proof that I actually attended the wedding

Before I used to be able to watch this from a comfortable distance, more amused than disturbed, but this time I couldn’t. Being single at a wedding does something ugly to your objectivity, it takes the display and it makes it personal. I wasn’t just observing the opulence, but doing the math of it: the perfect dress, the perfect first dance, the perfect husband that exists but I haven’t met yet. I sat at the table completely forgetting of all the things I have at this age and contemplating on the relationship, the money and the car in the parking lot and none of it was rational but all of it was real.

It’s not just the people in the room. It’s not just the wedding. Social media can make the guest list infinite, right? You post something for the cousin of someone you see at the wedding, you’re thinking of a stranger on a yacht in the Maldives, someone whose name probably you don’t even know. Same performance, same audience logic, but scaled to everyone with a phone and internet connection.

So it got me thinking. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why is contentment always suspicious like leaving the stove on when you go out?

Psychologists have an accurate term for this: scarcity. We tend to assign more value to things the moment they seem limited or hard to get, not necessarily because they become more useful but because our brains associate hard to get as a shortcut for it must be good. It is the same wiring that makes limited stock make you want that ugly dress you didn’t want 30 minutes ago.

But scarcity alone doesn’t explain why we chase things like that and why it doesn’t really make us happy after we get it. Neuroscientists who study reward have found that wanting and liking run on two separate systems in our brains.

The wanting system is the one that makes you crave, refresh the page and check the product again. The liking system is what actually enjoys the thing once you have it. These two systems aren’t always in agreement. This is why you can desperately want something and after you get it you feel absolutely nothing. It is not a personal failing, it is how we are built.

And then there is the system that actually runs the whole operations which is less about chemistry and more about the fact that wanting was really never about the object. Pierre Bourdieu, a french sociologist, argues in Distinction that taste, what we want and what we find beautiful isn’t personal at all. It is rather positional. We are not chasing objects but we are chasing a place in a hierarchy and the object is just the scoreboard. The yacht isn’t about the yatch, it’s about a stanger somewhere having proof of a rank you don’t currently hold. Which means the moment you get the wedding, the yacth, or whatever is you’re chasing, the game doesn’t really end. It just quitely finds you a table where you are seated below.

I know the easy answer is to stop comparing because God knows I have tried many times. Sometimes it works but you cannot logic your way out of a system that isn’t running on logic. Your preferences in terms of the music you like, what food feels elevated, your hobbies and habits it is rather social conditioning. Desire and taste are viewed as instruments for social positioning, and they reproduce across an entire society, often shifting only in the moment something becomes accessible to more people.

So maybe being content with your life but not that content isn’t a flaw to fix.

Maybe it’s the tax we pay because we are social animals with functioning brain and maybe we should just accept it. I am not saying everyone is feeling this, obviously, this is also why we go to therapy: the accept our past, the understand our present and to feel more optimistic about the future.

Thank you for reading,

A

^{I am close to reaching 30 and I am writing about life and all its meaning through my eyes and my experiences. This is a vulnerable and intimate place for me and I hope it can get you to open up more. I write about grief, relationships, career, money and all in between. I hope you choose to stay. Thank you for being here. If it’s your first interaction with me and my articles, have a seat, we’re open.}

Be honest with me for a moment. I am aware I am not exactly a Substack authority, sitting here with my 100 subscribers and 7 posts. But I imagine every single one of you reading this article has seen at least one article this month “How I made 10k $ on Substack in one month?”, “How I grew to 100000 paid subscribers in 3 months?”, etc. - a screenshot of a dashboard, a strategy, financial plan and at the end of the page a small button with a course link, priced as if they are doing you a favor.

yours truly

How does this make you feel? Genuinely. I can tell you how it made me feel and I can only assume that I am not the only one, even if maybe we don’t say it out loud as much.

It made me feel I am not good enough.

What am I doing with my 100 subscribers and my 7 posts, while Susan is out there buying a house from selling-courses money? Substack is supposed to be this next big thing, no? Yet here I am, doing the thing I always did with internet, with crypto, with Tiktok, watching from the outside window into the store, arriving exactly at the closing hour, feeling the fomo (fear of missing out) but not reaching for the treasure. What am I doing so wrong? Teach me, master of all trades who writes posts like this for a living and sell the recipe for those who are hungry.

The recipe is always right there, isn’t it? We all know it:

• 4-5 note a day

• 1-2 articles per week

• build a community you talk to everyday

• private articles for paying subscriber

• get VIP subscriber

• etc.

It is all so achievable, so close you don’t even need talent or passion anymore, you just need ChatGPT or Claude. Feed it a prompt, get that essay, cash the check.

What I didn’t expect though is that it makes me feel both superior and inferior at the same time. I don’t want this article to shit talk those who actually sell these kind of courses but I feel we need to face the emotional facts.

I click on those articles because truth be told, yeah, I do want to know how much Susan made last month. I see it and then I immediately feel inferior. Why? She’s making money while I am doing it for free, while still doing it half-anonymously because I don’t even have the guts to face the music. So yes, she is way ahead of me.

But after I see the numbers and reading the content, I get it. I is vague. It is something in the shape of an essay but not quite there. No sentence is making me question something or feel something. The only thing is making me feel is envy, and it is a feeling I don’t want to embrace here or in my life anymore. That is the moment superiority kicks back in (hehe, at least I write my own words, at least I spend some time thinking what I am writing about my struggles at the moment and how can I help other feel less alone). I may not be able to help you be the next millionaire based on my courses but maybe that is not the point for me. I am better than Susan, right?

Isn’t it strange though? How I can feel two things at the same time, on top of each other, feeding of each other and leaving me with an empty feeling inside. This can only happen, I assume, when you’re standing at the exact intersection of wanting to be seen and refusing to perform to be seen. Yeah, maybe Susan optimized for reach and audience. At the same time I am optimizing for honesty and since that can’t be sold in a course, we are on different paths here.

But underneath all of this, a bigger and uglier question keep popping up in my head:

Are we (the ones writing think-opinion-pieces about Substack monetization at 11pm, feeling smug about our authenticity) any better than those battling in comment on Facebook with people they don’t know?

From a distance, it might look the same. Two camps, human writers versus AI-assisted one, each convinced they hold the moral standard, each a little right. I fear we’re entering an era where this has no end, it just moves platforms. Tiktok yesterday. Substack today. Something else tomorrow.

I don’t have a clear answer. But what I do know is that I have some posts, I have some subscribers, I even talk to 2 people from Substack, so in the end at least 2 people read and related to something I wrote. No formula, to VIP subscribers, no courses. And maybe this is something you can’t fake or buy.

So if you came here looking for the recipe, I am sorry you lost 5 minutes of your life. If you came here because maybe at least once in your life you felt it to, than I think you already know that it is not just you and maybe slower is better.

