I've been thinking about the women who came before us. Our mothers. Our grandmothers. Their mothers. Women who stayed in marriages where they were unhappy. Women who were used to domestic violence. I often see people joking about " ningekua na bwana na vile huwa nachelewa kupika ningekua nishapigwa" or " vile mimi huongelesha wanaume if tungekuwa in the old times I would have beaten up. " Women who were cheated on and told that this was simply what men did. Women who never knew they could be child free. Women whose entire identities were built around being someone's wife, someone's mother, someone's daughter. Always someone's something. They have never truly known what it is to belong to themselves.

And you see this everywhere. Every time a man criticizes a woman it's based on "someone's wife btw. " "someone's mom Btw"

If there's a guy reading this I want you to answer me. Do you ever see a woman outside a wife or a baby making machine? Why do you feel the need to make women build their entire lives based on being future mothers and wives?

And most men are so pissed off seeing women having fun. Choosing who to have sex with. Choosing what to do with their lives. And not men only also women who have been conditioned by the patriarchy that their existence is nothing more than to serve them. So you'll see these women hating on other women and insulting them because they are doing something they can't.

And it makes me wonder. Why do you feel the need to impress a gender that hates you? Why do you want to seek validation from people who see you as wives and mothers and not even actually people? Why do you feel the need to impress people who do everything they are against you doing? Why feel the need to serve the patriarchy?

There is misogyny and there is personal preference. If you prefer to be with someone that doesn't do clubbing, doesn't go out, doesn't drink or smoke, hasn't been around w many people. Make sure you are the same. If not, it's hypocrisy and oppression. And it goes both ways. Ladiss you are also allowed to choose. Don't settle with someone that's against everything you believe in just because he's a man. Have your standards also. You cannot be taking in every other Joe and Peter.

Other than that live your life and let other people live their lives. Women are people. Do men ever realize that?? Like I have actual dreams. Interests. I want to have fun. And none of it is based on me being a mom or a wife.

And I keep wondering: Were the women before us self aware? Or did they simply never get the chance to ask the questions we ask now? Maybe it's unfair to look back at the women before us and wonder why they stayed. Maybe they didn't know they could leave. Maybe they didn't know there was another way to live.

Imagine living your entire life believing something is normal simply because everyone around you is living the same way. If your mother was beaten, your aunt was beaten, your grandmother was beaten, and every woman you knew told you that marriage required endurance, how would you know that it wasn't supposed to be that way? If every woman you knew had five children, six children, eight children, how would you know that motherhood could be a choice? If every woman around you was cheated on and told to forgive, how would you know that fidelity was something you were allowed to expect?

Maybe ignorance wasn't bliss. Maybe ignorance was the only way some of them survived.

And that's what makes the present so uncomfortable. Because we know now. Btw I feel sick when I hear girls advising each other "Every man out here cheats. Just settle with the one with money. " like hell no. Not for me for sure. The situations you tolerate will always be your reality. The universe won't reward you something you've never asked for or something you've decided you've already settled on.

I hate. Truly hate that somehow, we're still talking about the same things. How are we still here? How is it possible that we're still complaining about the same thing our grandmas complained about?

Someone is lying. And it's definitely not us. Have men not evolved? Why is empathy still a new concept to them? Don't they have the ability to? Like aki I'm so tired of hearing the same complaints. Cheating men. Violent men. Unkind men. Like bro aren't y'all getting tired of doing the same shit? When is the revolution going to happen? Ama we should just accept they are doomed and will never leave some traits behind?

I look at my girls and I wanna give them such a huge hug. Do guys ever talk to each other? Complain about how they are being treated by their women? No. They don't. They don't even care. They leave. They don't stomach shit. They don't write substacks about women. They don't go for advices. They don't cry the whole night just to go back to the same place. And I envy that. That's one thing I really like them for. They know when to be done. I wish more women will become like that. If I could forfeit all abilities to feel any sort of romantic or sexual attraction for men I would. Because it hurts and it's draining. And sometimes you do crave someone's son to cuddle you up, kiss you and all that. Take you out. Having a man by your side but it's so fleeting. The good moments. 90% of the time is you feeling like shit. And praying to God to make you unlove them.

But they're exceptions. There are women with incredible husbands. Boyfriends. And it's so sad that wonderful men are rare. There are some men who God made as an apology for their gender. And it's sad because that wonderful man is an average woman on their bad day.

If I were a guy I'd feel so lucky. It's so easy to find good women. Like someone who won't beat you, someone that'll love n be kind to you. Someone respectful. Like they don't have to use so much strength to find a good woman. I envy that.

And it's sad because even the loveliest guy you know will do something that'll remind you they're still a man. You may think you've met someone so woke. But shege delayed is not shege denied.

Don't ever feel the need to be a good woman. To keep quiet. Be crazy please. The bitchiest women have the most amazing men. Because they don't tolerate all that bullshit. And live your life. You don't need to make a boyfriend out of every guy you meet. You don't need to give a child to every guy you like. I also feel women enable men a lot. You'll meet a guy - a very ill behaved person and trust me, there's a woman that tolerated all that and it gave him the confidence to behave like that.

And sometimes I have this rage. That's been passed down to me from women of my generation. And it burns every time I think of the opresssion. I am woman full of rage that doesn't know where to go.

I'm just gonna end this here. I'm starting to get angry. But men should see women as people- it breaks me that this even needs to be said. I'm not a wife. I'm not a mother. I am Wairimu. And I want to be just that. And they should change. A deep shift is needed. Call each other out. Stop entertaining your misogynistic and sexist friends. Stop the dick sucking please.

You can get your son raise him so well then send him out to the world and he comes back as an asshole. Like it's so concerning and my greatest fear is having a son. Because what if he becomes the very person that oppresses my gender?

And women stop normalizing "they are just like that, they disappoint you so many times you just have to get used to it. " like no. I don't want that. I don't want to get used to being with someone that lacks empathy and consideration. I don't want to be with someone that disappoints me every now and then that I've gotten used to it.

Why does a woman deciding she doesn't want children feel like an attack on men who want children? Why does a woman choosing herself feel like selfishness? Why does independence feel threatening? And sometimes I wonder if the anger isn't really about women. Maybe it's about the fact that some men were raised to believe that women would always be there. That there would always be a woman cooking. Cleaning. Forgiving. Having children. Staying.

And now women are saying no it angers them. And suddenly everyone is shocked. Were we supposed to be okay if he shouts at you, at least he doesn't hit you. That if he hits you, at least he doesn't hit you often. That if he cheats, at least he comes home. That he doesn't respect you, at least he provides. That marriage means enduring. I think that's one of the saddest things we've inherited. That disappointment from men is some unavoidable law of nature.

But I don't want to believe that. I don't want to believe that loving someone automatically means preparing yourself for the ways they will eventually hurt you. So maybe self awareness is a punishment. Once you know better how do you go pretending that you don't?

