when the tides inside my mind run high,
i come to you with a sigh

and the moment your vastness meets my eyes,
your waves whisper;

slow down, my child.

i watch your poetic waves
become one with the sun
sparkling into art

it’s as though you’re in conversation with the sky
and the cosmos
making love with the light

i sit there, staring into your endlessness,

and little by little,
the noise inside me softens

once, a wave rushed towards me
like a sudden burst of affection
only to return quietly to the sea
leaving me longing for one more embrace

your horizon reminds me
that my mind is not as endless as it feels

what once seemed like a storm
becomes nothing more than a ripple

against your infinite blue 🩵

every time i leave,
i take a little of your calm with me

so thank you for reminding me

that as every wave returns to the sea,
i too awaken from a beautiful dream
and find my way back to reality ~

written with “Snow On The Beach” by Taylor Swift & Lana Del Rey softly playing in the background 💌 iykyk

thank you for being here <3

Comment

lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to “find my spark back.”

It’s a phrase we throw around so casually, as if our spark is something we accidentally leave behind somewhere. As if it’s waiting for us in an old hobby, a different city, a new routine, or the next chapter of our lives.

but the more I sat with it, the more I realised I wasn’t really looking for my spark.

I was looking for myself, or maybe a specifc version of me.

and that made me think about just how many times I’ve lost myself over the years

sometimes for love. (ahh quite a lot of times) sometimes for acceptance. sometimes it’s because we become so consumed by trying to be who the world wants us to be that we slowly stop recognizing who we already are

we lose ourselves in people who ask us to shrink. in relationships that make us question our worth. in trying to fit into spaces that were never meant for us. we abandon pieces of ourselves in the hope that someone else will choose us, understand us, or just stay

and somewhere along the way, we forget what it feels like to simply be ourselves

well, well..

the beautiful thing is we can always come back. (what a relief)

I’ve realized that coming home to yourself isn’t a grand, life-altering moment. It isn’t loud. It doesn’t announce itself. It’s mostly quiet

It feels like slipping into your oldest oversized T-shirt after spending the whole day in clothes that never really fit

like sleeping on freshly changed bedsheets after an exhausting day, when your entire body finally lets go.

like finding the bookmark tucked inside a book you couldn’t put down as a teenager, smiling at the familiar creases and underlined sentences because the girl who once read those pages is still somewhere inside you

like hearing an old Ariana Grande song you used to scream-sing in your bedroom at sixteen and realizing you still know every lyric by heart

like rewatching a comfort movie you’ve already seen a hundred times (Jab We Met, ofc) not because you’re looking for something new, but because you already know exactly how it’s going to make you feel

like birds returning to their nests every evening without needing directions

like waves finding their way back to the ocean, over and over again, as if they’ve always known where they belong

maybe that’s what our hearts do too, maybe they never really forget the way back.

2 years ago, when I moved to London, my mom told me something I’ll never forget.

“If things don’t work out, you can always take the next flight back home.”

at the time, I thought she was talking about a place.

a house
a city
and a room that would always be waiting for me

her words comforted me because they meant there would always be somewhere I could return to if everything else fell apart. but the older I get, the more I realize she unknowingly taught me something much bigger.

that’s what coming home to yourself really means.

not criticizing yourself for getting lost. not punishing yourself for all the times you abandoned yourself trying to hold on to someone else. and not feeling ashamed that life pulled you in every direction except inward.

just welcoming yourself back the way you’d hug a friend you haven’t seen in months <3

with the same tenderness my mother did when she said, “If things don’t work out, you can always take the next flight back home.”

no questions asked, no conditions. just the quiet comfort of knowing there would always be a place waiting for me.

I’ve spent a long time thinking she was talking about a house.

now I think she was teaching me how to become one.

because before there was a city I called home, there was me.

before there was a house I belonged to, there was me.

before I found home in other people, there was me.