Love,

A.

* Susan doesn’t really exist. She was created for this article.

* I have a job so the situation is not as dramatic as it may seem in this article :))

All this searching and running towards exterior validation and recognition can get you so far. What really matters is pretty simple: the relationships we built in this life, people who love you and you love them back. Morrie says in the book more than once - at the end of our lives this is what we will remember, not the recognition but the people, the love and the emotions.

It’s quite obvious, this book got me all emotional and made me think that I miss having real conversation with honest-raw-real people. People who inspire you, kind and compassionate people.

So today I did the thing that happen when a feeling is just too big to just sit with it, I started thinking and writing and turned it into a list. While most of the days we are so focused on the red flags in people, today I decided to go for the opposite. We are able to spot the avoidant and anxious attachment really easily, we are masters in decoding what four hours without a reply means. So I sat down and made a list of all the green flags I could see in a person and I admire the most.

For example, watch how someone treats a cleaner, a waiter or an intern, not how they treat their boss. Respect for me is real information. Next to it is something much simpler but hard to do it at times: say thank you, not as something forced, but as a reflex, because it means you notice when somone does something for you, regardless how small it is.

Then there is the harder stuff. Being financially literate, for me it is a green flag. Someone how understands how their own money works, instead of avoiding the subject. Being mature enough to apologize and mean it, without turning it into a performance that ends up with you comforting them about it. Teaching other people in a humble way instead of flashing it and bragging, that is the difference between somone who wants to teach you something and someone who wants you to know they know better.

And then are the quiet stuff, the once you can barely see or describe. Being able to read the room. Being comfortable in silence instead of feeling the need to say something just because you can’t stand the quietness. Being on time is another green flag that makes me feel that my time is just as important as theirs. Loyalty is another one and it makes me feel it can be harder to find it these days. Being a good listener, you know, when someone is actually present and involved in the conversation rather than just waiting for their turn to say something (this is also something Morrie outlines in the book)

For me, non of these make a perfect bio. They are not niche traits, not that impressive but they are the exact kind of thing Morrie spent his last months trying to emphasize.

Love each other of perish. Not impress each other. Love.

I am not saying red flags should be ignored, usually our instinct pushes us towards them. But I would like to be just as fluent in green flags. The people who are comfortable in silence. The people who make you feel you don’t need to perform. Those who you can build a life with.

If nothing sticks with you from this article, remember just this:

1. How someone treats other people who can’t do much for them is the real test. Respecting someone’s status isn’t about manners, it is a clear sign of character.

2. We are fluent in red flags and illiterate in green one. It is often easier to spot the narcissist rather than the empath, but good behaviour is out there, just make room to observe it.

3. A good apology is not just an admission, it is a maturity test when you truly mean it.

4. Be comfortable in silence and you will find peace. We don’t always have to reward those who fill the space.

5. Kindness, loyalty and being an active listener aren’t traits that make the headlights but they are the only ones that people actually remember you for.

6. Exterior validation and real relationships are not the same currency. One runs out at the end when you are considered expired for society, the other is what you are left with at the end.

Love,

A.

_{I am close to reaching 30 and I am writing about life and all its meaning through my eyes and my experiences. This is a vulnerable and intimate place for me and I hope it can get you to open up more. I write about grief, relationships, career, money and all in between. I hope you choose to stay. Thank you for being here. If it’s your first interaction with me and my articles, take a seat, we’re open.}

The first time I saw a therapist was sometime between 2017 and 2018, not long after my mom passed away. The exact day is a bit blurred considering I have more recollection of the hospital hallways than the day I sat across from a therapist for the first time. To be fully transparent, it was my friends who pushed me into this, at first very subtly, then not to subtle until they just forced me to go see someone because it was quite obvious I wan’t gonna do it myself.

I didn’t have much money at the time, I was still a student and let’s just say I barely had money to make it through the month and therapy was definitely not on my budget, so you can imagine I didn’t go for the best of the best. I met a very well-intentioned lady who tried to help me but had no idea I was a master at performing for others rather than facing my own demons. I was so used to deflecting my whole life that therapy at that point did not work for me but it surely showed me how survival skills easily get mistaken for healing steps, which I fully processed years later.

Fast forward, I came back to therapy in 2020, not because of the pandemic or because the grief had been too much to handle but because I was in a relationship that made me question everything about myself and made me feel like I was the architect of its own failure. I did therapy online, hiding from everyone and feeling ashamed that I couldn’t deal with my emotions on my own. Eventually, I managed to drag myself out of that toxic relationship but I left with more questions that I had answers for:

Why did I end up in a toxic relationship?

Why do I choose specific partners?

Why do I believe I am not enough and why do I have to fight for everything?

For me therapy was like a disease. I go for a check up, I follow a certain treatment and I am healed, right? I was supposed to get fixed and move on with my life. The thing is you don’t do it once and stop, you just have to keep going. Now I see it as an ongoing practice, not a cure for something and if you are fortunate enough to afford it, I think it might help you more that you realise.

In 2020, I started CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) which was great at the time. A lot of frameworks and techniques meant to help you lead a normal life. But last year, in 2025, I moved into psychoanalyses, let’s say - by mistake. At that point, I felt my circle with my last therapist was closing, she considered I had healed from the trauma of guilt and my parents dynamic and we should “online-meet” less often.

Psychoanalysis is not for the faint hearted, it is very disturbing and yes, it really is like in the movies. You sit on a couch, the therapist is behind you and you talk more or nothing at all. It was also the first time I was doing therapy in person, and let me tell you, it is different and way more harsh. Lying back on a couch, long silences and uncomfortable truths that sometimes make the room feel gigantic. Mentally and emotionally it is more demanding but it healed something in me in a way that CBT never managed to touch.

For a long time I struggled with memory loss, partly because of the grief, partly because of my childhood and being always in fear or flight mode. Weirdly, psychoanalysis had been the only thing that gave me back those pieces of memory back to me, fragments from my first years of life that I thought, at first, were simply gone for good.

I then learned to listen to my own voice and to trust my intuition that often know earlier than my critical thinking what I should or shouldn’t do. Don’t get me wrong, critical thinking is still there, you shouldn’t jump off a bridge because your friends are, that kind of thinking. But I spent years trying to suppress that inner feeling, that older knowledge inside me. Learning to hear it again and listen to it changed how I moved through the world.

I learned to be okay on my own, to sit in silence and make peace with that. For most of my life I had surrounded myself with people no because I truly enjoyed it but because I was too uncomfortable in my own presence.

I learned to set realistic expectations for myself instead of holding myself accountable at the highest standard. The critic inside of me is most likely not satisfied with this change but I am learning to let her be unsatisfied and no letting her run the room for me.

I also learned I am not ready for the relationship I want to be in if I am not willing to become the person capable of holding it. I know it sounds like a cliche, maybe it is, but it also happens to be true. I still struggle with it, it doesn’t come easy but I truly trust that it will pay off in the end.

