the difference between silence and that silence. when to push and when to leave it alone. what gets under their skin. what makes them laugh despite themselves

when the relationship ends, that knowledge has nowhere to go

until you meet again.

a question is asked in exactly the right way. a familiar provocation still works

and for a moment, you remember how fluent you once were in each other

it doesn’t mean you want anything back

some languages are simply hard to forget

the swimming bothers him. i’ve always been good, i just train more now

he admits he’s jealous. three seconds later, i’m reminded that i’m still a bad runner. his assessment, not mine. aerobic base building is apparently not a convincing defence

the compliment had a short life

after everything, competition was still a language we both understood

the relationship ended

the leaderboard, apparently, did not

he knows exactly how to provoke me. i know exactly when he’s jealous

some dynamics are harder to retire than others

another conversation was different

i was asked what I felt. i answered. he waited

that wasn’t it

there is something almost aggressive about being given enough silence to tell the truth. most people accept the joke, the change of subject, the clever answer that isn’t really an answer

he didn’t

i remembered how much I hate being seen without permission, which is inconvenient because i also want to be understood

we romanticise being known

‘i want someone who sees me’

do you?

sometimes being seen is simply someone recognising your exit strategy. knowing when the clever answer isn’t the real one

that was what surprised me. not that someone remembered me, but that they remembered how to reach me

years pass. relationships happen. you get better at leaving things behind

then one question, asked in a particular way, and the door still opens

that doesn’t mean they should walk through it

maybe intimate knowledge never really disappears

the feeling goes. the fluency remains

someone knows what your silence means. which questions you’ll avoid. how to provoke you

you’re left knowing things about each other that no longer have anywhere to go

then you meet again, and for a moment, it all comes back online

everything recognises everything

and then you leave

not every familiar feeling is asking to become a future. some show you what you miss. others, what you’ve outgrown

intimacy survives in strange places

ty for being here. see you on the other side.

♡

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‘There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.’

— Peter Levine

I read this somewhere and immediately wanted to send it to someone

I do this a lot

I send sentences from books, songs with no explanation, photos of things that probably mean very little to anyone else. Sometimes I send a whole article when really there is only one sentence in it I want someone to read

It is probably a complicated way of saying: this made me feel something and I want to know if it makes you feel it too

Or maybe: this reminded me of you

Or, occasionally: this is about me, but I would rather let someone else say it :)

Kazuo Ishiguro once wrote that stories are, in the end, one person saying to another: ‘This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it also feel this way to you’

I think about this a lot. Because maybe that is what we are doing most of the time—finding  elaborate ways of asking: do you know what I mean?

There are feelings I can recognise instantly and still couldn’t explain if you asked me to

I know exactly what they are when I hear them in a song. I know them when I see a particular scene in a film, or when I underline something so hard in a book that the pen nearly goes through the page

But ask me what I am feeling and suddenly I have no vocabulary at all…

It is strange that sometimes another person’s words can know you before you know how to describe yourself

Maybe that is why I save so many sentences. They feel like evidence

Evidence that someone else has been here. That this very specific thing I thought belonged entirely to me has happened inside another person too 🫂

And there is something comforting about that, not because it makes the feeling smaller, but because it makes the world around it a little bigger

Which brings me back to: ‘There is nothing so whole as a broken heart.’

I don’t know if I could explain exactly why I find this hopeful. Maybe because it doesn’t ask the broken heart to become anything else

It doesn’t say it will be whole again. It says it is whole now

I like the idea that two things we have decided are opposites might exist at the same time

That something can hurt and still contain something beautiful </3

That you can miss something without wanting it back

That you can be certain and still wonder

That you can be happy and have a sadness running quietly underneath it

That you don’t have to resolve every contradiction in yourself before you are allowed to feel complete

Maybe we spend too much time trying to turn feelings into conclusions. Sometimes I don’t want a conclusion

I just want to put something down in front of another person and say: This is the way it feels to me. Does it also feel this way to you?

Maybe that is what writing is for me. Not arriving somewhere, exactly. Just leaving little pieces of myself behind and seeing who recognises them

p.s. do i weird you out or have i weirded you in?

ty for being here. see you on the other side.

♡

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For a while, they borrow other languages

An image

A piece of music

A poem that feels as though it has been waiting for you

A film that patiently waits until you’ve lived enough to understand it

Maybe that’s why we keep returning to certain works throughout our lives. Not because they’ve changed, but because we have. They reveal different parts of themselves because different parts of us have come alive

The greatest works of art don’t simply tell us who they are

They recognise something in us long before we know how to recognise it ourselves

A few nights ago I found myself watching Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror (1975) again

It’s hardly a film in the conventional sense. There is no beginning to hold onto, no ending to work towards. Childhood slips into dreams, dreams into war, memory into imagination. Time folds over itself the way it does inside us

At one point someone says,

‘Words can’t express everything a person feels.’

The older I get, the less this feels like a limitation of language and more like a permission

Perhaps we were never meant to explain ourselves completely

Perhaps some things can only be carried by rain falling through the roof of a house, or wind moving through long grass

Tarkovsky doesn't ask us to make sense of his films

He trusts that, given enough time, they'll make sense of us

That same feeling returned when I listened to Mahler’s Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony

Bernstein once conducted it so slowly that it feels less like music than breathing

Only strings

Only harp

No brass announcing itself

No percussion demanding attention

As though Mahler had stripped away every instrument incapable of whispering

People call it a love letter to Alma

But what moves me is not its romance

It’s its confidence

The music never hurries toward resolution

It lingers

Repeats

Returns

As though it already knows that the deepest feelings cannot be rushed into language—they have to be lived through time

I thought about Mahmoud Darwish, writing:

‘Make space in your ribs for me, I would like to reside eternally in my home country.’