I was my first home. 💌

and that’s why I’m no longer afraid of losing myself.

life will probably pull me away from myself again. I’ll probably outgrow people, lose myself in love, I may forget my own voice every now and then. that’s part of being human.

but now I know something I didn’t know before.

i can always come back home to myself and i’ll always have the same place waiting for me with open arms.

it’s almost as if my heart knows my soul’s address by memory 🕊️

thank you for being here.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

“just let it go.” move on. I’ve heard it countless times

“but I don’t want to” I said.

as relieving as it sounds, the act of letting go feels like the opposite of relief

It’s not one moment of realization. It’s not a movie scene where the character stands on top of a mountain, looking at the view and suddenly feeling euphoric.

it’s quieter than that

It’s fighting demons in your mind every day

stopping yourself from reaching out countless times, writing messages and deleting them.

wanting closure but knowing no answer would actually be enough, eventually killing the urge.

acting as if someone is a complete stranger even when you learnt the tiniest details about them by heart.

people talk about letting go as if it’s a magic potion that will erase everything and make my world as good as new or make leaving easier. but it never will be.

it goes like..

“remember the bad parts, forget the good ones”

“convince yourself it wasn’t worth it”
”and move forward”

but what if I don’t want to forget?

what if I don’t want to turn something meaningful into something meaningless just because it ended?

because for me letting go isn’t always about leaving behind things that hurt you

most times it’s about leaving behind things you still love

and I think that’s the cruel part which isn’t talked about

we don’t need to turn something into a villain to justify letting it go

things don’t always end because it became unbearable

sometimes it simply reaches the end of what it was meant to be

and letting go becomes harder

because there is nothing to hate, only something you once loved.

and suddenly someone who became part of your day, your thoughts, your routines, your inner world, becomes someone you no longer speak to.

that might be the strangest part of all.

or should i say the most heartbreaking part.

because nothing disappears.

the places still exist

the memories still exist

the person still exists

only your place in each other’s lives changes

I used to think moving forward meant leaving things behind

but moving forward doesn’t erase where you’ve been

how could it?

when I left pieces of my heart in all those places.

good places. bad places.

places I would return to if I could

maybe that’s why I never understood people calling letting go brave

to me, it always felt like grief. like standing outside a place you once called home and realizing you no longer have the keys.

so yes,

I let it go. I had to.

life kept moving. and eventually, it took me along.

he returned to his life.

I returned to mine.

and one day I realized

the opposite of love was never hate.

It was letting go

and somehow, it went from

“I love him”to “I let him go.”

Subscribe

thank you for being here <3 tap the subscribe button for more.

am I the chosen one ?

for failure

for heartbreak

for loss

for instability

for endless grief

some days it feels that way

as if life looked at me and said, “ hey you! you get the hard lessons.”

we spend so much of our lives keeping score of what went wrong

the opportunities we didn’t get

the people we lost

the plans that fell apart

the versions of ourselves we had to leave behind

we look at our suffering and ask, “why was I chosen for this?”

but maybe that’s not the question I should be asking

because the greatest act of being chosen happened long before any of that

I was chosen to live.

chosen to wake up this morning

chosen to experience another day of sunlight and conversation and possibility

chosen to have a body that carries me through the world

chosen to have a mind that can think and learn.

chosen to have a heart capable of loving, even when it breaks

heartbreak is not proof that I wasn’t chosen

failure is not proof that god forgot me

loss is not proof that I have been abandoned

those are not punishments

they are part of the human experience

every person who has ever lived has known grief

every person has carried disappointment

every person has walked through uncertainty

that is the journey

but life itself? is the gift.

to be here at all is the miracle

to be healthy

to choose to be kind

to be able to begin again

to have another chance to grow into wisdom and virtue

to witness another sunset

to love another person

to create something that did not exist yesterday

these are the blessings

so, yes

I am the chosen one. chosen for life 💌

not because I was spared from suffering

or because everything worked out

I am the chosen one because out of all the possibilities

I was given life.

and every morning I wake up

I get to choose it back.