Most of all, I learned to love myself, not in a complete way but I have come a long was from hating myself to learning to tolerate and accept myself, to then liking certain things about myself to somehow loving myself most of the days.

If you can do it and have the means, I truly recommend therapy. If not, try journaling, try talking to people you know and trust and most importantly, don’t hold it all in. Don’t let that inner critic take over.

Love,

A.

As you might know, I am close to reaching 30 and I am writing about life and all its meaning through my eyes and my experiences. This is a vulnerable and intimate place for me and I hope it can get you to open up more. I write about grief, relationship, career, money and all in between. I hope you choose to stay. Thank you for being here. If it’s your first interaction with me and my articles, take a seat, we’re open.

Take dinner time. For a Spanish friend, 9:30pm is a perfectly reasonable hour to sit down and eat. Spanish people, I see you, and I respect the commitment. For a Danish friend, dinner happens while the sun is still very much up, because apparently efficiency doesn’t stop at the office door. And when I was sitting down with my Italian friends at what felt like the tail end of the night, I got genuinely irritated. Why is this so late? I won’t be able to sleep. Bla bla bla, main character energy, party of one.

Because that’s really what it is, isn’t it? My normal should be everyone’s normal. It seems so reasonable from the inside. My truth is clearly the correct one, and everyone else is just running on a slightly buggy version of common sense. We do this constantly — we spend an enormous amount of energy trying to convince other people that our way is the way, when in reality it’s just the way we happen to know.

I do the exact same thing in a completely different corner of my life, just with less charm and more judgment.

I used to envy people who were comfortable being on their own. When I was younger, I quietly judged anyone eating alone at a restaurant, or nursing a drink solo at the bar, like they were missing a plus-one they’d forgotten to invite. Fast forward to now: I’m writing this from a poolside chair, completely alone, because nobody in my circle could make the trip. On the way here I was low-key anxious about it — scared I’d be the one person in the whole place with no one next to them, like that was a visible flaw people could clock from across the pool.

Turns out it was bullshit, pardon my french. It’s not bad at all. I get to write. I get to work. I get to actually decompress instead of performing relaxation for an audience. Working from home has its perks, sure, but it also has a very specific downside: you can slowly turn into a hermit without ever noticing the door closing. So I decided I’m changing that, even if changing it starts with a table for one.

Here’s the part that connects both of these: dinner schedules and solo pool chairs aren’t really about dinner or pools. They’re about how quickly we mistake “what I’m used to” for “what is correct.” We inherit a normal from our culture, our family, our own comfort zones and then quietly spend years defending it like it’s a fact instead of a habit.

Why your normal isn’t the objective normal?

Your schedule is cultural, not universal. Dinner at 6 or dinner at 10 isn’t right or wrong, it’s just what your corner of the world decided decades before you were born.

Discomfort with someone else’s normal is usually about you, not them. The Italian dinner didn’t ruin my sleep, my rigid idea of correct bedtime did.

Judging people for being alone says more about your own fear of it. I wasn’t disgusted by strangers eating solo, I was scared of becoming one, which is a very different thing dressed up as opinion.

Comfort with solitude is a skill, not a personality trait. Nobody is just naturally fine being alone, they practiced it, often uncomfortably, exactly like I’m doing right now.

The people who seem the most “different” from you are just operating on their own normal. Which means the gap you feel isn’t a red flag, it’s just two default settings meeting for the first time.

Thanks for reading! If this one hit close to home, I’d love for you to subscribe.

Then consciousness arrived, as it does, uninvited.

My dad started telling me not to be messy like my mom. My mom started telling me not to be angry like my dad. And somewhere in there, everyone else’s opinion of me started to matter more than my own experience of myself. Which is sad, when you actually sit with it. Two people who were supposed to raise a confident young woman ended up, without meaning to, raising someone whose main instruction was: don’t be like the other one. Not “be yourself.” Be neither of them.

I don’t think they did this on purpose. I don’t think most parents do. But a kid doesn’t need cruelty to absorb a warning — she just needs to hear it enough times, from the two people whose opinion she has no way of questioning yet.

I’ll admit the ending isn’t all bad. Being a type A adult comes in handy, especially now, single, living a life where everything runs through me and only me. I keep track of the bills, the appointments, the small logistics of a whole existence, because there’s no one else keeping the second list. Some days that feels like competence. Other days it just feels exhausting, like I’m running a household of one at the staffing level of two.

But I try not to forget that this isn’t just who I turned out to be. It’s who I became.

Because here’s the part nobody puts on the motivational poster: becoming type A usually means you were missing something when you were younger. Not always in some dramatic, capital-T Trauma way — sometimes just a quieter kind of missing, the kind where nobody was reliably catching things for you, so you learned to catch them yourself. Type A isn’t really about ambition. It’s about control. And you don’t get obsessed with control unless, at some point, you didn’t have enough of it — or enough help, or enough stability, or enough of someone else doing the worrying so you didn’t have to.

I don’t want to turn this into a full psychological excavation. I don’t think I need to know the exact shape of what was missing to know that something was. That’s usually what it means, when a person who once lost her keys monthly turns into a person who double-checks the lock from the car.

What I keep coming back to is this: the version of me who lost everything and didn’t care was not a worse person than the one who tracks everything now. She wasn’t more free, either — just less aware. I don’t think there’s a way to go back to her without going back to not knowing what I know. And I wouldn’t, actually, even if I could.

So I’m trying to hold both at once. The woman who needs to be in control because no one else is going to run this life for her. And the girl who used to lose her house key and still made it home fine, because somebody always let her in.

writing from my backyard is my fav writing spot

Be kind to yourself, A.

Sure, we all think that — but in reality we are more similar than we want to be. Nowadays it’s so important to differentiate from the crowd, to be in your own bubble, to have your own niche, to specialize in something so particular you can’t even explain what you do at your job. But why is it so important now to be something else than the rest?

The answer is simple. We can’t stand the mediocrity.

We grew up being told we were the special ones. Every generation gets told that, I know, but mine got told it in HD, with a participation trophy in one hand and a Myspace profile in the other. And now we’re in our 30s and the math isn’t mathing. Not everyone can be the exception. Statistically, most of us are the rule.

I noticed it first in the way people describe their jobs. Nobody is “in marketing” anymore. They’re a “brand storyteller.” Nobody just cooks — they’re “reimagining Eastern European comfort food through modern lens.” (*check the screenshots down below*) I do this too, if I’m honest. I’ve caught myself dressing up a normal Tuesday like it was a personality. It’s not a moral failing, it’s just what happens when being ordinary starts to feel like a diagnosis instead of a description. If you don’t believe, check the Linkedin feed and you’ll be convinced.