I’ve never encountered a more beautiful definition of home

Not geography

Not permanence

Simply another person’s body becoming a place where you can remain

Suddenly, exile isn’t only about leaving a country

It’s about losing the place where someone once held you

Perhaps every great love asks the same impossible thing:

Carry me somewhere the world cannot take me from

Then I remembered Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960)

A woman disappears during a trip to a remote island

But instead of searching for answers, the film quietly turns away from the mystery itself

What remains is absence

Not the absence of explanation,

but the absence people leave inside one another

Monica Vitti, Antonioni's longtime muse, moves through volcanic landscapes and unfinished buildings that seem too vast for the lives unfolding within them

Antonioni understood that loneliness isn’t always being alone

Sometimes it’s standing beside someone while an entire landscape stretches silently between you

His films aren’t really about disappearance

They’re about the spaces people leave behind long before they’ve gone

Perhaps that’s why a single line from Federico Fellini’s ‘8½’ has stayed with me longer than entire conversations:

‘Because he doesn’t know how to love.’

Fellini's protagonist, Guido Anselmi—a celebrated film director paralysed by creative and emotional crisis—drifts between fantasies and the women in his life, forever searching for something that remains just out of reach

When I first heard the line, I thought it was an accusation

Now it sounds almost like sorrow

It made me wonder how many of us are ever taught what love actually asks of us

Not desire

Not romance

Love

The kind that remains present once the fantasy dissolves

Long before we choose the people we love, we inherit ways of loving. Some of us learn that closeness is safe. Others learn that distance is protection.

Perhaps that’s what I hear in Fellini now

Not that Guido doesn’t know how to love

But that he hasn’t yet learned its language

Maybe that’s why certain works return to us throughout our lives

Not because they’ve changed

Because we have

They don’t reveal new meanings

They reveal new versions of us

Life, I’ve realised, doesn’t ask us to move forward so much as to return—

to the same questions,

the same loves,

the same wounds—

until one day we notice we’re no longer looking with the same eyes

Bazı şeyler tercüme edilmeden daha güzel

ty for being here. see you on the other side.

♡

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John Keats wrote those words to Fanny Brawne in 1819.

Every time I read it, I wonder where language like this goes.

Surely it doesn’t disappear. Perhaps it simply changes form.

From letters to emails. From ink to glowing screens.

Still trying to do the same thing:

reach another person.

I have a friend I mostly speak to through email.

Somewhere along the way, our correspondence stopped feeling like correspondence. A message would begin with something practical and end somewhere entirely different. An observation became a confession. A confession became a poem.

I often wonder what Keats would have made of email.

Would he have sent ten messages a day?

Would he have hovered over the send button, wondering if he had revealed too much?

The medium changes, but longing remains remarkably consistent.

Reading Keats’s letters today feels almost voyeuristic. They are overflowing with desire. Not the polished, performative kind, but the sort that consumes the body.

Lips, breath, touch, sweetness. He writes as though love has altered his senses.

‘The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest.’

Last night I was eating lip-shaped gummy sweets after dinner when that line came back to me.

The absurdity of it made me laugh.

A poet dead for two centuries interrupting an ordinary Saturday evening.

Yet some feelings seem immune to time.

The rush of kissing someone you love.

The sweetness.

The brief moment when another person occupies your entire attention.

Honey. Sugar. Nectar.

Keats returns to these images again and again, as though language itself is inadequate without taste.

I understand that.

There are some emotions that feel less like thoughts than flavours.

Sometimes I think what I miss about being in love is not the person but the intensity.

The way the world sharpens around them.

The way an ordinary object—a song, a flower, a packet of sweets—suddenly becomes charged with meaning.

Maybe that is why I keep returning to old letters.

Emily Dickinson’s letters that became poems.

Keats’s poems disguised as letters.

And these contemporary exchanges that arrive quietly in my inbox.

What separates a letter from a poem, anyway?

If a poem is simply language reaching toward something it cannot quite touch, then many of the most beautiful poems I have read were never published.

They were sent.

Addressed to one person.

Written without the intention of becoming literature.

Perhaps that is what makes them beautiful.

Not that they were crafted for an audience.

But that they were written for someone.

For a single pair of eyes.

A single heart.

A single summer.

Three days, maybe.

Or fifty years.

Keats would probably tell us the measure is not the duration.

It is the delight.

Çiçekleri verip seni öpüp gidicem

ty for being here. see you on the other side.

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Not because you still speak to them.

Not because you’re waiting for them to come back.

They just become part of the way you see things.

I used to think forgetting was a real thing that happened to people.

Now I think most of us simply absorb.

A person becomes part of your internal landscape. You stop thinking about them every day, but somehow they are still there, quietly influencing the shape of things.

Maybe language works the same way.

Lately I have been less interested in what words mean and more interested in what they do.

Sometimes I write something down and months later I still don’t know why that particular word appeared. There are sentences I’ve written that I still don’t fully understand.

I don’t think everything we write exists to be understood.

Some things are written because they need somewhere to go.

What else are words for except to press on a wound?

Not to heal it.

Not to make it disappear.

Just to find its edges.

To see if it is still there.

I think we create ourselves through language. Sentence by sentence. Repetition by repetition. We become the stories we keep telling. We become the questions we cannot stop asking.

Maybe that is why every writer eventually realizes they are writing about the same thing.

Not because they lack imagination.

Because there is one thing they cannot solve.

One thing that keeps changing shape.

A person.

A memory.

A fear.

A desire.

The same thing wearing different clothes.

Gertrude Stein once wrote that writers need two countries: the one they belong to and the one they live in.