I really hope the next generation won't talk about this. It's such a tiring subject. I hope there's a time women won't have to be so conscious about who they fall in love with. About who they become friends with. This should be easy. I don't want to see any TikTok or substack about how to make a man treat you well. No power games. Just both genders coexisting peacefully. But will we ever reach that in a patriarchal society? Where everything is tailored to always enable them?

We've been used to cleaning our place up when someone comes over that we don't want an impromptu hang out or when the group decides to pass at yours. I've been telling my friends over and over again, IT'S OKAY. I don't care about your coffee/ tea cup that's on your table. Or the clothes on your bed. It's all proof of your existence. I wanna come around when your sink is full of dishes and you've worn the same hoodie for three days. When your room looks like your mind. Let me in.

You can just come. Come as you are. Come exhausted. Come confused. Come angry. As your friend, I am offering you that. Come to me. I want to sit with you in your mess. We'll figure it out. Or maybe we won't figure it out that day. Maybe we'll just sit there and exist together. Maybe we'll drink tea in silence. Maybe we'll watch terrible movie and forget about the world for an hour. That counts too.

Come talk to me about the ex you went crazy about or the things you can't forgive yourself for. The uncertainties you have. All the new things you've been trying to explore. Tell me about your thoughts. What you think makes you impure. I want to do your hair when it's greasy. Or dye it for the 9th time. And while we're at it, let's try every eyeshadow shade in the drawer. Let's put on the ridiculous lipstick color neither of us would normally buy. As we're folding clothes, you'll notice a terrible terrible shirt and you'll still choose to keep or and I'll ask you again " why did you buy it? " then you'll run this story of how you thought it'll look good with a certain pair of pants - it didn't. And you decided to keep it because.

I want to sit beside you when you have the worst flu of your life. I'll make you soup and you'll complain it has a lot of chilli. I wanna sit beside you when your mind feels sick. And don't say a word more. You don't need to over-explain yourself to me, love. Never. Over anything.

Tell me about your mom. Do you think you're like her? Do you think she's happy with your dad? Talk about the times she never said sorry? Do you want to talk about your dad?

This was never about spilled coffee or clothes on the floor but are you willing to let me sit with you when you feel messy? When you feel dirty?

I just want to sit with you.

That sums up on the type of friend I am.

This piece contains intense depictions of substance use, addiction, relapse, emotional distress, and dependency. It may be triggering for people who have experienced addiction, are in recovery, or have loved ones affected by substance abuse.

Please read with care.

The world does not begin with a needle, a pipe, or a pill. It begins in the "white".

Before the first hit, life is just normal. You are just walking. Then you find it. You touch it. Play with it. You don't take it. You continue walking. The second time you stumble upon it again. Curiosity grows . It’s the first time the dopamine receptors in your brain are hit with a flood they were never designed to manage. It is the moment the "White" is shattered.

The first time is an accident of grace. You didn’t know life could feel like this. You take the substance. Let’s call it the "Golden Nugget" and the laws of physics simply cease to apply to you and suddenly, you aren't just walking, you are "ascending".

The colors of the room sharpen into a high-definition vibrancy you’ve never seen. The anxiety that usually sits like a lead weight in your chest is no longer there. Your mind is so quiet. It is replaced by a warmth that feels like being hugged by the sun from the inside out. You look at your hands and they seem to glow. You feel witty, beautiful, and profoundly understood by the universe.

In this moment, the drug is not a problem. It is a solution. It is the missing piece of you. You think,“Why would anyone ever choose to be gray when they could be gold?” You are flying over the white void, and for the first time in your life, the horizon doesn't look like a dead end.

But here is the catch about flying: it requires an immense amount of fuel. And the fuel isn't the drug. The fuel is you.

The high ends.

The first crash is a bruise you think you can hide.

You hit the ground. It’s jarring, yes. Your head aches, your mouth is dry, and the sun feels a bit too bright the next morning. But the memory of the flight is still warm in your blood. You stand up, shake the dust off your coat, and try to continue your walk.

But the White Void has changed.

Yesterday, the walk was enough. Today, the walk feels insatiable. The silence of the apartment is no longer peaceful. The ordinary joy of a cup of coffee or a conversation with a friend feels "thin." The music doesn't hit the same. Watching your favorite show feels boring. Compared to the gold, reality looks like a Xerox of a Xerox, faded, grainy, and utterly pointless.

You aren't addicted yet. You tell yourself that. You just want to feel that way one more time. Just to make the weekend special. Just to survive the Monday blues. Just to have an out of body experience once in a while.

You find the next Nugget. You take it. The flight happens again, but if you were paying attention, you’d notice the altitude is a little lower. The music is a little quieter. And when you hit the ground this time, you don't just bounce. You THUD heavily.

This is where it all turns. Your feathers turn gray and its body sags. You start eroding yourself. The skin loses its luster. The eyes loses its light and become hollows like craters where only one thought lives. Your "walk", the way you move through the world, your career, your passions, school, name it, it all becomes a limp. You're no longer moving toward goals, you are merely dragging your carcass toward the next moment of relief. Just to make it till the end of the day. Right. Right.

Your friends notice first. They see the "graying" of your personality. You become flakey, then distant, then a ghost. You stop showing up to the things that used to define you because those things belong to the White Void, and you are a creature of the Gold.

But the Gold is betraying you.

By the fourth or fifth "Nugget," you realize that the flight is getting shorter every time. The "High" has been replaced by a "Not Low." You aren't taking the drug to fly anymore, you’re taking it just to stand up straight. You’re taking it so the shaking stops. You’re taking it to just show up for the day. Because the silence of the White is now filled with the screaming of your own mind. You are trading everything you've ever known, piece by piece, for three seconds of artificial peace. Artificial happiness.

Everything in your life starts being rewritten. The part of you that plans for the future, that loves your partner and friends, that wants to write a book, has been replaced. To your brain, the Nugget is now more important than water. It is more important than your work. It is more important than any relationship.

You stand in front of the mirror and you don't recognize the person looking back. That person is a stranger, a gray, shivering animal.

The tragedy is the pacing. The way the walks get shorter and the falls get more violent. You could use on Friday and be okay by Monday. Now, you use at noon and you’re in hell by four.

The world has shrunk. There is no more sky. There is no more horizon. There is only the distance between your hand and the Golden Nugget.

Then comes the final stage. The stage where the heaviness truly sets in. You are standing in the middle of your life, or what’s left of it. The furniture is gone, the bank account is empty, and the people who loved you have grown so exhausted. Your partner broke up with you because they can't stand seeing you like that. Mom doesn't call as regular. Dad is already grieving you. Your small sister no longer looks at you with admiration in her eyes. You feel it all. You have this immense self hatred and disgust towards yourself. You promise you are never reaching for it again. You stay imdoors. You don't go for the "Walks" anymore in fear you'll stumble upon a Nugget.

You are a shadow in a white room.

A Nugget sits before you.