Ex1:

Ex2:

Ex3:

Somewhere along the way, average became a slur. Nobody wants to be the person who just does the job well, goes home, and lives a decent, unremarkable life. We want the plot twist. The niche. The bio that makes a stranger stop scrolling. And I understand the impulse — I started this Substack anonymously because some small part of me wanted proof that I was more than the job title on my LinkedIn and I was interesting. But wanting to be different and needing to be different are not the same hunger, and I think most of us have quietly confused the two.

Here’s the part nobody puts in their bio: most interesting people had extremely uninteresting decades before anyone noticed them. The specialness, if it comes at all, comes after years of being unremarkable in a room, doing the unglamorous version of the thing, long before it had a niche or a name. We just don’t see that part. We see the highlight reel and assume it was always a highlight.

I think what we’re actually afraid of isn’t being average. It’s being forgettable. Those aren’t the same thing, but anxiety doesn’t know the difference. You can be perfectly average and still be someone’s favorite person to sit next to at dinner. You can have a completely normal job and still be the one people call when something falls apart. Being unremarkable to a stranger on the internet and being unremarkable to the people who actually know you are two entirely different verdicts, and only one of them matters.

So maybe the relief isn’t in becoming exceptional. Maybe it’s in putting the measuring tape down. Not because average is some hidden virtue we should aspire to, but because most of a life — the good parts included — is built out of ordinary days that never needed a niche to justify them.

I’m not particularly cool. I don’t have a thing, not really, not the kind you can put in a headline. And for the first time in a long time, I said that sentence and didn’t feel the need to apologize for it.

some fireworks for the last part

Why it’s okay to be normal and average

• Average is just math, not a flaw. Most people are, by definition, near the middle of the curve. If everyone were exceptional, the word would stop meaning anything.

• Comparing your real life to someone’s highlight reel is a rigged game. You’re measuring your unedited footage against their trailer. The gap will always feel like failure, even when nothing is actually wrong.

• Being interesting to strangers is a second, invisible job. It’s not enough to do the thing anymore — now you have to narrate the thing as unique. That’s extra work layered on top of just living.

• The “everyone needs a niche” pressure is recent, not natural. For most of history, being a steady, reliable presence in a family or community was the goal. The personal-brand mandate is basically a product of the last couple of social-media decades.

• The people who actually love you aren’t scoring you against strangers. They love you for small, specific, repeated things — how you show up, what you notice. None of that requires a niche or a headline.

• Consistency is rarer than a flashy differentiator. Teams, families, and communities run on people who reliably show up over years, not on one impressive burst of “different.”

• Needing to be exceptional makes your self-worth conditional. If your value depends on being the exception, you’re always one bad quarter away from feeling like you don’t matter.

• Most of what makes life good isn’t rankable at all. A good meal, a real conversation, a quiet afternoon — none of it sits on a spectrum from average to exceptional. Grading it that way is just the wrong instrument.

• The chase for uniqueness is oddly conformist. Everyone is trying to be distinctive in the exact same handful of ways — the same career pivots, the same “reimagining X” language. The pursuit of difference has become one of the most homogeneous behaviors around.

For most of human history, comparison had a radius. You measured your life against the people who shared your street, your school, your small town — people whose actual circumstances you could see, whose struggles you knew because you’d watched them happen. I’m part of the last generation that grew up inside that radius. At 18, when I wanted Forbes 30 Under 30 and a marriage I’d stay in love with for life. Social media wasn’t yet the water we all swam in. My comparisons, however unrealistic, were still at least tethered to people I actually knew or news I actually read and was interested in.

By 25, the radius had disappeared entirely. Now I wanted the friends, the money, the family, the opulence — everything, all at once — and the yardstick for “everything” was no longer my neighbour or my classmate. It was a stranger on another continent, living a life I knew nothing about except the 30 seconds of it she chose to show me in an Instagram post. We’d traded a comparison group we understood for one we couldn’t possibly understand, and somehow convinced ourselves the trade was progress.

Prove your worth. Do something. Do something big.

That was the script underneath both ages, the one I absorbed before I even knew I was reading it. A big house. Three kids, a perfect body, a perfect husband, seven vacations a year. Not a life so much as a highlight reel, assembled from other people’s edited best moments and mistaken for a blueprint.

I believed all of it was not just possible but expected. Success had a shape, and if I worked hard enough, I’d eventually pour myself into it like water into a mold. I didn’t question the mold. I just assumed it was mine to fill.

The mold never filled in the way I’d pictured, and everyone who seemed further along became a small, private ache. Jealousy doesn’t announce itself as jealousy at first — it shows up as scrolling a little too long on someone’s engagement post, or feeling strangely hollow after a friend’s promotion, even while you’re genuinely happy for them. It’s an odd kind of grief: mourning a life you never actually lived, just imagined for yourself. By 25, I had enough distance from 19 to see the gap between the script and my actual life, but not enough distance yet to question whether the script was ever worth following.

Something shifts closer to 30. Not all at once, and not completely — I want to be honest about that, because tidy transformation narratives are their own kind of lie. The jealousy doesn’t vanish. I still notice other people’s grass. But the metric quietly changes. Health starts to feel like wealth in a way it never did at 19, when I assumed my body would just cooperate indefinitely. True love from the friends who’ve actually stayed — not the wide, glittering network but the small, tested circle — starts to matter more than any number of “great friends” on a highlight reel. Time in nature stops being a wellness cliché and starts being something my nervous system actually needs. Having my own space, cooking food that’s actually good for me, having unstructured time to just relax without producing anything — these things move from background noise to the actual substance of a good life.

What’s happening, I think, is a slow trade: I’m swapping a life measured by how it looks from the outside for one measured by how it feels from the inside. Those are genuinely different currencies, and for most of my twenties I was only trading in the first one.

I don’t think this is about becoming less ambitious or pretending I’ve transcended comparison. I still want things. I still notice when someone else seems to have gotten there faster, easier, sooner. But wanting something and needing to win a race against everyone else’s version of it are two different postures, and I’ve started to feel the difference in my body — one is expansive, the other is depleting.

I don’t care how green your grass is. I’m busy watering my own, not because I’ve stopped looking over the fence entirely, but because I’ve finally noticed that the only garden I actually have the power to tend is mine.

my actual grass at home

straight from my backyard

A little context first. My mom was the main provider in my family, or at least she was mine. I come from a family and honestly from a part of the world, where money was never just money. It was a subject for anger, for shame, for whispered arguments behind closed doors. If you grew up in Eastern Europe, you probably know what I mean without me having to spell it out: that low hum of financial anxiety that sits under an entire household, the sense that stability is something other people have, not something you’re entitled to. I grew up very aware of what it meant to carry debt, of failed businesses and to not know what the next day would bring. Money wasn’t an abstract concept to me. It was survival, and survival was never guaranteed.

