyone outgrows their younger selves. But deep down, it feels like a kind of mourning grieving the person I used to be, and the words that once knew how to find me.

It hurts in quiet ways. When I sit in class and realize I’m not listening. When I walk home and can’t remember what music I was playing. When I call my grandma and lie that I’m doing fine, because I don’t want her to hear the emptiness in my voice.

Sometimes, when it rains at night, the city lights blur through my window, and I feel like crying for no reason. Maybe the reason is that I miss myself. I miss the version of me that laughed easily, that loved the sound of rain instead of using it to drown out her thoughts.

I keep hoping one morning I’ll wake up and feel whole again. Maybe I’ll find that girl again the one who believed she could belong somewhere. Maybe she’s still here, hidden beneath the noise and exhaustion, waiting for me to slow down long enough to listen.

But right now, if I’m honest, all I know is that I feel lost. Not the kind of lost that can be fixed with directions or advice it’s deeper, quieter, heavier. It’s the kind of lost where you’re standing in the middle of your own life, surrounded by everything that’s supposed to make sense, and yet nothing does. I walk through this city the same roads that once felt like home and everything looks familiar, but nothing feels safe anymore. The classrooms, the crowded corridors, the laughter that spills out of canteens they all blur into a background I no longer belong to.

There are moments when I catch my reflection in a bus window, in a shop mirror, in my phone camera and for a split second, I don’t recognize the girl looking back. She wears my face, my clothes, my tired smile, but she isn’t me. She’s someone trying to hold it together, someone pretending she’s fine because falling apart feels like a luxury she can’t afford.

And maybe that’s what hurts the most not the loneliness, not the silence, but the uncertainty of it all. I can’t even remember when I stopped being the girl I used to be. There wasn’t a single day or a single moment it just happened slowly, quietly, like sand slipping through my fingers. Now, I’m left holding pieces I don’t know how to fit back together.

Sometimes, I tell myself that maybe this is what it means to grow to lose and rebuild, to wander until you find yourself again. But tonight, as I sit here with the city lights bleeding through my window and the hum of traffic echoing like a lullaby I can’t sleep to, all I can feel is this hollow ache this aching awareness that somewhere along the way, I stopped being me. And I don’t know how to find my way back.

I think, deep down, every one of us carries that silent terror, the fear that one day, the world will keep spinning, and we’ll be the only ones standing still, watching as everything and everyone we love drifts quietly out of reach. It doesn’t arrive with a crash, it seeps in softly, like water finding cracks in a wall. It begins so small, almost invisible a friend who stops calling as often, their laughter no longer folding your name inside it. A parent whose eyes light up a little brighter when they speak of someone else’s child, as if pride has found a new home. A lover who once reached for your hand like it was second nature, who now keeps their fingers in their pockets, walking beside you but feeling a thousand miles away.

You tell yourself stories to keep the hurt at bay. They’re just busy. It’s nothing. I’m overthinking. But somewhere deep inside, a quieter voice whispers the truth you don’t want to hear. It’s the sound of being slowly replaced, the slow unravelling of the thread that once tied you to someone’s heart. It’s like standing in a room you used to belong to and realizing that your pictures have been taken down, your laughter no longer echoes there.

You start to feel it everywhere in the pauses between messages, in the way conversations lose their warmth, in the silence that lingers a little too long. The fear doesn’t just hurt, it hollow outs something inside you. You begin to shrink, to make yourself smaller, as if disappearing first might hurt less than being erased. And yet, you can’t stop hoping that someone will turn around, see the empty space where you used to stand, and remember that you were once irreplaceable.

I’ve felt that fear like a ghost following me. It whispers when I see people laughing without me. It stirs when I scroll past pictures of the people I used to know the same smiles, the same inside jokes, just… without me there. And every time, it feels like losing a small part of myself, as if their world kept spinning and mine froze somewhere in the past.

The cruel part is that it’s not always anyone’s fault. People grow, and life keeps moving. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Because when you’ve given pieces of yourself to someone your time, your secrets, your laughter and suddenly realize they don’t need you anymore, it leaves a silence behind that’s hard to fill. You start to wonder what you did wrong, what you could have been that would have made them stay. And the answer never really comes.

The truth is, the fear of being replaced isn’t just about losing people. It’s about losing the version of yourself that existed with them. It’s about watching the mirror of who you were reflected in their eyes, their words, their love shatter. You can try to put the pieces back together, but they never fit the same way.

And yet, somehow, we keep loving. We keep showing up. We keep letting people in, even knowing they might leave, even knowing that one day someone else might take our place. Maybe that’s the most human thing about us our willingness to risk being forgotten just for the chance to be known.

Because sometimes, even if you are replaced, even if your name fades in someone else’s story, it doesn’t erase the chapters you were part of. You were there. You mattered. You changed something even if the world doesn’t remember it, even if they move on.

And maybe that’s enough.

I remember staring at my phone and actually laughing out loud. It sounded ridiculous like one of those over philosophized internet theories made to romanticize the most mundane bits of chaos in our lives. I even typed, “This is so stupidly deep for no reason,” with a laughing emoji. But behind that laugh, I felt this tiny flicker of curiosity, the kind that hums in your chest when something silly might secretly make sense.