You aren't rushing for it anymore. You don't have the energy to rush. You stand there, looking at it, and for a brief, flickering second, the "Old You" wakes up. The version of you that used to walk with an easy gait.

That version of you looks at the Nugget and feels a profound, soul crushing horror.

You know exactly what happens if you take it. You know the high will be a mockery. A two second twitch of dopamine that barely registers. You know the fall will be a catastrophic collapse into a darkness you might not wake up from. You know that this bite self sabotage. Literally a nail on the coffin.

The most emotional part of the addiction experience isn't the pain tbh. It’s the witnessing. Seeing your own gradual fall and no one else can save you apart from you. It's like drowning and you can't notice it, and people reach out for help but you don't wanna give your hand out because "just a little and I'll be out". While the real you is screaming for help.

You stare at the nugget with those sad, knowing eyes. The look of a person who has lost their free will. The look of someone who knows they are about to really hurt themselves but the hunger is louder than the grief. You take a bite. Another bite. Another one.

It ends in a slow fade to black.

The white void eventually becomes a black Hole. Everything that ever made you happy is now dull, boring and gone.

When you lose the ability to find joy in the mundane, the " white" you lose the ability to be human. Life is lived in those moments. It’s lived in the boring walks. Addiction robs you of that. It turns life into a series of high highs peaks and low lows. Until the lows get so deep they swallow the highs entirely.

But once you’ve tasted the Gold, the ground feels like a grave.

If you are the person in the White Void right now, staring at a Nugget, know this: Gravity is not your enemy.

Gravity is what keeps us connected to the earth. Gravity is what allows us to walk toward people we love. The flight was a lie. The Gold was a hallucination. The "Gray" you feel when you aren't high isn't death darling, it’s just the world, waiting for you to learn how to walk again.

The fall is heavy and the impact is very real but as long as there is still a you left to witness the cycle, there is a you that can break it.

Stop looking at the sky. Look at your feet. Take a step. The walk is the only thing that’s real.

It can be so hard to draw a line between fun and addiction. Fun is fun when you can leave it behind and still return to yourself. When you can wake up the next morning and still recognize yourself. When life feels as something worth living. Fun becomes concerning when it stops being an addition to your life and starts becoming the condition for surviving it. When you no longer do it to celebrate, but to escape. When “just this once” becomes a ritual, then a need, then you can't do without completely and you even sell parts of yourself for that one more high.

The White was never the enemy. It was home.

And you are allowed to come back.

"Nothing you become will disappoint me."

That line makes me sob. Because I am not an idea. I am not a role. I am not a promise that you can hold me to.

Sometimes I'm scared of evolving. The constant change. Will my lover appreciate all the versions? Or am I only loved when I remain? Will they still love me with the uncertainty I come with?

It sounds soft. Generous. Like love without friction. But when you sit with them for a while, it starts to feel heavier, almost unbearable in its honesty. Because loving someone like that means giving up something we rarely admit we depend on. The comfort of knowing who they are going to be. This is how they love me. And without even realizing it, we start holding onto that version like it’s the real thing. Like it’s something that can stay.

And when I drift from it, even a little, it doesn’t feel small. It feels like something slipping. So he reaches. Just in these small, almost invisible ways. He reminds me who I used to be. He feels that flicker of discomfort and call it concern, or confusion, or even just missing me. But underneath it, there’s this quiet wish: come back to where I recognize you.

It doesn’t feel like control when you’re in it. It feels like love trying to hold on. But maybe that’s what the pedestal really is. Not admiration, not even idealization exactly, but a fixed version of someone we can rely on. A way of keeping them still enough that we don’t have to keep adjusting or relearning.

And the thing is, no one can live there.

Because people don’t stay. Even when they try to. Even when they want to. They shift in ways that are subtle at first and then suddenly undeniable. And when they do, the love that once felt so certain starts to feel like it’s being tested.

Not because they’ve done something wrong.

But because they’ve become something we didn’t account for.

So what does it mean to say, you can’t disappoint me?

It sounds like unconditional love. But it’s more than that. It’s saying: " i’m not going to hold you against the version of you I created in my head. I’m not going to measure you against who you used to be for me. I’m going to meet you where you are, even if it unsettles me." And God. I wish I could hear that often.

Because if you really mean that, then you have to be willing to lose the version of me that felt easiest to love.

You have to be willing to sit with the unfamiliar. To not immediately turn my change into a problem. To not ask me even silently, to shrink back into something more recognizable.

And that doesn’t feel peaceful. It feels unstable. It feels like loving without something to hold onto.

Maybe that’s why we don’t do it very well.

Maybe that’s why we keep building pedestals, even when we know how easily they break. Because it’s easier to love someone when they stay consistent with the story we’ve made of them. It’s easier when their humanity doesn’t interrupt it.

But real people always do.

I contradict myself. I grow in directions you don’t understand. I become harder to summarize, harder to predict and even harder to fit into the neat shape you once held so confidently.

And then we’re left with a choice we don’t like.

Do we love who they are becoming, even if it doesn’t feel the same?

Or do we quietly start loving them less, because they no longer match what we needed?

There isn’t a clean answer. Where is the boundary between love vs expectation?

And maybe the best we can do isn’t to pretend we don’t have expectations. It’s to notice them. To feel that moment when disappointment starts to form, or from harm, but from difference and to pause before we turn it into something the other person has to fix.

To remember that letting someone be human means letting them be unpredictable. Letting them move. Letting them become. Even when it means we don’t fully know how to love them in the same way anymore.

Especially then.

Not for perfection in love.

But for a kind of honesty that’s harder to hold onto.

Baby, the person you love is not something you can keep still, and loving me anyway will always feel a little like learning how to let go. I want to be loved without being defined. I want be met as I am, without the weight of who you imagined I might be, and still choose me again and again, even in the places where I feel hardest to love. I don’t want to be a version that's polished for your comfort; I want you to want my uncertainty, my contradictions, my becoming. Witness me unfold without fear that you will turn away, and I will honor the same. Because what I long for isn’t perfection. it’s the quiet, honest truth of you, exactly as you are, and the privilege of loving you there. As you are.

You are a person, which means you will surprise me. You will disappoint me. You will change in ways that don’t center me. And if I love you, truly love you, I have to make peace with that, not as something to tolerate, but as something sacred. Your humanity is not an inconvenience to my affection, it is the very reason it matters. I don’t want to love a curated version of you. I don’t want to stand at a distance, applauding only the parts that feel easy to understand. I want to be close enough to witness the whole landscape yk the bright clarity and the quiet confusion, the confidence and the doubt, the becoming that never quite settles into a final shape. I want to know the parts of you that don’t perform well. I want to sit beside the moments that don’t resolve cleanly.

And here is the part I don’t always say out loud: I am afraid. Not of your imperfection, but of my own reflex to tighten around it. Of the moments when I might feel the urge to reshape you so I can feel more secure. Of the ways I might confuse familiarity with safety, and control with care.