I have always liked that.

The older I get, the more true it feels.

The second country is rarely geographical.

It is usually made of people.

Some of them are still here.

Some of them are not.

Some of them never really existed outside the version we made of them.

Memories, obsessions, unfinished conversations. Things that continue long after they have ended.

Perhaps writing is simply the act of traveling between those two countries.

Trying to describe one from the vantage point of the other.

I have also been thinking about muses.

The older I get, the less interested I become in the idea.

A muse suggests that another person is responsible for what happens inside us.

I don’t think that’s true.

Most people we become fascinated by are carrying something we cannot quite locate in ourselves.

The fascination is real.

But so is the projection.

You meet someone and suddenly a part of yourself becomes visible.

Then they leave and you’re left wondering whether you miss them or the version of yourself that existed in their presence.

Maybe this is why some people stay with us long after they leave.

Not because we are unable to let go

But because they have become part of the language we use to understand ourselves

And maybe grief belongs somewhere in this.

Not grief as loss.

Grief as continuation.

The last form love takes when it no longer has anywhere to go.

I used to think the goal was getting over things.

Now I think some things are simply absorbed.

Like language.

Like memory.

They stop being events and become part of the structure.

Part of the way you see.

Part of the way you speak.

Part of the way you understand yourself.

Or fail to.

ty for being here. see you on the other side.

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later that night, though, i kept thinking about what i actually wanted to say.

or maybe not even ‘meant to say.’ more like the things i’ve been slowly realising over the last year without fully noticing it.

because this year—the year before i turn twenty-seven—has been an interesting one.

not my hardest year.
not my best either.

just a year that quietly rearranged a lot of things.

the way i think.
the way i love.
the way i spend my time.
the way i understand myself.

i think one of the biggest things i’ve learned is that life is not something you solve once and for all. it’s something you keep composing as you go. certain parts collapse, others emerge more clearly underneath. you outgrow entire versions of yourself without realising it until months later.

leaving home changes you. returning home changes you differently. and there are versions of yourself that only exist in between those places.

i’ve learned that some parts of you only emerge around certain people. entire sides of your personality can stay dormant for years until someone arrives with the ability to bring them forward.

and maybe part of growing up is realising that the most compelling people are rarely the ones performing themselves most loudly. they are usually the people who remain connected to some private interior world of their own.

nothing is more attractive than someone who has somewhere else to be, even if that place is internal. people who are absorbed in something beyond how they are perceived. people with inner lives that feel active and inhabited. not performative, not constantly available, not shaped entirely around being seen.

their lives seem to extend beyond your access to them. and i think that’s something i want more of as i get older too. a richer inner life. more texture, depth. more time spent building a life that feels real even when nobody is looking.

i’ve also realised that every period of growth feels like loss at first. even the good changes carry grief inside them.

Felwine Sarr once wrote:

‘The death of someone close to us opens up a wound in our sensibility. The fundamental fragility of things reappears to us. The essential vibration and trembling of life becomes at once all the more vibrant.’

that line stayed with me because i think grief changes your sensitivity to life completely. ordinary things suddenly feel sharper. more alive. a familiar smell. someone laughing in another room. the way your parents age in front of you without asking permission.

you realise how fragile everything actually is.

which strangely made me less afraid.

because honestly, olmayacak ne var? olmayacak şey yok.

life changes constantly. people leave. plans collapse. identities shift. things you thought would never happen do. things you thought were permanent disappear overnight.

when life shuts a door, open it again.

and maybe that sounds simplistic, but i no longer believe disappointment means the end of something. sometimes what feels like an ending is just life forcing you toward a different shape.

bazen insanın son sandığı şey aslında başlangıçtır.

and maybe that’s how i should have ended the speech that night.

with the same thing i awkwardly said at the beginning:

‘i love love’

not just romantic love. all of it.

friendship. curiosity. effort. attention. sincerity. the decision to keep meeting life with openness despite everything.

who am i if i don’t give my whole heart every time?

anyway.

twenty-seven feels less like arriving somewhere and more like becoming someone capable of holding the life that was already waiting for me.

ty for being here. see you on the other side.

♡

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a run in the morning then the world rushing back in.

it doesn’t feel like contradiction to me.
it feels like range,
like not reducing myself to one version just to be understood.

you should live your life so multi-faceted that it confuses people—
(or at least, i think i’m doing that.)

not as a performance,
just as a byproduct of being honest.

because honesty is rarely linear.

and then there are the moments when it all quiets.
alone in the silence of my own presence.
no audience, no explanation.
just me, existing without translation.

i used to think some things were too strange to say out loud.
that they had to stay hidden to keep their shape.
but i’m starting to understand: things are only strange when they stay secret.
once you share them, they soften. they become a bridge.
a small offering of what it means to be human.

this is why i keep telling my story.
not because it’s special, but because it isn’t.
because every time we say something real, we make it safer for someone else to do the same.
we loosen the quiet grip of shame that convinces people they’re alone in it.
we normalize. we create space.

i’m also learning to see people differently.
not as fixed things to hold onto, but as experiences.

and experiences, by nature, pass.
some people are seasons.
and seasons are not failures just because they end.
winter doesn’t apologize for turning into spring.

maybe that’s why it’s so hard to explain anything properly.
Franz Kafka was right: ‘the more you feel, the less you know how to say.’

so instead of trying to say it perfectly,
i’ve started asking more questions.
i think questions are more romantic than compliments anyway

:)

lately i’ve been drawn to certain images, a kind of quiet, surreal intimacy.

rooms that feel like they remember things you haven’t said yet

and then something completely different, a reminder that imagination doesn’t have to make sense to be true: a psychedelic Hungarian myth where a divine horse’s son goes on this strange quest to free captive princesses from dragons.

maybe it’s not about understanding.
maybe it’s about staying.

with the strange parts,
the quiet,
the too-much.

long enough for it to become something else.

thank you for being here. see you on the other side.