Subscribe

thank you for being here <3 subscribe for more!

they say “hurt people, hurt people”

but i’ve spent years protecting people's hearts while mine was breaking apart.

they say “home isn't a place, it's a person”

well, I found mine in both. and while the places stayed intact, the people didn't.

they say “time heals everything”

but sometimes it only helps you conceal the things you’ve learned to live without.

they say “everything happens for a reason”

maybe that's why i’m still looking for those reasons because some endings left me with nothing but questions.

they say “distance makes the heart grow fonder”

but distance simply teaches you how to miss someone quietly and how to carry someone without you reaching for them.

they say “learn to let go of what no longer serves you”.

as if love and memory are things you can place in a donation box. as if grief has an expiry date. as if the heart understands timing.

they say “people who matter, stay.”

so why did people who carried pieces of my heart leave me with only their absence to hold?

they say “if it's meant to be it’ll be”

but some things don’t stay because they’re written in the stars. they stay because someone keeps writing them into their life.

perhaps the truth was never in the saying itself

it was always in the life that followed 🪐

Subscribe

I was always waiting for answers
because I loved more

I kept dreaming of happily ever after
because I loved more

I kept hurting, and still smiling through it
because I loved more

I started feeling everything the said, the unsaid,
and everything in between
because I loved more

I kept giving all I had
yet I never felt like it was enough
because I loved more

I held onto almosts, maybes,
and words that were never fully spoken
because I loved more

I kept finding truth in all your lies
because I loved more

I was constantly breaking apart,
but still holding on to what we had
because I loved more

and after countless betrayals
I kept calling it love anyway

maybe that was the tragedy of it all
because in the end, even love wasn’t enough to stay 💫

Subscribe

how we say he/ she was my whole world, everything I did revolved around them.

and what happens when they leave?

how does someone become your whole world and when they leave it all comes crashing down.

every year we hear "the world is gonna end soon"

but mine ended long ago.

i'm left alone feeling like a corpse with no soul just a mere body,

longing for someone

getting consumed by the emptiness of it all

staring at the sky, remembering how beautiful my world used to be.

looking at stars shining staring into my eyes, trying to find the sparkle that i once borrowed from the same stars 🌌

Subscribe

https://open.spotify.com/track/7uNnlVit5qDvfOje0pqICF?si=axBGVfiaQc2puAhubzs0cA

that girls are each other’s worst enemies.

that girls are jealous. competitive. insecure.

that girls can’t really be happy for other girls.

and for a while, I believed all of it.

I had that phase too the very classic “I’m not like other girls” phase. The “I get along with boys more, it’s just easier”phase.

and honestly, it didn’t come from nowhere. i’ve had girl friendships that hurt me. girls who bullied me in school, who made me feel small, made me question myself, made me feel like I was too much or not enough. while I was trying to be a real friend, loyal, present, all in and still somehow ended up feeling bad about myself.

for a long time, I genuinely thought maybe this is just how friendships between girls are supposed to be.

but then life moved, and so did I.

then in middle school, I met a different set of girls. teenage girls. full of rage, confusion, & insecurities. our frontal lobes nowhere close to developed. we were all just figuring things out badly and loudly. till grade 10, most of my friendships were with girls. and it was one hell of a blast, quite literally and dramatically lol.

then came high school. I transferred to a new school, and met a new set of girls. all of us somewhere believed that we are grown-ups now and just wanted to fit in. I met all sorts of girls some sweet, pure & innocent, some rather bitter or bitchy? if i may say so.

somewhere in all of this chaos of growing up with them, I found my footing.