I promised myself as a kid that I would never take a loan from a bank. That promise felt like the one solid thing I could control in a house where nothing else felt solid.

Then my mom died when I was 20.

I don’t think people who haven’t lived it understand what that actually does to you, especially at that age, especially with that background. Twenty is this strange in-between: old enough that everyone assumes you should be able to handle yourself, young enough that you still desperately need someone to catch you if you fall. I was fresh in college, I’d just moved to a different city, and suddenly the one person who had held everything together was gone. There’s a very specific kind of disorientation that comes with that: you’re grieving, but you’re also filling out forms, and figuring out rent, and realizing there is no longer a single human being on this earth whose job it is to take care of you. You become your own parent overnight, without any training for the role.

Add the Eastern European mindset on top of that, and it gets heavier. In a lot of Eastern European families, showing vulnerability isn’t really encouraged. You’re taught to push through, to not make a scene of your suffering, because everyone around you is struggling too and complaining feels like a luxury you haven’t earned. So I didn’t just lose my mother. I lost her in a cultural context that didn’t really leave room for me to fall apart afterward. I was just supposed to keep going.And I couldn’t lean on my father. Let’s just say he wasn’t a reliable source, financially or otherwise.

I had some scholarship money. Extended family sent me a little here and there, out of love, but also inconsistently, the way help often is when it’s not anyone’s actual responsibility to give it. So I existed at everyone’s mercy. I hated every second of it. There’s a particular humiliation in adulthood that comes from needing to ask, especially when you were raised to believe that needing anything from anyone was a weakness.

My first job paid me the equivalent of 500 dollars per month. I had to cover rent, food, everything in between, out of that. Somehow I made it work. But it left scars, the kind that don’t show up right away, they show up later, in how you behave around money for the rest of your life.

Fast forward, I was 27, and I bought my first apartment (if you understand the post-communist countries syndrome of being the owner of a property). I’d saved for it, extended family helped again, and I finally got there. I remember coming back from the notary’s office, documents in hand, standing in the metro station, and I started crying. Spoiler alert: not tears of joy. I felt like a kid who had just made an enormous, adult decision and had absolutely no idea if she was ready for it. Because how could I be? Nobody had walked me through this. I was improvising a life milestone that, in a lot of families, you get to lean on a parent for.

first day spent in my apartment

And to buy it, I had to do the one thing I swore I’d never do: take out a bank loan.

It messed with something deeper than my finances. It messed with what my word meant to me, which, in that moment, felt like nothing. I know it’s fine to change your mind about things. But this wasn’t a preference I’d changed, it was a promise I’d made to a version of myself who had watched debt destroy peace of mind in her own home. Breaking it felt like betraying her. It was hard to sit with, and it’s around then that I started becoming genuinely obsessed with money.

Years later, in therapy, I finally understood why. I associate money with stability, and stability, for me, is my mother. She’s the one who gave me that feeling for as long as I had her. So when money feels tight now, I don’t just feel inconvenienced. I panic. I lose sleep. It’s not really about the number in my account; it’s about a much older fear that the person who kept my world steady could disappear, and did.

I know there are people out there who have it far worse than I do, genuinely, I know that, and I catch myself feeling guilty for even bringing this up as often as I do. But it’s woven into who I am in a way I haven’t figured out how to undo yet.

I always want more, not to spend on things I want, but to build a safety net for whatever might happen next. Spoiler alert, again: no amount of saved money is ever enough to fully protect you from whatever might happen next. Unless you’re a millionaire, maybe. And even then, I’m not so sure.

I used to think the goal was to reach a number where the fear would finally switch off. I don’t think that number exists. What I’ve come to understand instead is that I’m not actually chasing security, I’m chasing a feeling my mother gave me without even trying, just by being there. No amount in a savings account can replicate that, because it was never a financial feeling to begin with, it was a human one.

I’m still working on separating the two. Some days I manage it, some days I don’t. But naming it, out loud, in therapy and now here, has made the panic a little quieter. Maybe that’s the most honest answer I can give to the question I get asked so often: I’m not obsessed with money. I’m obsessed with never again feeling as unprotected as I did at twenty years old. Money just happens to be the language I learned to express that fear in.

Because here’s what I’ve come to understand: love is where I feel most alive.

It takes so many forms, love does. It doesn’t always arrive with candlelight and declarations. The love I’ve known has come in much quieter ways and it has been, without question, the most defining force in my life.

I love my mom, even though she is not here with me anymore. That love doesn’t go anywhere just because a person does. It settles in the chest, a permanent warmth that no loss can fully extinguish. As I was writing this article, I found probably the last photo I have of me and my mom. Even though it used to hurt so much to see it for many years, now I am grateful I can look at it.

I love my first boyfriend for staying beside me for more than six years, even during the stretches when I wasn’t worthy of it. That kind of loyalty - patient, unglamorous, real - deserves to be named. It deserves to be honored even though he is not in my life anymore.

I love my best friends, who stood by me through everything, every version of me, even the ones I’m not proud of. I love my family, too, even when, especially when, it’s difficult. Maybe loving through difficulty is the truest kind of love there is.

The love we carry from our past, the so-called lost love, is so often dismissed as naive. Childish, people say. But I think they’re wrong. Those early loves were the purest, most concentrated version of the feeling. We gave them everything, with no calculation, no exit strategy. That’s not immaturity. That’s courage.

Something has shifted, though, and I feel it more with every passing year.

Modern love — the real, lived, present-tense kind — has become harder. It has become something we approach like a job interview we’re terrified of failing. I catch myself doing it: composing mental briefs on men I haven’t even met yet, running silent risk assessments on first dates, cataloguing what’s missing before I’ve noticed what’s there. We’ve turned partnership into a performance review.

As we grow older, we require more certainty before we allow ourselves to feel anything at all. I have sat across from perfectly lovely men and spent the entire dinner not present, but auditing, tallying up reasons this won’t work, preemptively grieving a thing that hasn’t even started. We need to know before we’ve even held hands whether this could be the last one.

And when it isn’t, when it ends, we don’t call it life. We call it failure.

I notice it in myself, and it unsettles me.

In my twenties, I loved freely. Recklessly, maybe, but freely. Now, single and quietly terrified of ending up alone, I catch myself thinking strategically. I need a good partner. A stable one. Someone reliable. Someone who makes sense. And I wonder sometimes if I’ve grown wise or if I’ve simply grown afraid.

I don’t want to give up on the childish feeling. Or the butterflies. Or the dizzy, disorienting joy of genuinely wanting someone. But I feel the pressure to trade it in, to exchange the feeling for something safer and more sensible.

I’m not ready to do that.

There is one more thing I keep coming back to, and it has to do with butterflies.

Psychology has recently taken to telling us that butterflies are perhaps a feeling of anxiety. That the racing heart, the giddy nervousness, the way your stomach drops when someone walks into a room, it’s all just your nervous system misfiring. A trauma response. A red flag in disguise.