I remember nodding along when they explained it, pretending I understood, but the idea stuck with me in a strange way. It’s been living rent free in my mind ever since. Because now I keep wondering what’s my Yellow Lays?

At first, I took it embarrassingly literally. I started listing foods in my head, a McFlurry on a random Tuesday, garlic bread that someone else orders “for the table,” or those shiny toffees that only seem to appear at relatives’ houses during the holidays. You know, the ones wrapped in crinkly paper that you’d never actually buy yourself but somehow always end up unwrapping anyway. For a while, I was convinced that was it my Yellow Lays was probably just sugar, carbs, and poor impulse control.

But the more I sat with the idea, the more it started to stretch, like a thought refusing to stay small. It couldn’t just be about food. There was something deeper in the way it lingered. Maybe the Yellow Lays theory wasn’t about literal cravings, but emotional ones the quiet, half embarrassed tendencies that live in the corners of who we are. The things we pretend we don’t care about, that we never go out of our way to seek, but that still make our pulse quicken when they unexpectedly show up.

It started to feel less like a snack metaphor and more like a mirror one of those annoying, truth telling ones that make you realize you’re not as self contained as you thought.

So I started thinking deeper.

Maybe just maybe my Yellow Lays is attention.

I keep telling myself I’m built for solitude, that I’m perfectly fine orbiting my own little world. I pride myself on being low maintenance, on not needing anyone to check in or ask how I’m doing. I even romanticize the idea of being “unbothered,” as if emotional independence were some badge of honor. But the truth slips out in smaller ways in how my heart lurches a little when my phone lights up with an unexpected text, or how I replay a simple “hey, how’s your day?” like it’s poetry.

When someone remembers something tiny I mentioned weeks ago, the name of a song I loved, or that I hate Idly it hits me like a quiet explosion. I melt. Completely. There’s something so intoxicating about being seen without asking to be, about someone noticing the invisible threads of you that most people walk right past.

I’d never admit it out loud. I hate feeling needy; the very idea makes me cringe. I’d rather pretend I’m above it, that I don’t need reassurance or recognition. But when attention comes uninvited gentle, unassuming, freely given, I drink it up like I’ve been starving for it. Maybe because I have.

And maybe that’s the thing about my Yellow Lays, I’ll never go out of my way to ask for it, but when it’s there, when it finds me in small, accidental ways, I can’t resist. It’s the emotional equivalent of a guilty pleasure something I’ll never confess to craving, but always, always take when it’s offered.

Or maybe it’s chaos. I swear I like stability, but I always end up saying yes to plans that derail my schedule, to conversations that keep me up too late, to people who make life feel a little too intense. I complain about the exhaustion later, but in the moment, it feels alive like something inside me wakes up.

Sometimes I wonder if my Yellow Lays is comfort. I won’t seek it out, I’ll push through bad days, keep quiet when I need help but when someone sits next to me and says nothing, when I get that rare evening where the world feels soft again, I don’t want it to end.

The more I think about it, the more my brain starts short circuiting. Like what is my Yellow Lays, really? Every time I think I’ve cracked the code, my personality does a full 180. Maybe your Yellow Lays isn’t one fixed thing at all maybe it’s a shapeshifter, a sneaky little chameleon that changes depending on who you are that week. One day it’s emotional attention, the next it’s 2 a.m. chaos, and by Friday it’s probably just bubble tea and bad decisions.

It’s exhausting. I feel like I’m starring in some philosophical rom-com directed by the universe me dramatically pacing around, whispering, “Who am I? What do I even want?” Maybe that’s the real Yellow Lays the pure confusion that exposes all the truths I didn’t know I was hiding. The part of me that wants to be mysterious and self aware, but is actually just a clown with an identity crisis and a bag of chips.

I found the whole Yellow Lays theory so ridiculously fascinating that it practically became my new personality trait for a week. I started bringing it up in every conversation like some self appointed philosopher of snack based psychology. I’d corner my friends mid lunch, mid rant, mid exam breakdown and go, “Wait, pause what do you think my Yellow Lays is?” I wanted to know how people saw me when I wasn’t performing as myself. Some said it was chaos (rude but fair), others said attention (ouch), and one person said sarcasm (which, honestly, might be the truest answer yet). But the more I asked, the funnier it got because everyone had an opinion, and somehow, they were all right. It became this weirdly intimate game, like holding up a mirror and letting other people tell you what reflections they see.

All I know is that I’ve started noticing these little moments more. The way my heart reacts before my brain does. The subtle, unplanned yeses I give to people, to conversations, to pieces of life that I didn’t think I wanted but always accept.

Maybe my Yellow Lays isn’t something I can name yet. Maybe it’s not even a thing. Maybe it’s the quiet curiosity of wanting to understand myself, this constant urge to peek into the corners of who I am and ask, why do I do that? why does this matter to me?

I don’t have an answer.
But maybe that’s okay.
Maybe the Yellow Lays theory isn’t about identifying one thing you always say yes to maybe it’s about realizing that you do say yes, even when you think you don’t.

And maybe, somewhere in those unplanned yeses, you meet yourself in the most honest way possible.