But I am trying, imperfectly, to love you without turning you into something fixed. To stay open where it would be easier to close. To trust that what we are building doesn’t need to be certain to be real.

That's it. I hope you extend the same grace to me.

I have gone through my fair share of existential dread, sitting in my room and it’s 2:17 a.m., listening to jcole's new album, my final year project due and I’m googling things like “what is purpose” and “what number am I ? " Somewhere between refreshing my email (nothing) and answering my unread texts I realized: I am having a full-blown “to be or not to be” moment.

Not in a dramatic, skull-holding Shakespeare way. No, mine is more like sitting crosslegged on a mattress that doesn’t have a proper bed frame, surrounded by three dirty cups of tea I forgot to take to the sink, unfolded laundry and a vague sense that I should have my life together because I once successfully wrote a line of code without crying. Lol.

“To be or not to be” sounds poetic until you realize at 22 it translates roughly to: Should I pursue my dreams or get a stable job that slowly erodes my soul? Sould I move to a new town or stay where my favorite waiter knows my usual order but not my name? Should I double text them or ascend into a higher plane of emotional detachment?

These are the real questions Hamlet forgot to include.

Let’s start with “to be.”

To be what, exactly? A functioning adult? A thriving creative? A person who folds clothes the same day they wash them?

At our age “to be” feels less like a confident declaration and more like a soft shrug. You’re technically an adult, which means you can legally make terrible decisions without anyone stopping you. You can develop a caffeine dependency, open a business that you aren't guaranteed it would be profitable, stay a night out with friends. Freedom starts to taste bittersweet. Everyone says this is the time to “become yourself,” which is both inspiring and deeply unhelpful. Become which version of myself? The one who wakes up at 6 a.m. to journal and do "75 soft" or the one who considers weetabix at 11 p.m. a balanced dinner because it contains milk?

I have tried both. One lasted approximately two days. I will not specify which.

There’s a particular kind of chaos that comes with being 22. You’re old enough to know better, but young enough to absolutely not do better. You oscillate between “I have so much time” and “I am running out of time” multiple times a day. CUT THE DAMN CAMERAS.

One minute you’re planning your five year goals, and the next you’re lying on the floor thinking, “What if I just… didn’t participate in capitalism?” as if that’s a viable opt-out option.

And then there’s “not to be.”

Which doesn’t necessarily mean non-existence. It’s more subtle. It’s the temptation to disappear a little. To ghost your responsibilities. To avoid decisions because decisions imply consequences, and consequences imply growth, and growth sounds like it needs a lot of effort.

“Not to be” is opening an internship application, staring at it for 45 seconds, and then closing the tab because it asked for a cover letter and suddenly you no longer believe in the concept of employment. Sigh.

It’s saying, “I’ll figure it out later,” with the confidence of someone who absolutely will not figure it out later.

It’s also social. Oh, deeply social. Because nothing amplifies existential confusion like watching everyone else allegedly have their life together on the internet. You, meanwhile, are trying to decide if doing laundry counts as an accomplishment (it does, by the way, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise). I swear if someone asks if I'm on LinkedIn again I'll actually puke. I just wanna travel the world and own a retro camera and a mysterious source of income.

There’s also the career question, which is less of a question and more of a recurring nightmare.

“What do you want to do with your life?”

I don’t know. I barely know what I want for lunch.

Every choice feels irreversible, even though intellectually you know that’s not true. Choosing a path feels like closing a hundred other doors, even if those doors were just hypothetical and possibly led to careers you would hate anyway.

Do I follow my passion, which may or may not pay rent?

Or do I choose stability, which may or may not make me question my existence every Sunday evening?(I'm really trying to escape a 9-5)

Either way, I will be anxious. The anxiety is non-negotiable.

And then there’s love. Or whatever chaotic interpretation of love exists at this age.

“To be” in love sounds beautiful in theory until you actually practice it and sometimes you wanna lay on the floor and cry your lungs out. But some days you feel you have conquered the world.

There is no clean answer.There is no magical point where you suddenly feel like you have it all figured out. No clear voice that says , “Ah yes, this is the life.”

Instead, it’s messy. It’s choosing “to be” in small, often unimpressive ways.

It’s having that hang out session.It’s showing up to something you’re nervous about. It’s trying, failing, and then trying again, even when trying feels deeply inconvenient. It’s also allowing yourself to not be certain. To not have a five-year plan. To not optimize every decision. “To be” doesn’t mean becoming a fully formed, flawless adult overnight. It means existing in the uncertainty and still choosing to participate. Actively. It's not a feeling. It's a decision. Even when it’s uncomfortable - especially when it’s uncomfortable.

And “not to be”?

It will always be there. The temptation to withdraw, to avoid, to disappear. To be distracted. It’s more doable because it’s easy.

But maybe “to be or not to be” isn’t about a single decision. Maybe it’s about a series of small choices that, over time, shape something really good and worthy to live for. Not a perfectly curated life. Not a definitive answer to every existential question. Just the willingness to keep showing up, to keep trying, to keep being.

It’s something you keep choosing, over and over again, even when you really don't feel like it.. Or when you think others are doing better than you. Oh sweety there's no manual. You will choose to be one day and not to be the next. You will have moments of clarity followed by moments of complete confusion. You will make decisions you’re proud of and decisions you will absolutely cringe at later. But it's normal. It is the process.

And maybe, just maybe. that’s enough.

Even if “being” currently looks like sitting on your bed at 2:17 a.m, eating snacks, overthinking your entire existence, and wondering if you should finally fold those clothes or start that assignment.

(You should)

So, to be or not to be?

And the answer is both.

And that counts as being.

Even if you don’t feel like it does:)

The year is coming to an end. This might be my last substack for the year. I actually contemplated if I should write it or not. I've been doing my undergraduate project and I actually have an assessment tomorrow but oh well here it goes. I just feel I should get it over with. My friends actually encouraged me to write this one. This is me being so vulnerable actually.

All I ever wanted was to be loved. Being someone's girlfriend is nice. Being chosen is awesome. Being held. All that, is really good. But now what happens when you no longer want to be chosen? To be someone's anything? I have loved. I know how much I can love. I can love someone so good and leave it like a scar on them. My love knows no bounds. But I also forget the same roots can also bend the other way. I can also be so disinterested in the idea of romance and it shocks me because this is so unlike me. What is it? What is happening? Is it a burn out? Is it that I see how mediocre humans can be? For so long, love felt like the missing answer. If I could just be loved, then everything else would settle. The longing would stop.

I didn’t know then that wanting something too much can turn it into a hunger that never really ends. Now I’ve been alone for quite some time, and the wanting, the yearning, has really changed. It doesn’t scream anymore. It just sits there, tired. And the strangest thing is this: I don’t think I want love the way I used to. I don’t think I want relationships. I don’t think I want to be anyone’s girlfriend, anyone’s person, anyone’s promise. The idea feels heavy, almost intrusive, like being asked to carry something delicate when my hands are already full of myself.