I don’t believe that.

Butterflies are nerves, yes. But they are the nerves of a person who is genuinely showing up for something. They are the physical sensation of putting yourself — your whole, unguarded self — on a platter for another human being and saying: here I am, I hope you’ll be careful with me. That vulnerability, that terrifying openness, is not a malfunction. It’s the whole point.

It is pure. It has always been pure.

And so I keep coming back to this: I love love. Not the curated version, not the strategic checklist version, not the version that has already accounted for every possible ending before the beginning has even begun. I love the real, uncertain, full-bodied, slightly terrifying version of it.

Even now. Especially now.

1. Look at the light between the curtains.

I did it this morning and it instantly transported me to childhood when I could do this every day.

2. Look at the rain drops on your window

Remember summer rain? Those days where it is pouring rain and you’re inside just loving it.

3. Goo Goo Dolls - Iris live.

Whenever I want to feel life deeply I listen to this version of Iris. Highly recommend.

4. Cuddle up with a pet

In case you’re in need of love, animals are always there for you unconditionally. If you have one, you are lucky. If not, there are a lot of stray animals who could use all the love, or maybe you have a friend who can share it.

5. Read outside

I always find comfort in being in nature and just admiring life while reading my fav book.

6. Walk bare feet in the grass

There's something grounding about feeling the earth beneath your feet. It takes you back to being a kid without shoes in the backyard, not a care in the world. Try it even for just five minutes.

7. Spend time with a kid for a while

Kids haven't learned to overthink things yet. Spend an afternoon with one and you'll be reminded what it feels like to be fully in the moment, laughing at nothing, curious about everything.

8. Buy some flowers/plants for your home

Something living in your home changes the energy of a space. You don't need to be a plant person, just one pot on the windowsill does it. It makes home feel more like a home.

9. Bake something - love the smell

I know it works better during rainy or colder days but who can say no to a pie? For me it screams cosy vibes and the idea of home. I remember when I was a kid and the whole kitchen smelled like apple pie. Still my favorite.

10. Deep cleaning - makes me feel I got my shit together all the time

It’s always been therapy for me. Whenever my mind feels full, I need to clean it starting with the outside world.

11. Call someone you love and just chit chat

Not to catch up on anything important. Just the kind of call where you end up talking for an hour about nothing and everything. Those are the conversations that remind you that you're loved.

12. Be nostalgic - look through some old photos and give yourself some grace

This is more common for millennials. We have a lot of analog photos sitting in a drawer. Make use of them, visit your inner child. You might find out he/she was a happy kiddo.

13. Write in a journal

Another form of therapy. It is difficult being consistent but it helps with your thoughts. Advice: get a bullet journal, for me it has been easier. Just some random words thrown there can make your mind at peace.

14. Paint or draw

When you get older it gets more difficult to get in touch with your creativity, hence my substack page. I felt the need to do things that made me happy when I was young. Painting is one of them even though I consider myself a not-talented-person. Who cares?

15. Call your mom

This hits hard for me and it comes from a place where I lost a parent. Trust me, do it now so you don’t regret it later. There are days when the only person I would want to talk to is my mom and I can’t anymore.

16. Watch a very good comedy

When was the last time you laughed at a comedy? I missed that so recently I decided to watch Borat! - highly recommend if you haven’t seen it yet.

17. Go alone to a museum

I did that a month ago and it was very fulfilling. Admiring art alone hits differently. No one is there to rush you or interfere with comments. We need that from time to time.

18. Put your headphones on and dance in front of the mirror

My fav hobby. It makes me daydream a lot and feel good about my inner world.

19. Daydream

We're told to always be productive and present, but daydreaming is where some of the best things live. Let your mind wander without guilt. It's not wasted time, it's how we make sense of what we want.

20. Sing in the car

Full volume, solo concert, no shame. Doesn't matter if you can carry a tune. This is just for you and the open road. Pure joy.

21. Make yourself a cocktail/mocktail

Put on some good music, pick a recipe, and make something just for you. The ritual of it is the point, choosing the glass, the garnish, the whole thing. A small act of taking care of yourself.

22. Put on your favorite outfit and stare in the mirror

The one that makes you feel like yourself. Stand there for a minute and actually notice. Not to be critical, just to see yourself as you are. It does something for your confidence that's hard to explain.

23. Look at trees

Not just glancing at them but really look. The way light comes through the leaves, the way a whole tree moves in the wind like one living thing. It's a good reminder that the world is bigger and quieter than your thoughts.

24. People watching

Find a café, a park bench, a train station, anywhere people pass through. Just watch. Everyone has a whole world going on inside them. It makes you feel more connected to life somehow.

25. Light up a candle in the evening and make yourself a cup of tea

This is the ultimate reset. A lit candle, a hot cup of tea, the evening slowing down. Put your phone away and just be there for a while.

26. Fresh sheets after an everything shower

The combination of a long shower and fresh sheets is honestly one of life's small luxuries. Everything shower: hair, nails, skin, the full reset. Then you slide into bed feeling like a completely new person. Absolute bliss.

27. Summer salad: sunflower oil, tomatoes, fresh onion, cucumber, apple cider vinegar, salt. trust me, you will thank me later, only in the summer.

28. a night out with your friends

Not a dinner, not a coffee, a proper night out where you laugh too loud and stay out too late. We forget how much we need this until we're actually in it.

29. a hug from your fav persons

A proper hug from someone who really gets you. The kind where you both hold on a little longer than usual. There's nothing that fixes things quite like that.

30. seeing the sea for the first time

That feeling when you catch your first glimpse of the sea, the horizon stretching endlessly, the salt in the air, something in your chest just opening up. It never gets old. If anything, it hits harder the older you get.

I would love to know what else reminds you of who you are. We can all learn from this. :)

* taken from the wonders of the internet

There’s a particular kind of self-consciousness that gets baked into you when you grow up in a culture where showing off is considered bad taste, and where admitting you want something, really want it, is somehow seen as naive. You learn early to keep your ambitions quiet. To be cautious. To wait until you’re sure before you move. The problem is, you’re never sure.

The fear of failure and embarrassment always comes first. I’m too afraid to be exposed - not just to criticism, but to the possibility that I try and it doesn’t work, and everyone who ever doubted me gets to feel right. That’s a specific kind of dread. It’s not about the failure itself. It’s about the audience.

That’s probably why I could never be an influencer. We live in an era of fast, easy money, or at least that’s how it looks from the outside. And when you come from a background where you had to fight harder for everything your whole life, watching people seemingly coast on charm and confidence doesn’t motivate you. It makes you suspicious. It makes you think twice before putting yourself out there, because you know how much it costs when things don’t work out, and you’re not sure you can afford to lose again.