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one of those very specific ones,
habibi there’s no one like you, wallahi energy.

i started pulling songs i hadn’t listened to in years.
oriental rare groove. funky tracks from across the arab world.

and then one came on.

i let it play once.
then again.
then again.

there’s something about those rhythms.

not just the sound,
the timing of it.
the way it doesn’t rush.
the way it sits slightly behind itself
and still feels completely certain.

it did something i wasn’t expecting. it didn’t make me think.

it brought me back.

not to a place exactly,
more like a frequency.

something familiar
without needing to be explained.

like your body recognising something
before your mind catches up.

and i think that’s where i’ve been lately.

somewhere between states.

not fully settled.
not fully undone.

moving between things
without ever landing completely in one of them.

there’s a term for it—
fluctuatio animi.

the mind, or the soul,
suspended between opposites.

hope and anxiety.
affection and resistance.
staying and pulling away.

not choosing one,
not resolving into anything stable.

just oscillating.

it doesn’t feel dramatic.

it’s quieter than that.

more like a continuous movement
you only notice when you stop trying to fix it.

a kind of internal shifting that doesn’t ask to be resolved.

only held.

maybe that’s why the music stayed on repeat.

because it wasn’t trying to take me anywhere.

it didn’t build toward anything.
it didn’t ask for interpretation.

it just moved. and i moved with it.

not forward.
not backward.

just… within it.

i used to think that state meant something was unfinished.

that being between things meant i needed to decide, or define or settle.

but maybe it doesn’t.

maybe it’s a condition.

a way of being.

a kind of sensitivity to everything that exists at once.

maybe that’s what i felt.

not clarity.
not resolution.

just contact.

something passing through without needing to stay.

i stayed with it.

long enough for it to stop asking anything from me.

hissi yok edene kadar hissettim.

thank you for being here. see you on the other side.

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i was thirteen the first time i underlined something by Fyodor Dostoevsky: ‘I say let the world go to hell, but i should always have my tea.’

i remember smiling, because I understood something I hadn’t known I did. that I, too, was made of contradictions.

that you can ache and still move through the day.
that you can want everything and still accept very little.
that you can be breaking and still show up, quietly, as if nothing is happening.

but what i didn’t understand then is how easy it is to fall for someone. not because they are extraordinary. but because we know how to make things feel that way.

and your mind begins to build something around it.

you give meaning to timing.
you stretch moments into something continuous.
you turn a feeling into a story.

and before you even realize it, you’re not just experiencing something
you’re shaping it.

was he actually special,
or was i just very good at making him feel that way?

because if i’m honest, the magic didn’t always come from him.

It came from me. I was the one paying attention.

I brought the softness.
the curiosity.
the sense that something meaningful was happening.

I think sometimes what we call a relationship is just projection.

not entirely—but enough.

enough that you can exist inside it, even when the other person isn’t really meeting you there. because someone is still doing the work of keeping it alive.

we take something small and let it expand.

a song he liked because i showed it to him.
a moment of attention that felt more intentional than it was.
a night that felt meaningful because i made it feel that way.

and suddenly it becomes something else.

something bigger.
something that feels like connection.
like alignment.
like it must mean more than it actually does.

and when it ends, you try to understand it like it was a structure.

what changed?
what broke?
what moment caused it to collapse?

as if there had to be a reason. but sometimes there isn’t.

sometimes you just see more clearly.

i think about him.

about how i loved him in a way that made everything feel heightened.
how even the smallest moments felt full of meaning.

and how, when he hurt me, i didn’t react the way i thought i would.

i softened. i explained it away.
i made space for him, even when there was none left for me.

because i needed to believe that the way i loved
gentle, patient, understanding
would somehow be enough.

but love doesn’t make someone meet you where you are. and it doesn’t protect you from being hurt.

‘What is hell? i maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.’

i used to think that meant not being able to love others. now i think it’s also this:

the moments you abandon yourself while loving someone else. the moments you stay quiet when something hurts. the moments you shrink so something can continue.
the moments you choose them over your own clarity.

and still—

i don’t regret loving him.

because the feeling was real, even if the story wasn’t what i thought.
because the way i showed up was real.

and maybe that matters.

maybe that’s the only part that was ever mine.

‘Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.’

i used to hear that as something to fix. now it feels more like something to accept.

maybe feeling deeply isn’t the problem. maybe that’s it.

maybe we’re not meant to be okay all the time.

maybe people like us, like Dostoevsky, like me, maybe like you,
we’re meant to come apart a little.

to open in places others keep closed.

because when that happens, you start to see differently.

not just the beauty, not just the damage,
but how close they sit to each other.

how nothing is ever just one thing.

and slowly, you learn how to hold both
without needing to resolve it.

i don’t think i need to feel less. just see more clearly next time.

and not give so much of myself
to something that was only ever held up by me.

Thank you for being here. See you on the other side.

♡

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Cracking them one by one on the edge of the pan. The soft break of the shell. The way the yolk holds for a second before giving in. Butter melting, not too fast. Stirring slowly. Folding, not rushing.

Halfway through, I paused.

Because the way I was doing it felt familiar. Too familiar.

Not something I remember learning. Not something I decided. Just a rhythm my hands already knew—the timing, the patience, the way of folding instead of overworking it.

I tried to trace it back.

Someone, at some point.

And now it’s mine.

That’s how it happens, I think. Quietly.