There are days it even disgusts me, this choreography of romance, this constant reaching and naming and defining. Disgust may come off as a really strong word but it’s the most honest one I have. I don’t feel broken in any way. I'm actually the happiest I've ever been. I just feel finished with something I once begged for. It's almost been a solid year where I haven't felt the intense love for someone. I have been in relationships during that period yes, but I had a sudden realization that I just didn't love them as intensely as I thought and this is making me think about a lot. When is the last time I looked at someone and felt that I want to combust? Combust. Yes. I really do like people and I'm really intentional with my relationships. And I could never lead someone on intentionally to just hurt them. If the hurt happens, it was really inevitable.

I've been letting people down slowly and that scares me, because this distance from love doesn’t look like who I thought I was.

I’ve met beautiful people. That’s what complicates everything. People who have provided warm spaces. I wish they were awful people and maybe that would justify why I have become like this. And don't get me wrong, I'm not against the idea of love and relationships. Humans are social beings. It is good to have someone to love, cherish and care for. It's cute to build a life with someone. But for now I think I'm really investing in platonic relationships. They can give you the same feeling. I'm so grateful for my friends.

The world sends you the most beautiful human being with eyes that sparkle so bright they could blind you and you really want to hold them so well but you're so scared that you lack the capability to.

Maybe I don’t want to fall because I know how it feels to hit the ground. Maybe I don’t trust growing either, because growth asks for time, and time asks for commitment, and commitment asks for a version of me I’m not ready to hand over.

So I ask myself what I’m afraid of. And the answer isn’t pain. It’s depth.

When I love, it is not light. It is not casual. It is not something I can put down and pick up later. When I love, I enter with my whole body. I start seeing them in my future.Love becomes a place I live, not a feeling I visit. I know how deep my love goes. Anyone I've ever loved can attest to that. And I know how dangerous that can be. Because once I open myself like that, there is no gentle way to close again.

I still want to be someone’s girl. I won’t lie about that. I still want to be chosen in a way that feels intentional and enduring. I still want intimacy that stays forever. But right now, the idea doesn’t sit right in my body. It feels like a dissonance within myself.

For the longest time, I was starving. Starving for affection, for reassurance, for someone to stay. I learned how to survive on crumbs and become full. And now, suddenly, there is a full plate in front of me. Love offered in the most gentlest of ways. No chaos. No doubts. And I don’t know how to eat it.

I don’t want to pretend hunger where there is none. I don’t want to take what I can’t return with the same fullness. I don’t want to keep anyone waiting at a door I’m not ready to open yet.

So I've been asking God for clarity. Repeatedly. I ask Him if this distance is protection or avoidance. If I should rest or retreat. I hope He answers. Because the last thing I want is to hurt someone with my hesitation, even though it feels inevitable right now.

But I've also observed the dating industry. Why I call it an industry you may ask, it's so full of transactions. You give me this. I give you that. It's really dissatisfying. There's this verse. Ecclesiastes 9:10. It talks about putting in 100% in whatever you do. Whatever task it is. People treat dating like a game. And no one wants to be on the losing side so they have their defenses so up. And they are not allowing themselves to be in love and to be loved. Or carrying hurt from previous relationships. Whenever I date someone I give my 100% whether it ends or not because I believe in authenticity and I can't do a half hearted relationship. I think the world would be so much better if everyone was intentional with what they do. If I don't see myself offering 100% into something I let it go no matter what it is. I need my heart to be fully engrossed into something for it to work out. Love was never meant to be this transactional. It was meant to be devotional. And I don’t recognize it anymore.

Also If you have someone good, someone kind, someone who is not abusive or cruel, try. Please try. Don’t leave at the first sign of imperfection. The grass really is greener where you water it. But also know when to go. I once stayed longer than I should have. I always knew I needed to leave, long before I said it out loud. Leaving saved me. That choice is one I will never regret. So know when to exist. But if there's no solid reason to leave, stay. "Soko ni chafu" they say and it's true. The illusion of options you think you have will make you abandon something not everyone has. Although sarcity mentality is also bad. There's so much love out here. Don't be in a space that hurts you. Darling I promise, there's so many people out here you are yet to meet and so much love you are yet to feel. Don't settle for mediocrity.

What surprised me was how much love I found outside of romance. In friendships. Platonic love has held me in ways romance never could. It fed me without consuming me. We don’t talk about that enough. We should.

So now I ask myself why love feels so far away when it’s the only thing I ever wanted. Maybe because I finally stopped chasing it. Maybe because I learned how to sit with myself without reaching for another body to make the silence bearable. I’ve been alone for a while now. And it’s okay.

I’m scared to hold someone’s heart right now. Not because I wouldn’t know how. But because I know exactly how. I know how carefully I would carry it. How fiercely I would protect it. How deeply I would bind myself with them.

The moment I allow myself to love, I know I will hold them well.

I love so much. I love so intensely.

And right now, I am choosing not to give that love away. Not because love failed me. But because I finally understand its weight.

All the people I love and have ever loved are either sitting in my notes somewhere or here in substack where I can express what I didn't.

With time maybe I'll come here and tell you guys I've finally let someone hold me or that I'm engaged. Till then stay tune I guess.

Have a wonderful holiday. Merry Christmas and a happy new year.

I've also come to realizie when we fall in love, we unknowingly project our own wholeness onto another person. Also friendships. We imagine that they are the source of our joy, our peace, our sense of being seen. And when they leave or it fails to work out, it feels like we have lost a part of ourselves. But the deeper truth is that they never owned what you felt. They only awakened what already existed inside you. Okay?

I've gone through my share of pain. I really have. And at that time I'd question why? Because it really did seem unfair. But I realized the pain was never punishment. It was initiation. Every heartbreak, every "could have been", every almost was guiding me back to the only place that could never abandon me. Myself. And somewhere along that road, I discovered a truth that felt both terrifying and liberating:

I am not defined by someone’s inability to love me properly.

Even more radical than that. I realised that what I had been seeking all along was never outside of me. I am love.

There's an article I've written about suffering and how it arises from attachment. From clinging to impermanent things and expecting them to provide lasting fulfillment. Relationships, no matter how intense or beautiful, are impermanent. People change. Circumstances shift. And yet we tie our identity to them and call it love. But that is not love. That is grasping. And grasping always leads to pain.

There is a particular kind of devastation that comes with loving deeply and losing. Been there. It feels like your chest has been hollowed out, like the future you imagined has collapsed into dust. We are not only grieving the person. We are grieving the version of ourselves we imagined we would become with them. Oh and the memories? It's like you're bargaining with reality itself. Why couldn’t they love me the way I needed?

These questions are human. Yes. But they also point us to the very place we must outgrow. Plus you don't stare at your wounds forever. It is there yes. But become the space that holds it. Not the wound itself.

Because the moment you believe another person’s capacity defines your worth, you surrender your power. I've stopped projecting my depth into other people. The way you love, think, act, won't be the same with others. Then you get angry because they aren't like you. But how can they be?