In class 11, I found someone I called my best friend. Slowly, she became everything to me.I got consumed by that friendship in the way you only can when you’re young — when one person starts feeling like your whole world.

then, like some friendships do, it started to fizzle.

and I found someone else. someone who really saw me and loved me for who I was, someone I saw too. and for the first time, I understood something very clearly, maybe I didn’t need a hundred people. maybe all I needed was one genuinely good girl.

one person who really reciprocated the love, care, and softness I was giving. And I found her. (i’m sure she’s reading this and knows who she is) I love you ♥️

at the same time, an old friendship from middle school was quietly finding its way back to me too. Back then, we weren’t even that close in school. But in that strange in-between phase of growing up, we became best friends almost without realizing it. i can’t even imagine life withut her anymore. ( you’re reading this too, and you know you have my heart) FOREVER 🫶🏻

and till date, those two are pieces of my heart. like puzzle pieces almost

now I’m in my twenties. (don’t ask early or late) :)

I’ve gone through so many friendships since then.

some stayed. some didn’t.

ssome taught me something.

some quietly faded.

some are still there, even if life means we don’t talk every day.

but the love is still there, maybe it’ll always be.

and now, more than ever, I believe in girlhood. maybe that’s where I should define it.

because girlhood, to me, isn’t just being a girl or having “girlfriends” It’s the familiarity of being understood without having to explain every single thing.

It’s women who understand the female experience in ways that sometimes words can’t hold, the emotions, the pain, the overthinking, the underlying things, the things you don’t even know how to say out loud.

It’s boy drama

It’s first dates, last dates, terrible dates.

It’s talking about the same thing 20,000 times.

It’s calling someone just to say, “I don’t even know why I’m upset, but I am.”

It’s being allowed to vent. spiral. feel. repeat.

the internet made “girl’s girl” into a phrase. but I think people miss what it really means.

It’s not just sharing lip gloss in a club bathroom. It’s not just sending each other links to the top you bought or the boots you’re obsessing over.

that’s sweet obviously.

but that’s not all of it. real girlhood is being there in the actual chaos of life.

through heartbreak, confusion, family drama, identity crises & all those canon events in a female’s life.

through becoming & un-becoming

through all the versions of yourself that come and go

of course, you won’t align with every woman that deeply. and you’re not supposed to.

but when you do find women who grow with you and also help you grow, everything shifts.

women who uplift you, but also correct you when you’re wrong

women who make you see another perspective

women who let you be messy and human

women who don’t compete with you or your potential, but quietly cheer for it and make you see it, they become the mirror.

that, to me, is real girlhood.

and I really do think it saves you, as it did to me. not in some dramatic movie way. but in the everyday way.

In the I know who to call way.

In the someone will understand this feeling way.

In the I don’t have to carry this alone way.

I wish every woman gets to experience that kind of friendship at least once in her life.

because somewhere along the way after all the friendships that fizzled, the heartbreak, the phases, the learning, the growing, I stopped believing the stories I was told about women.

and started believing my own reality.

so yeah, girlhood really saved me.

and this is for all the women who helped me believe that. eternally grateful.<3

only love for all my girls, you make this world a better place every single day! keep being you. ⭐️

I don’t think I’m scared of failing. I think I’m scared of wasting myself.

the word “potential” and what it even means has been lingering on my mind and is consuming my thoughts lately.

and now that i’ve heard and thought about it so much I don’t even know is it even real? or is it just something we’ve all been told for so long that we’ve started believing it without really questioning it.

“you have so much potential, you can do so much more” i’ve heard this since I was a kid. i’m sure whoever said it was coming from a good place.

but i’ve repeatedly heard this in every phase of life, not just from a career point of view but in life, as a person. like it’s a measuring standard.

and now when I think about it, I’ve internalised that somewhere.

because one thing I’ve always felt about myself is that I know I can do more.

be more disciplined and show up better
for work, for people, for myself in every sense

and it’s not self-doubt. it’s almost the opposite. because I know I have it in me and maybe that’s exactly why it feels uncomfortable now.

because so many times in life I’ve done things I didn’t even think I was capable of,.

like moving to London at 23 figuring life out and starting from ground zero, building something for myself from scratch, be it learning how to cook, just surviving extreme cold without any warmth, pulling myself out of the darkest places alone and making meaningful relationships.