You carry people without meaning to.

In the words you reach for without thinking. Certain phrases that start to sound like you, even though they weren’t always yours. The way you soften something before you say it. The way you pause.

In smells, too. Something warm and clean that catches you off guard—a detergent, a perfume—and suddenly you’re somewhere else for a second, without choosing to be.

In rhythms. Songs that used to belong to a person more than they belonged to you. At the time, they were just there. Just background. Just something playing while you existed next to each other. And later, they come back differently. Not as them, exactly. Just a feeling. A vibration your body remembers before your mind does.

None of it announces itself.

It just settles in.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot.

Because the other day, I was sitting on my couch, nibbling on blueberries. Nothing special about it. No one else around. Just a quiet moment, passing without asking for anything.

And for once, I didn’t interrupt it.

I didn’t try to hold onto it or turn it into something else. I didn’t step outside of it to observe it. I didn’t think about how I might describe it later.

I just sat there.

That’s it.

But something about it stayed with me. Not because it was important, but because it wasn’t. It didn’t need to become anything.

It made me realize how often I’m slightly outside of my own life. Already translating it. Already shaping it into something I can use later. As if every moment needs to justify itself.

But that one didn’t.

And something softened.

Since then, I’ve been noticing more.

The warmth left behind on a chair after someone gets up.

The pause before you reply when something actually matters.

The quiet relief of taking off your shoes when you get home.

Small things.

But not nothing.

Because nothing is ever truly empty. Everything passes through me and leaves something behind—however small.

A gesture. A word. A rhythm. A way of being.

Like dust. Like pollen. Like memory. Like something settling softly inside you.

And maybe that’s enough.

Maybe a life doesn’t have to be impressive to feel whole. Maybe it doesn’t need to resolve into anything clear or visible.

Maybe it just has to be lived. Felt fully. Stayed inside.

Without always turning away.

Thank you for being here. See you on the other side.

♡

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No doors slammed.
No betrayal.
No catastrophic ending.

Just two nervous systems standing in different places.

One saying:
‘Let’s feel this.’

The other saying:
‘I don’t know how.’

I used to think love was about intensity.
Now I think it’s about capacity.

The capacity to stay.
The capacity to tolerate depth.
The capacity to remain present when things become real.

If you could stay —
not forever,
just in the feeling —
I think you would understand me.

Some people can love you when it’s light.
When it’s exciting.
When it’s potential.

But when the bond starts to grow weight,
when it asks for witness,
for steadiness,
for choice,

that’s when you see what someone can actually hold.

And what they can’t.

There is a quiet humiliation in being loved but not chosen.

Not because you are unworthy
but because you are ready.

Ready for something that requires both people to step forward.

I don’t think he is cruel.
I don’t even think he is indifferent.

I think he is protecting himself from something he doesn’t fully understand.

You keep asking how to reduce the pain.

How to soften the transition.
How to make it lighter.

But this isn’t something to reduce.

It’s a loss.

And losses have weight.

There is a line my therapist said that hasn’t left me:

‘Familiar hell feels safer than unknown heaven.’

Some people would rather return to what they know:
distraction, distance, work, movement
than sit inside the magnitude of connection.

For me, grief is something you metabolize.
You cry it.
You speak it.
You let it reorganize you.

For him, grief is something you bypass.
You outrun it.
You shrink it before it grows

Neither is evil.
But they are not the same.

I just needed you to stay long enough
to acknowledge that this mattered.

That what we built
had gravity.

Instead, every message becomes a small reality check.
A reminder that you are already stepping away
while I am still inside it.

You are trying to survive it.
I am trying to honor it.

That is the difference.

I don’t know if he will ever fully feel the weight of this.

Maybe one day he will sit still long enough.
Maybe another ending will teach him what this one couldn’t.
Maybe not.

I don’t think you’re heartless.
I think you are overwhelmed
by something that asks more of you
than you know how to give.

But I cannot shrink my way of loving
to make it easier for you to leave.

If you ever sit still long enough,
you might feel the full shape of this.

Or maybe you won’t.

But my experience does not become smaller
because someone else cannot contain it.

This was real.

The depth was real.
The grief is real.

And I would rather be someone
who feels too much
than someone
who never lets it land.

Maybe love isn’t about who feels more. Maybe it’s about who can stay when it gets heavy.

And today, I know this much:

I can.

Thank you for reading and witnessing my feelings.

see you on the other side.

♡

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Less about becoming, more about noticing.

Less about doing, more about being with what already was.

Not through dramatic shifts, but through subtle invitations. A lingering glance. The sound of birds on a Friday night. A memory returning mid-walk, uninvited but welcome. I paid attention to where I soften. Where I resist. Where I disappear, even from myself.

There were weekends held together by small joys—sunlight through a curtain, a morning coffee on the balcony, a carpet of flowers that stopped me mid-stride. There were also moments where the mask slipped. When I saw my own ache reflected back in someone’s silence. When I learned that tenderness, too, can be exhausting.

I kept circling back to the body. Not just as a vessel, but as a tuning fork. When I couldn’t make sense of things, I asked my body how it wanted to move. Sometimes the answer was a run. Sometimes it was stillness. The right move felt like a deep exhale.

There were days I wanted to speak but didn’t. Times I longed for closeness but pulled away instead. I watched myself from the outside, quietly negotiating what felt safe. And then there were days I returned, more present, more porous. Less sure, maybe, but more honest.

Somewhere between the almost and the not-quite, I wrote. Even when I wasn’t sure what I was trying to say. Writing was how I stayed close to myself, through letters I never sent, poems I folded into drawers, sentences that asked more than they answered.