You were never meant to be completed by another person. You were meant to remember who you were before you forgot.

You need to loosen your grip, when we stop insisting that reality must meet our expectations, we begin to experience peace. Not because life becomes perfect, but because we stop fighting the flow of it.

I love someone. And not from a place of attachment. Detachment is not indifference. It is love without chains. It is me allowing people to be who they are, not who I need them to be. True love is presence, not possession. It is the capacity to be with someone without needing them to complete you. It is rooted in self-awareness, not fear of abandonment. It understands that people can leave, change, misunderstand you and you will still remain whole. When you love yourself in this way, relationships become conscious choices, not emotional survival strategies. Not from a place of need. I hate how people see relationships as a need. It's not. Be okay to be in your space alone. There's also friendships. Only have a relationship if you want one not because you are running from something.

I've been talking about non duality with a friend. It's been really eye opening. Non-duality teaches that there is no separate "me" that has to defend, perform, or prove. Life is happening through us, not to us. You are not your pain. You are the awareness witnessing your pain. The mind wants to make an identity out of suffering. "I am the one who was abandoned. I am the one who was unchosen. I am the one who loved too much." But please gently peel these labels away and say. No. These are experiences passing through you, not the essence of who you are. You are the space in which all these things appear and dissolve. And that space? It is love itself.

This does not excuse harm, nor does it demand reconciliation. Don't get me wrong. It simply reframes the experience through compassion instead of bitterness.

I used to believe that healing meant never hurting again, never missing anyone, never feeling that ache in my chest. But healing is not the absence of pain. It is the presence of awareness. It is knowing that even when the wave comes, you are the ocean beneath it. It is understanding that you can grieve what was without betraying who you are becoming. And in this understanding, there is a softness that feels like surrender. It's not giving up, but letting go.

Remember life is happening through us, not to us. So just be a vessel and let it happen. Stop wanting to interfere with the process. I'm so grateful for everything that has happened to me. It has led me exactly where I needed to be.

All I ever wanted was to be loved. And now I see. I always was. Not because I finally have someone that chooses me everyday. Not because my elationship worked out. Not because they stayed.

But because love was never external. It was the consciousness beneath my yearning. It was the awareness beneath my suffering.

I am not defined by who failed to hold me correctly.I am defined by the love that continues to beat within me, soften within me, awaken within me.

This essay discusses death, mortality, and suicidal thoughts , not from a place of intent or crisis, but from reflection and emotional honesty. If these themes make you uncomfortable, please read with care or skip this one.

I’ve realized something strange about myself: I don’t find the idea of my own death terrifying. In fact, I find it peaceful like the end of a long, exhausting day where you finally get to rest. What unsettles me isn’t the thought of me dying, but of the people I love doing so. I could face my own end with quiet acceptance, but if I ever lost someone close to me, I think I’d lose my mind.

It’s an odd paradox. To be at peace with your own mortality but paralyzed by the idea of someone else’s. Maybe it’s because my death is something I can’t watch, can’t feel after it happens. But theirs? I’d have to live with it. I’d have to keep breathing in a world they’re no longer in. My mom wakes me up with her calls. She randomly updates me about her day. My dad calls and we vent about how shitty the government is. My sisters are funny. My friends are a living proof that love comes in all shapes and sizes. I have so many people I could talk about that I don't wanna do life without. I could face my own death, maybe even accept it, but I don’t know if I could ever survive theirs.

I’ve thought about death a lot.. not obsessively, not in a dark, desperate way, (there was a time though but not right now). It’s always there, hanging somewhere on the horizon.

I think about how one day, my body will stop being mine. My mind will go quiet. The things that make me me , the memories, the love, the tiny fears, will dissolve into nothing.

And that thought doesn’t send me spiraling. It feels… still. Like bleeding on snow. Your body will all be numb. Just peaceful.

There’s a kind of surrender in it. A peace that comes with knowing I won’t have to carry the weight of being human forever.

Maybe it’s because I’ve known what it’s like to hurt deeply, to feel the ache of being alive so intensely that the idea of not feeling seems like relief. Or maybe it’s because I’ve accepted that everything that begins must also end, me included.

Recently I was speaking to my friend. She asked me what I think about death and I told her that if things ever go wrong, I could always just die. Not because I want to. But because that thought reminds me that I’m not trapped. That no matter how cornered life makes me feel, I still have control over this one thing. Me. It's the mental safety net that says, “If everything collapses, I still have a choice. "

Life can feel like it's never coming to an end especially the days you are going THROUGH it. I usually see it as a journey. Yes, the bus will come to a stop. But the fact that I could always step out where I want to feels nice.

We live in a world that constantly demands things from us and the thought that I still hold the power over my own ending feels like the last piece of freedom no one can take.

That doesn’t make it good or healthy or right. This is just me being real.

For some of us, the idea of death isn’t destruction but a reminder that nothing is absolute. That no pain, no situation, no failure is permanent. It’s like knowing the exit exists, even if you never plan to take it.

Not Suicidal. Just Aware

This is where I have to be careful, because there’s a difference between not fearing death and wanting to die.

I don’t want to die.

I still have things I love, music that makes me feel alive, sunsets that quiet my thoughts, people who make me laugh until I can’t breathe. I want to see what comes next. But I don’t flinch at the thought of not being here anymore.

It’s strange how being at peace with death can make you more alive.

When you stop fearing the end, you start noticing the middle.

You start taking those long showers, you try out new things, unlock new potential, you find it easier to forgive people because everything becomes precious when you accept it’s temporary.

Philosophers like Epicurus said that death isn’t to be feared, because when death exists, we do not and when we exist, death does not. It’s a clean, logical way to look at something we usually approach with panic. But logic aside, I think peace comes from familiarity. The more I’ve thought about death, the less power it has to scare me.

But when I think of your death, be it my friend, my parent, someone I love, the peace disappears. Suddenly, it’s unbearable. Suddenly I can't breathe. Suddenly I'm 4 years old begging my mom not to leave the house without me. Suddenly, I’m clawing at the walls of my mind, trying to imagine a world where you don’t exist, and I can’t.

It’s like death only feels peaceful when it’s mine because I won’t have to live with the aftermath. But yours my love ? I’d have to keep breathing in the ruins.

I’d have to look at the places you filled, your laugh, your perfume, your absence, and live knowing they’ll never be filled again.

That’s what terrifies me.

Not death itself, but the living that follows someone else’s death.

People say grief is love with nowhere to go, but that’s not true.

It goes everywhere. It spills into everything. And it heavily reminds you. Like it'll pass, but it shall also linger. It rewires you. It burns and reshapes and stretches you until you no longer recognize who you were before they were gone. That’s why losing people hurts more than dying ever could. Because love makes you vulnerable to absence amd that absence feels like a kind of death that doesn’t end.