I didn’t sit there thinking I have the potential to do this

I just… did it and then realised later that I could

and just a year ago, coming back to India, moving to Mumbai, starting over again in a completely different way. a new city, a completely new pace, and new version of life. this change was something that I didn’t see coming and so I wasn’t prepared for it.

but as time passed, I found myself trying to make a place for myself in this big big city of dreams, I secured an internship in one of the biggest international magazine house: ELLE India. the experiences this position gave me was something i’d only imagined once. It showed my that my potential was way beyind my imagination. tricky right?

every time something major in life happens, it feels like my idea of what I’m capable of just stretches. like there’s always more I didn’t know about myself until I’m in it.

and in that way, thinking about “potential” can actually feel nice.
It pushes you a little. It makes you try things.
It reassures you, in a quiet way, that you’re probably capable of more than you think.

but I also think we internalise it a bit too much, almost in a way that it turns into this constant voice in the back of your head, this version of you that exists somewhere in theory doing everything right, being everything you think you should be.

and i’m just… constantly comparing myself to her (23 y/o version of me)

and when nothing MAJOR is happening or i’m not doing anything BIG enough
I’m not even doing the basic things I know I can do.

that’s when it hits the most.

not because I’m failing. but because I feel stuck almost stagnant.

like everything is a bit of a blur, days are passing, but I don’t feel fully in them.
I’m just kind of existing, not really living

especially in a city like Mumbai, that feeling is even louder.

because there’s so much happening around you all the time. so much to do, to experience, to be a part of and here I am, can’t help but feel like I have it in me to do more with my time, my energy, my life.

& to experience more

but right now, I’m just… not.

and in phases like this, “potential” doesn’t feel motivating.
It feels like something that’s slipping away.

like I’m not using it the way I should be, something that I could experience in the brightest days of life.

I don’t even know if that’s true,
or if it just feels that way because right now I don’t have the capacity I thought I would.

maybe potential isn’t something fixed
or maybe it’s not something you either live up to or waste

maybe it just changes with you.

some phases stretch you beyond imagination, some slow you down
some phases are just about getting through.

at 23 my highest potential looked like moving countries and rebuilding my entire life

and now at 25 it just looks like showing up without punishing myself or comparing myself to versions of the past.

the feeling is still incomplete, and the word potential almost feels hypothetical to me.

I think I’m still coming to terms with the fact that potential doesn’t always have to be greater than what you’ve already done, that it doesn’t always have to keep expanding in visible ways.

that sometimes it just… shifts and you don’t always recognize it when you’re in it.

i’m just sitting with these thoughts for now :)

and I don’t really want to overthink it or explain it too much
I just keep coming back to this one feeling

everything just… goes.

good things, bad things, everything in between.
It doesn’t stay.

I think we forget that sometimes.
when things feel good, we want to hold onto them tightly.
and when things feel bad, we feel like we’re stuck in them.
but everything moves, everything shifts.
even us.

there’s something strangely comforting about that.

especially in phases like this when everything feels a little foggy.
when nothing feels very clear or fully right, not fully wrong either.
like you’re stuck, but time isn’t.

days just keep going by.
whether you’re fully there for them or not.

and maybe that’s the only thing that’s actually moving when everything else feels still.

time. ( waits for none so we hear )

and because of that, no matter how I’m feeling right now,this exact feeling, this exact moment, it’s already passing.