I’m not sure what I’m leaving behind yet. But I know what I want to carry:

• the ability to be still, and still feel deeply.

• a softness that no longer depends on being met.

• the knowledge that some truths live comfortably without answers.

As the year closes, I’m not trying to soften its edges. Just holding what’s here. And letting that be enough.

Thank you for reading, witnessing, walking with me through the in-between.

see you on the other side.

♡

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Cosmic motion, in this sense, isn’t just about stars and gravity—it’s in the way we move around each other. In human interactions. Through closeness, absence, touch, timing. Through gestures so subtle they could go unnoticed, unless you’re paying attention.

Two lovers sharing a table on a Saturday morning. Coffee cups side by side. A magazine spread open between them. One of them reads aloud while the other half-listens, half-lost in thought. Their knees touch under the table. Familiar. Unforced. The kind of intimacy you can only settle into slowly, over time.

On Sunday, I watched someone go in for a hug, then come back for another. This time slower. A deeper squeeze, followed by a soft pat on the back, an instinctive way of saying, ‘stay a bit longer,’ without needing to say anything at all. Then, just as they were walking away, they turned back around for one last glance. That moment stayed with me. The way people do when they’re trying not to be forgotten.

There’s something about ephemerality I keep returning to, how beauty often arrives gently and disappears before we can name it. We can’t hold onto it, not really, but we try. Maybe that’s why we return to symbols: to give form to something fleeting. A pressed flower in a book. A text we can’t delete. A photograph we return to, again and again. These things don’t preserve the moment itself, but they remind us how it felt.

And memory? It’s not just about revisiting the past. Sometimes memory is what brings us back to ourselves in the present. A kind of remembering that isn’t about nostalgia, but about presence. A quiet return to what matters.

Philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes about something he calls ‘ceremonious inactivity’, the idea of doing something without expectation, without urgency, without trying to make it useful. Sitting for no reason. Letting time pass. Lighting a candle just to watch the flame dance, to let the scent move through the room and touch your skin. In a culture that optimizes everything, we slowly unlearn how to experience life.

A moment is the breath. And the moments we share, the way we move around each other, the pauses, the gestures, the subtle glances, those are the breathing. That’s where aliveness lives.

It passes.

But it doesn’t pass away.

ty for being here. let’s meet again soon.

♡

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There are times when what you’re in stops feeling like what you thought it was. When the energy shifts, not with an argument, but with a silence you can’t quite name. Communication fades, and you’re left wondering if what’s missing is something you can ask for, or if it’s already gone.

There’s no fight, no dramatic ending. Just a sense of slipping. The kind of quiet that makes you question whether you're being patient—or passive. Whether this is just a moment, or a slow unraveling.

And then the harder question: What does a relationship mean, truly, beyond presence, beyond the idea of being ‘together’?

For some, love is a language spoken in gestures:

• spending time together intentionally

• creating something for the other person

• small offerings

• shared glances that say more than words can

• the ability to speak freely and be received

When those things go missing, the absence becomes loud. It becomes difficult to say what you need, especially when you’re unsure whether it will land.

There’s a kind of ache that doesn’t come from heartbreak—but from lack of resonance. A subtle, persistent sense of not being fully met.

II

Bazen bir his gelir.
Kelimelerin ötesinde bir şey.
It moves through the body before the mind can name it.

Sometimes, when you least expect it, something, or someone, unlocks doors in you that had been quietly waiting to open. Doors you forgot were there. Or never thought anyone would notice.

It can feel like a homecoming. A returning.
And for a moment, everything aligns—timing, feeling, safety.
You start imagining what it could look like if it stayed.

But life isn’t always made of permanence.
Everything arrives with its own rhythm.
Some people come to remind you of what’s possible.
Others come to teach you what’s still tender.

‘Let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you.’ —Kahlil Gibran

Sometimes you give deeply and fully, through time, creativity, affection,
not as performance, but as instinct.
You open your heart because it feels safe to do so.
But when that offering is met with silence, or distance,
the question becomes: what do you hold onto, and what do you release?

There’s grief in feeling unseen.In realising that the things you thought you were building together may not have been shared.
That the feelings were real, but the future was not.

Still, there’s something beautiful, even sacred, in having loved.
In knowing what your own love looks like in motion.
In learning your emotional language more clearly, even if no one else is speaking it back to you.

Sometimes, loving deeply means being left exposed.
But also: it means you dared to feel.
You dared to try.
And that, in itself, is a kind of quiet courage.

I give thanks for another day of loving.
Even imperfectly.

ty for being here. let’s meet again soon.

♡

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Lately, I’ve been noticing softness in unexpected places. Like men at the nail salon, sitting patiently, waiting for their wives to finish. There’s something tender about that—men who are present, men who enjoy caring for others, who prioritise their partners over their friends, not because they have to, but because they want to.

For a long time, I think I wanted to be that softness. Lately, I’ve been more interested in understanding it.

I’ve also been trying to make sense of a quiet kind of emptiness. The small, lingering kind—not a dramatic absence, but something more delicate, more elusive. I’ve been curious about its texture, the little things that give it shape, the reasons it arrives without warning—and where it hides when we pretend it’s not there.

In learning to sit with that feeling, I’ve realised that so much of life is really just about returning to yourself—again and again. Some seasons pull you far away. Others gently bring you back. 🌀

I’ve been slowly finding my way back to my body after a stretch of feeling detached—coasting through days without much presence. One small thing that helps: I ask my body how it wants to move that day. Sometimes it’s a high-intensity workout, sometimes it’s yin yoga. The right move usually feels like a deep exhale.