Death as a Mirror

Maybe that’s why my peace with my own death isn’t really about dying . It’s about understanding life. Death is a mirror. It reflects what matters back at you. When I imagine my own end, what comes up aren’t regrets achievements, or my grades, it’s faces, laughter, moments of warmth and maybe some words I never got to tell someone.

The more I think about death, the more I realize how much I want to live well. Not long, not perfectly, just well. I wanna send the letters I've written. I wanna hold people tighter. To explore all my interests.

To make peace with the version of myself I’ve become.

There’s a kind of moral honesty in facing death without recoiling. When you stop pretending you’re immortal, your priorities rearrange themselves quietly. Suddenly, small things (forgiveness, love, gratitude) start feeling urgent.

Sometimes I wonder if not fearing my death makes me strange. I've seen people acting weird whenever I say that. We’ are raised to believe that death is the ultimate enemy. Movies, religions.. all built around the idea that life must be stretched and protected at all costs. But actually God even tells us this world isn't our home and we'll eventually leave.

But peace isn’t apathy.

It’s understanding.

I don’t think about death to romanticize it. I think about it because pretending it doesn’t exist is more terrifying.

There’s something paradoxically life-affirming about knowing I could die if I chose to. It’s like a quiet backup plan that my mind keeps somewhere hidden, not to use, but to comfort itself with. I can be in the worst situation, heartbroken, broke, failed my CAT, and this thought will flicker softly:

You could leave, if you wanted. But you don’t have to.

And in that moment, the world stops feeling like a prison.It becomes a choice again and it keeps me going. In some strange way it does.

I don't even think it's about death. It’s about relief from helplessness.The assurance that I’m not powerless against life. Some might call that dark, but to me, it’s survival.

The Japanese have a word, mono no aware . The bittersweet awareness of impermanence. It’s the quiet sadness and beauty that comes from knowing everything fades. And that’s what makes them beautiful.

If I lived forever, I’d stop noticing.

Death, in its strange way, makes life urgent and alive.

If I Go Before You

Sometimes I imagine dying first, not because I want to, but because I know I couldn’t handle watching the people I love fade. If I go before you, I hope you don’t romanticize it. I hope you still wake up late and complain about small things. I hope you'll still watch dumb movies and live with the kind of hunger I felt for the world.

Because that’s what I’d want, not grief, not worship, just continuation. If death is rest, then living is the brave part. And it is.

In the end, my peace with death and my fear of loss come from the same place. Love. I can face my own death because it’s mine. It belongs to me. But I can’t face theirs because love makes me greedy.

It makes me want forever. It makes me human.

Death will always be the quiet shadow of love. Not its opposite, but its mirror.

You can’t fear one without feeling the other.

And maybe that’s okay. Maybe the fear is proof that we’ve lived and loved fully.

If death comes for me, I just hope it’s beautiful.

I hope it’s not painful or cruel. I hope it feels warm, like the first rays of sunshine after a really cold season. Like going back home after a long journey. Like sleeping on cold pillows.

Because maybe that’s what it is. Maybe death isn’t an ending at all, but a return, a soft unlearning of all the noise and ache of being human. Maybe we don’t truly belong here. Maybe the world is just a stopover, a lesson, a brief stay before going home.

And if that’s true, then I’m not scared. I just hope, when my time comes, it feels gentle. That it feels like love.

Because peace, I think, isn’t found in living forever.

It’s found in knowing that even in ending, something infinite remains.

PS: This isn't me romanticizing death, just acknowledging its inevitability and learning not to wince at it.

I've come to realize something about poverty. Little to no racism or any form of division exists among the poor. Why? Because we are all fucked. That's it.

It doesn’t discriminate. Once you’re in it, you realize how fake all those other divisions are. Because you realize that suffering and survival is universal.

All that classism talk, all that hierarchy stuff, that’s for rich people. They’re the ones who get to sit around deciding who’s “middle class,” who’s “lower class,” who’s “ghetto,” who’s “respectable poor.” It’s all nonsense. When you’re broke, you’re broke. Poverty is the great equalizer.

People who aren’t poor love pretending there are layers to it. They say “not all poverty is the same,” but that’s just another way to make themselves feel better about being closer to comfort. The truth is, once you hit that wall ..that helpless, trapped, tired point, you’re in the same boat as everyone else. Poverty doesn’t play favorites.

And it’s crazy how people romanticize it. “Humble beginnings” Hmm or “the poor are resilient”. It's not praise. We need to stop romanticizing poverty when really it’s just survival. There’s nothing noble about struggling. There’s nothing poetic about suffering. I think people love to watch others suffer gracefully as it makes them feel inspired without having to do anything. Poverty isn't graceful. Far from it. It's so ugly.

There's no talk about “but some people have it worse." This constant competition of who’s suffering more is ridiculous. There’s no trophy for the most broke. It’s all the freaking same. The struggle, exhaustion, and survival. Comparing pain just divides people who should be on the same side.

That’s what classism does. It keeps people distracted. It makes you think there’s a difference between you and the next struggling person. It makes you think “at least I’m not that poor,” “at least I still have this,” “at least I’m not them.” But that mindset is exactly what keeps poverty in place. The system doesn’t have to do much if poor people keep fighting each other instead of realizing they’re all being crushed the same way.

Oh I also think religion has a hand in this. In high school I did a book. The Pearl. Religion can sometimes keep people poor by encouraging blind faith, submission, and acceptance of suffering instead of questioning unfair systems or seeking change. Have you guys noticed how religious teachings emphasize patience, humility, and the promise of reward in the afterlife and makes people accept poverty as a divine test rather than a social issue that can be challenged? Te manipulation is so crazy. Religion can be used to preserve existing power structures, keeping the poor submissive and dependent, rather than empowering them to change their circumstances.

The rich invented classism. They made up all these categories so they can watch the rest of us argue about who’s “better poor.” It’s a game, and we play right into it. They divide us by skin, by job, by education, by neighborhood and it works. Because while we’re busy comparing, they’re getting richer. The rich keep getting richer.

When you’re really living in poverty, none of that matters. The moment you’re struggling to feed yourself or your family, you see how fake those social divisions are. You’ll see a single mom, people living in the streets, graduates with no job , all hustling. Different stories, same struggle.

And that’s why I say poverty doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care how smart you are. It doesn’t care if you “tried your best.” It doesn’t care how disciplined, kind, educated, or religious you are. It hits everyone the same way. It fucking grinds you down until you start measuring life in small wins. Like I don't wanna be one paycheck less to being homeless.

I have seen people reading books about financial literacy or talks about “escaping poverty” like it's something that clicks overnight. Like oh yea this book or podcast is gonna save me. But most people are born into the system and die in the same system. You can work hard your whole life and still be poor. You can do everything “right” and still get stuck. I hate it when people think that poverty is about laziness. That you just need to lock in. It'ss about imbalance. And the people who say otherwise have never had to live it. I've seen people pulling all nighters, doing everything they can to escape it and sometimes it futile. It does work for others yes.