I always feel like I have a lot of thoughts, a lot of insights. My life hasn’t always been easy, and somewhere in all of it I’ve accumulated things worth saying. But it’s difficult to expose the ideas that live in the back of your mind, the deepest ones, the ones you haven’t stress-tested yet. The ones that might be wrong. Sometimes I’m scared someone will recognize me behind this account and judge me for it. Laugh that I have no talent. That I have no idea what I’m doing.

I’m a perfectionist, so nothing is ever truly “done” for me. Every piece of writing feels like it could be sharper, every idea like it needs one more layer. I feel like I have to work twice as hard to get half the results, and the painful part is that I know this is partly self-imposed. Some people are lucky. Some people just have it in them, an ease, a confidence, a willingness to publish something imperfect and move on. I don’t consider myself one of them. I’ve always had to earn it the slow way, which means I’m also always tempted to wait until it’s ready. And it’s never ready.

When you’re raised on the idea of lacking, money, status, the “ideal life” in your head, you become too cautious about how you act. Every decision gets filtered through a layer of risk assessment. Will this work out? What if it doesn’t? What do I have to fall back on? I think that’s exactly why I had to force myself to start this, and why I have to keep forcing myself to be consistent. Because left to my natural instincts, I’d keep preparing forever and never actually begin.

When you’re chasing fast results and they don’t show up, it’s easy to quit. Trust me — I’ve quit a lot in my life. Not out of laziness, but out of shame. I started a podcast and stopped once people close to me found out it was me. I had a TikTok account and did the same. The people closest to you find out, and they laugh first. Not always cruelly, sometimes it’s just surprise or a teasing comment, but it lands like mockery when you’re already fragile about it. I couldn’t stand that. I know you’re not supposed to care. I know the advice is to ignore it and keep going. But for some of us, it’s harder than for others. We weren’t taught to brush it off. We were taught that other people’s opinions were information, not just noise.

So I’m trying something different this time. I’m not telling anyone. No announcement, no sharing the link, no asking friends to subscribe. Just writing, and putting it out into the quiet.

This account is zero followers, zero network. No algorithm backing it, no existing audience, no one waiting for the next post. Just the act of going out there. And maybe that’s the whole point, to prove to myself that I can do something without needing permission or an audience first. To do it before I’m ready, before it’s perfect, before anyone is watching.

If you’re sitting on something you’ve been too afraid to start: this is your sign. Not because it’ll be easy. Not because people won’t laugh. But because the cost of not trying is quietly higher than you think, and one day you’ll want to have something to look back on, proof that you showed up, even when you were scared.

If you resonate with what I write and enjoy it, I would love for you to be the one that changes my title from 0 to 1. :)

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I love these weddings. I do. I cried at this one, actual tears, not the polite kind. I watched a very close person promise her and her husband a life together, and I felt genuinely, uncomplicatedly happy for them. That part is real and I don’t want to undersell it.

But somewhere between the ceremony and the end of the night, sitting at a table while the room paired off for a slow dance, I caught myself doing the thing I always do at weddings now: running a kind of inventory. Where am I in this story. Who’s left at the table with me. Whether the people glancing my way are just looking, or looking.

And underneath all of it, the same quiet question that’s been following me through this entire wedding season: am I going to end up alone?

I want to talk about that question honestly, because I think a lot of people are sitting at that same table and nobody’s saying it out loud.

The wedding I wanted at 23 isn’t the wedding I want now, and that says more than I expected

When I was 23, I had a very specific picture in my head. Big dress, big guest list, a ballroom, a band, a moment where every person I’d ever met watched me walk down an aisle. It wasn’t really about the marriage if I’m honest, it was about the spectacle. The proof. Look, here is my life, and it is going exactly according to plan, and you are all here to witness it.

Some years later, that image is almost unrecognizable to me. If I think about my own wedding now and I do think about it, just differently, I don’t picture a ballroom. I picture a small group of people I actually trust with the messy parts of my life, somewhere that feels like us, with enough quiet in the day that I’d actually remember it instead of just performing it and enough party in the evening to feel like we are all 20 again without a single care in the world.

That shift feels significant to me, and not just as a taste change. At 23, I wanted witnesses. Now I want company. I think that’s what actually growing up does, it quietly moves the goalposts from “being seen” to “being known.” And I don’t think that shift is a consolation prize for not having found someone yet. I think it’s just... maturity. The kind you can’t fake or rush.

But here’s the complicated part: even though my definition of what I want has evolved, the world’s timeline hasn’t moved with me. I’m still being measured against the 23-year-old’s version of the plan, the one where by now there’d be a ring, a date, a registry. So I’m carrying around this newer, truer version of what I want, while still occasionally being asked (with the eyebrows, you know the eyebrows) why I haven’t gotten there yet.

The table, the dance, the looks

There’s a very specific moment at every wedding. The dinner winds down, the lights drop, and the band plays something slow. Couples get up. The dance floor fills with people doing that gentle sway-shuffle that isn’t really dancing so much as being held.

And then there’s the table. A handful of us, sometimes it’s the same configuration of “still single” friends from wedding to wedding, like a recurring cast — sitting there with half-finished glasses of wine, very suddenly very interested in our phones.

I don’t think anyone means anything by it. But you feel it. The slight recalibration in how people look at you. The relative who corners you by the dessert table with “so... anyone special?” delivered in that tone that’s somehow both casual and loaded. The friend-of-a-friend who says “don’t worry, your turn will come!” like it’s a comfort and not a quiet confirmation that, in their eyes, something is currently missing.

It’s never cruel. It’s rarely even conscious. But it accumulates. Four weddings in, I’ve started to notice the way I brace for it before I even arrive, picking an outfit that says “I’m fine, I’m great, don’t worry about me” before a single person has said a word.

The fear, named plainly

Here’s the thing I think is worth saying plainly, because vague feelings are so much heavier than named ones: the fear isn’t really about the wedding, or the dancing, or even the relationship itself, not entirely. The fear is I will be left behind. Everyone I love is moving into a new chapter, and I will still be standing in the old one, alone, watching the door close behind them one couple at a time.

That’s a real fear. I’m not going to pretend it isn’t, or paper over it with a tidy “but actually being single is great, actually!” Sometimes it doesn’t feel great. Sometimes it feels like watching everyone you love quietly graduate into a life that has a place for two, while you’re still holding a single ticket.

But I’ve also noticed something this year, across these four weddings, that I didn’t expect: the people I love getting married hasn’t actually moved them away from me. If anything, the friendships that matter have just... made room. My closest friend’s wedding didn’t end our friendship as I knew it, it just added someone else to the table. The fear says you’ll be replaced. The reality, so far, has mostly been the table gets bigger.