I’ve been thinking a lot about joy too—specifically the kind that comes from small, grounding moments. Holding someone’s hand has always been my idea of joy. Simple, quiet, safe. Listening is another kind of meditation for me. It’s one of the only spaces where I feel still and moved at the same time. As Joanne Lam wrote, ‘Listening is a mirror, being heard and received is the remedy.‘ And maybe that’s why it matters so much—it reminds us that presence, more than anything, is what heals.

ty for being here. let’s meet again soon.

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There’s a particular kind of violence in being perceived.

It’s not the attention itself—it’s the way people decide who you are without really knowing you. They fill in the blanks. They make a story out of you. And suddenly, you’re not a person—you’re just a version. A caption. A projection.

People say they want to understand you. But do they?

To be truly understood is to be seen without armor.
To be known in the small ways—the stammer before you speak, the way your voice shifts when you’re tired, how you laugh when you don’t want to answer a question.

Sometimes I think being misunderstood feels safer. At least then I get to choose what version of me they see.
There’s a comfort in staying unreadable.

Because when someone really sees you, you lose the performance.
The mask slips. The lines blur.
They hear the disclaimers in your sentences.
They notice the fear behind your jokes.

It’s strange—how closeness can feel like being watched.
How affection can feel like exposure.
How ‘I know you’ can sound like a warning instead of a hug.

And it’s not always about love.
Sometimes it’s a moment with a stranger.
A fleeting friendship.
A passing glance that somehow sees right through you.

A few things that made me stop scrolling this week. Noticed, saved, screenshotted—

An ad I can’t stop thinking about from 2004—

Paulin, Paulin, Paulin Sofa. The curve of it. The confidence. Like it knows it doesn’t need to try—

The sound of home is clearest in its absence

Sometimes silence is louder than noise. Stillness can hum with truth, if you let it.

These days, I’m learning to listen to things I once ignored: the pause in a conversation, the way afternoon light lands on my coffee table at 6:17 pm.

The ache that follows joy. The joy that follows ache.

What we give our attention to grows. And how we listen shapes the life we create.

Not every moment needs to be explained.

Some things are meant to be felt in the quiet. And held, not solved.

ty for being here. let’s meet again soon.

♡

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And maybe, in some way, I came back to my body. Or reconnected with it. Work hasn’t exactly been a creative outlet for me lately—I’ve been feeling stuck, detached, barely paying attention to how I move through the world.

So, I walked. Long walks through London, chasing birds. The birds were seriously happy. See below a recording of them near the British Museum on a Friday night. Their chirping—it feels like a dance, like a secret language. I could sit there for hours, just listening.

In Hyde Park, early buds and flowers were scattered everywhere—little previews of spring. Saturday morning, on my way to a gym class, I almost arrived late because I got completely distracted by a carpet of colorful flowers. Had to step closer, take them all in. How could I not?

cooking

Cooking for one is never the easiest. There are always leftovers, and it feels more like a chore than a joy. But cooking for others? That I love. Still, last weekend, I made an effort. I’ve been thinking a lot about phytonutrients in plants lately—look at this purple combination: purple carrots and purple sweet potatoes. A feast for the eyes before even taking a bite.

seen in art

'Held Absence' by Grace Prince, presented by Béton Brut, London.

Tables, stools, a desk, and candle holders—each piece crafted from hand-patinated cast bronze and steam-bent wood. There's something so delicate yet structured about them, like they hold the weight of time. The collection is informed by Prince’s time living in Kyoto, Japan, and you can feel that quiet, meditative presence in every curve and surface.

flowers

Couldn’t help myself and bought flowers from two different stalls. The colors were so bright, so springy. Love how they instantly lifted my mood.

quince

I even made a trip to Broadway Market just to buy quinces. Ever since my trainer’s boyfriend handed me one—after catching me eyeing it in their kitchen—I haven’t stopped craving them. He brought it from Turkey. The taste lingered in my mind. And voilà 🧿

sandalwood

Stopped by ilāpothecary to pick up my Speak Your Truth Aroma Roller.

Sandalwood always comes to my rescue—grounding me, pulling me back when my mind drifts too far.

ty for being here. let’s meet again soon.

♡

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Reading ‘In Search of Lost Time’ feels like stepping into a dream, one where time folds in on itself, where past and present collapse into a single sensation. Proust understood better than anyone that memory isn’t linear—it’s an experience that sneaks up on you, triggered by something as simple as a taste.

Once, a friend told me about the passage on madeleines, and it has stayed with me ever since: ‘No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin… And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray…when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea.’

Proust’s words remind us that memory is not just about the past—it’s something we relive, something that reshapes itself with every return. And perhaps, as he once wrote, ‘The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.’

Sharing below some of the works on display at the exhibition ‘Proust and the Arts’.

every day,

I'm struck by the quiet magic hidden in the mundane. In the subtle shift of a gesture, the pause between words, or the soft echo of an untold story, ordinary moments reveal layers of meaning. It's in these silent spaces, in between, that we discover life’s profound symbolism.

When seemingly unrelated worlds converge, something extraordinary unfolds. As Julian Barnes observed, ‘You put together two things that have not been together before. And the world has changed.’

This idea has been echoing in my mind—reminding me that when we juxtapose the unexpected, we open up new realms of understanding.

the art of perception

Aldous Huxley once said: ‘Experience is not what happens to you, it’s what you do with what happens to you.’ And Anaïs Nin reminds us: ‘We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.’

Every person is a point of view—an artist who, over time, sculpts a very personal way of interpreting the world. Our minds are not passive receivers but active interpreters.

As John Milton mused, ‘The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven.’ And George Bernard Shaw nails it down further: ‘Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.’

conversations within

Ever catch yourself talking to yourself? In that endless stream of thoughts running in the background?