I won’t feel this exact way tomorrow.
even if things don’t magically get better, they won’t be this.

and maybe in this moment, it’s enough

that’s what Namjoon was trying to say too

there’s something about the way he puts things into words, simple, almost obvious, but they stay with you and make you feel something you already knew, but couldn’t really articulate.

not in a complicated way. not like a lesson you have to sit and understand.
just something that meets you where you are.

that this will pass.
that you don’t have to fight every moment or hold onto it so tightly
that things are allowed to come and go, the way they’re supposed to

I think that’s why his words feel like comfort more than anything else

It doesn’t try to fix or make things better instantly
It just lets you breathe

like you can just be where you are right now
even if it feels unclear or heavy or unfinished

and you don’t have to rush out of it.

because it won’t stay the same anyway and tomorrow I’ll wake up again.
and maybe it’ll feel a little different.
or maybe it won’t.

but either way
this will pass too.

like he said, everything goes. 🪽

putting a verse of the song for context:

adulthood, so far, has just felt like leaving things behind.

not once, not in big, obvious ways, but again and again, in small, quiet moments that don’t really give you time to sit with them and it’s just one thing after another.

rant timeeee :)
sometimes life gives you a little space in between, just enough to breathe. but most of the time it all comes at once and you’re just there, trying to keep up with everything changing around you. sometimes it’s just so hard to keep up, to process things as they happen, while also moving forward at the same time.

how friendships end, not always with a fight or something dramatic. sometimes they just… drift. and you just outgrow each other. the dynamic changes as you step into different phases of your life, and suddenly what once felt easy starts to feel unfamiliar.
and then you meet new people. you try again. you open up again. even when a part of you is still holding on to what didn’t work out the last time.

you outgrow places you once thought you’d always belong to.
your hometown starts to feel different, or maybe you’re the one who’s changed. things that once felt like home don’t fit the same way anymore.
so you leave for something better and without even realizing it, you leave behind versions of yourself that only existed there.

and then there’s love. (ahh)
you feel something real for someone or at least it feels real at the time. you let yourself believe in it, you give it your energy, your time, parts of yourself.
and then it doesn’t work out. or they’re not who you thought they were.
and somehow, you’re still expected to move on. to be okay. to try again. to let someone new in, even when you’re still figuring out how to make sense of everything that just happened.

it gets overwhelming.
not just because things end, but because they don’t end one by one. there’s no clean sequence to any of this. it’s just… everything, all at once.
and you don’t really get a pause. you just have to keep going. (sucks)

I think that’s the part no one really talks about.
that adulthood isn’t this phase where everything starts making sense or finally settles down. It’s just constant change. constant endings. constantly starting over.

just trying to make sure you’re still moving forward without completely losing yourself in the process.

maybe that’s why it feels so heavy sometimes.
because I don’t want a simple, predictable life. I want to be so many things. I want to feel deeply, experience everything fully.
and I guess wanting that means I don’t get to stay comfortable for too long. It means I have to keep letting go, keep beginning again, even when I’m tired.

I don’t think it necessarily gets easier.
I think you just slowly learn how to carry it better.
how to let go without it breaking you every time. how to start again without overthinking it as much. how to hold onto your past without letting it stop you.

or maybe you don’t.
maybe you just keep going, figuring it out as you go, carrying some things, leaving some behind, without really knowing if you’re doing it right.

but unfortunately… it’s true.

i’ve been wanting to do this for the longest time.

i even tried at one point, built a whole site on wordpress and everything.
but it got a little overwhelming… all the editing, layouts, trying to make it look perfect. and somewhere in all of that, i just stopped.

because it stopped being about writing.

then i found Substack. 💛

and i don’t know, something about this space just felt… easy.
for months, i’ve been reading stuff on here in between office hours, randomly during the day, and it kind of became my escape (the best kind)

but also highly inspiring

like all these people just… writing. no overthinking, no perfect aesthetic, just putting their thoughts out there.

and at some point i was like, okay, why am i not doing this?

so this is me, finally starting.
no fancy setup, no pressure, no trying to make it perfect.

just writing.

from Emily Cooper to Carrie Bradshaw, apparently.

lol.

i don’t really know what this is going to become yet.
but i do know i have a lot to say, and this feels like a good place to start.

so here i am :)

if any of this resonates with you, I hope you stick around
i think we’ll get along <3 ~ A