I don’t think that erases the harder feelings. I still sat there during the slow dance. I still noticed. I still went home and sat with that particular kind of quiet that follows a wedding when you’re the one who came alone. But I’m starting to think that feeling and the fear behind it aren’t actually predictions. They’re just feelings, real, valid, worth sitting with, but not facts about how my life is going to go.

What I’m taking from this wedding season

If I’m honest with myself, the version of me who wanted the big princess wedding at 23 was, in some ways, performing for an audience I don’t even think about anymore. The version of me now, the one who wants something smaller, truer, hers, is also the version who’s slowly learning that the timeline was never really a contract. It was just a story I was told early and believed for a long time.

I don’t have a neat ending for this, because I’m still in it, still going to weddings, still sitting at that table sometimes, still catching the looks and occasionally still believing them for a second before I remember I don’t have to. But I think there’s something worth holding onto in the fact that what I want has changed, deepened, gotten more honest. That’s not falling behind. That might just be arriving somewhere truer, on my own schedule.

I know I’m not alone in this and my true hope is that by reading this it made you feel a tiny bit less scared and less sad. We are all gonna make it in our own way.

Love,

A.

Last weekend I somehow did it. Not by choice, to be fair — forced by outside context, as the best changes usually are. I was away with my best friend, who had a conference to attend, and I had tagged along mostly for the change of scenery. When she disappeared into her work day, I was suddenly left with something I rarely give myself: an entire, unscheduled day with no one to answer to. Including myself.

I woke up at 7 am and, instead of reaching for my phone, I got up and went to the spa. Felt really rich, not gonna lie. I love water — always have — and there is something about being submerged in it that quiets the noise in a way nothing else really does. It is hard to spiral when you are floating. I had breakfast at the hotel after, slowly, without scrolling, without a podcast playing in the background. Just food, and a window, and the strange novelty of my own company.

I decided to be a tourist and went to the museum. There is something particular about experiencing art alone — no one to check in with, no one whose reaction you are half-watching instead of your own. Just the stillness, and the beauty, and the strange luxury of lingering in front of something for as long as you want without feeling like you are holding anyone up. I spent an hour immersed in a world that had nothing to do with algorithms or productivity or what I should be doing with my life. It felt almost rebellious.

The architecture of the building alone was worth the visit. Walking through it, I felt like I was inside a castle — the kind that reminds you that humans have always been capable of extraordinary things when they are not in a hurry.

Next, I searched for a coffee place nearby and made myself go in and sit down alone. This one was harder. Sitting in a café on your own, without a laptop open as a prop, without a friend across from you, feels oddly exposing — like everyone can tell that you are a person who is by themselves and somehow chose it. Which is ridiculous, obviously. No one cares. But I do, or I did. I am the kind of person who has always felt the need to be surrounded by people in order to feel like enough. Solitude, for me, has often read as rejection — of others, or of myself, I am still not entirely sure which. Maybe that is why I find it so hard to let go of relationships long past their expiry date. When you are afraid of being alone, you hold on to things that are not good for you just to avoid the silence. But that, as I said, is a topic for another day.

I ordered a kombucha (very hipsterish for a millennial, I know), found a corner seat, and read for two hours. Two actual hours. No guilt, no to-do list nagging at the edge of my brain. Just a book and an afternoon and the quiet hum of strangers around me.

In the afternoon I grabbed a panini and sat on a bench in the park. People watching is genuinely one of the great underrated pleasures of being alive. I am obsessed with it. Every person who walked past was a whole universe — a set of problems I will never know, a love story I can only imagine, a Tuesday that meant something completely different to them than it did to me. I invented lives for all of them. The woman with the red coat was definitely going to meet someone she had not seen in years. The man walking too fast was late for something he both dreaded and needed. Maybe I am projecting. Maybe I am a little bit unhinged. But at least I am free, hahah.

By the time I got back to the hotel that evening, I realised something had shifted. The discomfort I had been so sure would find me never actually arrived. What arrived instead was a kind of quiet I had been running from for a long time — and it turned out it was not frightening at all. It was just mine. It had always been mine. I had simply never stayed still long enough to recognise it.

Maybe the fear of being alone is really just the fear of what you might discover when the noise stops. And maybe what you discover, if you are lucky, is that you are actually pretty decent company. I was. I might even do it again — on purpose this time.

*photo from Pinterest

i know it all starts with being an only child. people associate it with being spoiled. in most cases it is not true, think of an only child that is empathetic.

for me it has always been hard being lonely. i always wanted a sibling, mostly so i could share all my sorrows, so it was not even for the right reasons.

in Eastern Europe we usually grew up alone, the generation with the key necklace around their neck, this is how we were called around the 2000s. we spent most of the days outside while our parents were at work. don’t get me wrong, i had a great childhood, a lot of freedom and playfulness yet something was lacking.

i lost my mom when i was 20 and all i could wish for was someone who went through the same thing and could understand exactly what i was going through. i missed having a sibling.

i was 25 and i went through a very bad breakup. i wished someone would come pick me up from my ex-boyfriend’s house and just help me deal with it. i missed having a sibling.

i was 28 and i bought my first apartment. imagine having someone to help with renovations, moving, and being an emotional support while dealing with all this adulthood stuff. i missed having a sibling.

so it’s not all privilege. it’s about having someone there unconditionally, someone who loves you the way family does. i see my friends fight with their siblings but at the end of the day, they show up for each other anyway. that’s the part i never got to have, not the sibling, exactly. the showing up.

i miss something i never had. and i think that might be the strangest kind of missing there is

.

every time i tend to be a little bit more optimistic, my overcautious brain starts dumping all those crazy thoughts (i am not enough, i don’t work enough, i don’t have a partner, i should be in a different place at this age). then i get a bit more paranoid and anxious and start agreeing to those nihilistic ideas.

i am close to turning 29, which in theory should be adulthood peak, right? i feel like a failure most of the time because i am single, i am rotting inside and i feel like i am losing my passion and creativity.

don’t get me wrong, i have a relatively well paid job, an apartment i bought and i am quite stable (thanks to my therapist) but somehow i can’t stop blaming myself for the lack of my own family.

the truth is that i am lonely. never in my life have i felt this way before because as a dependent person, i always took care of having someone constantly in my life. to be honest, this is the first year where i feel complete in my loneliness.

i don’t go out as much, i don’t have as many friends and the ones i have usually are spending time busy in their own lives (the audacity), therefore i am forced to live with my own presence.

since i was 15, i started being in serious relationships and now i have been single for almost 2 years, which is very weird to process. what do i do with myself? how do i enjoy my own company?

i started going to the gym, then i started reading more and going to the park and then what? when does my soulmate appear? in movies it’s different. in reality, people tell me i don’t give off the vibe of someone available to date. you know what? f*** off. i think i do, it’s just that my standards are higher now.

let’s just say this is the start of my series- i am behind in life, a series with no followers, no one know who i am and i plan to keep it that way, at least for now.

A.

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