William James once observed that ‘thoughts themselves are the thinkers.’ Our inner speech often resembles a cast of characters, each contributing to the ongoing conversation that shapes our identity. When you describe how you feel, you’re not just recounting events—you’re offering someone a map of your soul, a guide to the things you hold dear.

We all contain multitudes waiting to be expressed. Every conversation, whether with another person or within ourselves, is a chance to reveal a new layer of who we are.

can’t stop thinking about how

• everyday actions can become symbolically laden with meaning, like rituals we unconsciously create for ourselves

• silence can be as eloquent as words, shaping the spaces between what is said and left unsaid, carrying emotions too complex for language

• fleeting moments often hold the most weight, revealing their significance only in hindsight

• memory is less like a timeline and more like a constellation—fragments scattered, waiting for us to connect the dots

• the smallest details—an object, a scent, a passing remark—can transport us to another time

ty for being here. let’s meet again soon.

♡

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I’m not sure if it came naturally from speaking Spanish—where “por favor” is commonly used—or if it was simply part of who he was. In English, ending a request with “please” is less common, but hearing it felt like a refreshing reminder of kindness. Instead of “I’ll have a soda” or “I want a coffee,” he softly said, “I’d like a water, please.” It was small, but it made me think about how we treat each other as human beings.

In a world where courtesy often feels like it’s eroding—where everyone wants something immediately, and “please” or “thank you” can feel outdated—this small gesture touched my heart. It made me realize that acknowledging another person’s effort, even in something as routine as ordering a drink, is a form of warmth and gratitude. As the plane droned on, I dozed off, comforted by the idea that simple kindness still exists.

overheard @ work
As the holidays approach, the ritual of gift-giving kicks into high gear. It’s as if we’re all programmed to buy and give on specific dates—Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries—like clockwork. But why not surprise the people we love when we feel like it, not when we’re told to? Imagine how special a gift would feel if it wasn’t tied to an occasion already marked on everyone’s calendar.

There’s nothing wrong with celebrating birthdays or Christmas. It’s just that when a gift arrives unexpectedly—just because the thought of someone made you smile—that’s a different kind of magic. Maybe we can break free from the script society hands us, design our own special days, and let genuine spontaneity guide our giving. It might make our gestures of love feel more sincere and memorable.

little things that aren't little

• "of course i remember"

• noticing

• comfortable silence

• saying something that makes your friend laugh harder than expected

• chopped fruits from parent

• the last bite

• being asked for your opinion

• minor tone changes

• when they offer you their coat

• "you were right"

• when they give you the bigger slice

• “i see you”

• a calmed nervous system when around them

• when they pay attention to what you show them

• “i feel the same way”

walking slow in London
Recently, I broke a bone in my foot and the doctor ordered me to rest for six weeks. For anyone who knows me, staying put isn’t exactly my style. London is a city made for walking—I thrive on stepping outside, running errands on foot, and feeling the city’s pulse beneath my soles. Suddenly, I couldn’t do that. At first, I was stuck inside, frustrated and restless. Eventually, I ventured out again, but I found myself moving at a snail’s pace.

If you’ve ever been to London, you know people walk fast. Like, really fast. They’re basically the sprinters of the pedestrian world. Being overtaken by everyone was infuriating because I used to be one of them—always on a mission, never slowing down.

But then something shifted. Instead of being annoyed, I started observing the people around me. I remembered a thought I once had under the influence of acid: slow down. Stop racing toward the end goal. Notice life around you—take in the beauty, breathe in the wonder, be curious like a child.

As I hobbled along, I saw people in a new light. Their gestures, their interactions, the way they carried themselves. I smiled, heart full, suddenly grateful that my slower pace allowed me to really see the world I’d been rushing through.

what made my heart smile this week
In the bustling streets of Soho, I spotted two people who hadn’t seen each other in ages fall into a passionate hug. The energy they shared was magnetic—smiles wide, warmth radiating all around. For that brief moment, the city’s chaos gave way to genuine human connection, and it made my heart light up.

questions on my mind

• how were you loved today?

• what did my fingers held before him?

• is there something you never get asked but want to be?

• how old do you feel?

• what do you wish existed?

ty for being here. let’s meet again soon.

don’t forget, little by little is how we arrive.

♡

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To really know another person, perhaps we need to glimpse how they see the world. Maybe the only way to truly know someone is to understand how they experience us.

Mary Pipher once said that ‘to be able to understand people and to be present for them in their experience – that’s the important thing in the world.' It’s a reminder of the art of listening, of learning to be present for others in ways that reveal our own reflections.

words as pilgrimages

In much the same way that Proust used the taste of a madeleine to journey into his past, words allow us to make pilgrimages not only to memory but to possibility. They are not vessels of communication; they are portals to our past, gateways to our desires, and blueprints for our future. But where does that leave us in the present moment? Do we want to decode life or deepen it? Is existence something to be understood, or enjoyed?

stories we tell ourselves

We are what we articulate, even if only to ourselves. Our self-image is a mirror of our own imagination, an internal story we craft. Prisoners of our perspectives, we’re also the editors of our existence, giving rhythm to the contours of our lives.

Nietzsche wrote, ‘There are no facts, only interpretations.’ And in his last letter, WB Yeats claimed, ‘Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.’ These reflections seem to invite us to ponder the boundaries of our own understanding. Every act of expression or connection is a kind of compromise, a space where what we desire meets what we believe possible.

a playlist for you. let this music be your guide as you drift—floating through the cosmos of your own thoughts and finding clarity not in answers, but in the quiet of being.

‘The slower I walked, the sooner I reached places’

— Rithika Pandey

ty for being here. let’s meet again soon.

♡

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