And that’s where privilege comes in. Speaking of privilege. Can we talk about the economic state of the world? If you can afford not to care about politics, you’re privileged. If you can scroll past people talking about whatever hell they are going through especially whatever is happening in Sudan currently, our own country even and you don't feel your chest tightening, you’re privileged. If you can complain about “the economy” like it’s just a concept, you’re privileged.

Some of us get to "not care.” We don’t get to opt out. Everything affects us. Every decision, every policy, name it. There’s no neutrality in poverty. The people who can say “I don’t do politics” are just protected by money or they are so thick and dense and can't grasp how fucked they are. Do you know how rich you need to be to not give a damn? You need to have massive generational wealth or something to the point you know even the generations after you are taken care of.

And it’s wild how even among the poor, people try to separate themselves. Lmao. Like the rich don't give a fuck about you. And yet here you are having classes amongst yourselves. It's so funny. It's not funny haha but funny concerning. Why can't you wrap your mind around that?

Like you guys need to understand that you can have little pieces of comfort and still be one bad week away from losing everything. That’s the truth most people don’t want to admit, that they’re not as far from the bottom as they think. It's so easy to lose everything and wind up on the streets.

There’s a quote by James Baldwin that says, “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”

And it’s true. Being poor costs you more than money. The irony. It’s like life punishes you for not having enough.

The essence of poverty is that it annihilates the future.

That one just...mmmmh

Because when you’re poor, it’s hard to think long-term. You’re always stuck in the now. The next meal, the next bill, the next crisis. You don’t dream, you just survive. Can you even afford to dream? Poverty is such a hope killer.

So no, there’s no classism in poverty. That’s not for us. That’s for people who can afford to compare, to categorize, to separate. Poor people don’t have the luxury of that kind of pride. When you’re struggling, everyone struggling becomes your people. There's the fatigue. The quiet endurance. I wish people would stop saying “we’re not the same” because we are. Maybe not in how we got here, but definitely in how it feels.

It’s funny. People in comfort love talking about equality, but poverty is the only place where equality really exists. Everyone’s equally fucked. Equally scared. Equally desperate. The only difference is how good we are at pretending.. Or how deep you are into the mess.

That’s why I don’t buy into the idea of “respectable poor” versus “dirty poor” or “educated poor” versus “uneducated poor.” Those terms were created so we’d keep separating ourselves, so we’d keep thinking we’re different. But we’re not. Poverty swallows everyone. We vote wrongly everyone suffers. Everyone.

And if you’ve never had to worry about any of that, if you’ve never felt that deep, constant fear of running out, being worried about elections,you don’t get to talk about “understanding struggle.” You don’t. Because poverty is something you live, not something you theorize.

So yeah. All that classism talk, all those categories. They’re for the rich. For people who can afford to play identity politics while the rest of us are just trying to get by. The people at the top love to divide the people at the bottom, because as long as we’re arguing about who’s the “better poor,” we’ll never notice they’re the reason poverty exists at all.

Poverty doesn’t care who you are. It never has. It never will.

And until we stop trying to dress it up with fancy words and labels, until we admit that everyone who’s struggling is on the same side, nothing will change.

Because the truth is simple:

If you’re poor, you’re poor.

And if you can afford to ignore that reality, you’re privileged.

That’s it.

You just stay there and let me explain how he's made me have this whole other perspective on life. I hope you'll be interested enough to stay.

I came across him on an ig reel . Classic. He intrigued me so bad and I usually have this tendency of hyperfixating on something until it gives me release. He's been my hyperfixation for the month. And I'm actually so glad I stumbled onto him. I've been meaning to start documenting my dreams also. Then I found him. Jung doesn’t talk to you the way most thinkers do. He doesn’t lecture. He doesn’t try to convince. He just opens a door, steps aside, and lets you walk through it. There’s something ancient and deeply intimate in his writing.. It's as if he’s remembering something the rest of us have forgotten. When he speaks of the soul, it doesn’t sound like philosophy. It sounds like home. He's so warm.

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

I think that line captures everything he stood for. Most of us live in the world of the outer. The visible, the measurable, the tangible. We chase achievements, approval, security. But Jung keeps pulling you back inward, into that quiet and mysterious space where the unseen lives. It’s not a comfortable place. There are no clear answers there. But it’s real. And that’s what I love most about him ..his insistence that the invisible matters as much as, if not more than, what we can see.

He sees the world made of opposites..shadow and light, masculine and feminine, conscious and unconscious. He believed life is a dance between them, that the soul seeks not perfection but wholeness. That word wholeness appears so often in his writing, and every time I see it, it feels like a breath. In a world obsessed with self-improvement, he reminds me that maybe I don’t need to be better, just more complete.

He said, “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” omg I've not stopped thinking about it. I've been yapping about this to my friends for like the entire month. That’s such a simple sentence, but it carries centuries of searching within it. Because becoming who you are isn’t about creating yourself from scratch. It’s about uncovering what’s already there ,buried beneath layers of persona, fear, expectation, and forgetting. He saw the self as a seed already planted. The work is to let it grow.

I find comfort in how human his ideas are. There’s no demand to be pure or certain. He knew the psyche was messy ..full of contradictions, moods, symbols, and instincts that don’t always agree. He didn’t ask for control, he asked for dialogue. He treated the unconscious not as an enemy to be defeated but as a partner to be understood.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

That line haunts me. It makes me wonder how many things I’ve blamed on fate. Heartbreaks, bad timing, recurring patterns (that might have just been unspoken parts of me acting out stories I refused to see.) Jung believed those stories live in all of us..the ancient patterns. He called them archetypes btw.

Archetypes are one of his most beautiful and confusing ideas. They’re like blueprints of human experience. Universal images that keep showing up in myths, dreams, religions, and art. The Mother. The Hero. The Shadow. The Trickster. They’re not literal characters but living energies that shape the way we experience the world. When I read about them, I start noticing them everywhere, not just in myths, but in people, in myself, in the way we love and destroy and rebuild. Then I started doing my favorite thing. Psychoanalyzing everyone around me. Hehe. We don't judge around here baby, we just psychoanalyze. I truly believe there's something deep inside all of us that makes us act the way we do. But there's also assholes who are just really shitty.

Jung said the psyche speaks in symbols, not words. That’s why he turned to myth and religion and art, not as dogma, but as languages of the unconscious. He said that the symbols of the Self arise in the depths of the body and express themselves in images that reach far beyond the conscious mind. I LOVE that. He gives imagination a kind of holiness.

We’ve been taught to trust logic more than intuition, facts more than feeling. But he had this radical tenderness for the irrational. He believed the psyche has its own intelligence, one that can’t be dissected under a microscope. He gave the dreamer, the artist, the wanderer, the doubter a kind of dignity that modern life often denies.

He didn’t see madness as something to be erased, either. He saw it as meaning trying to break through. That doesn’t mean he romanticized suffering lol he knew it could destroy but he also saw it as the soil where growth begins. He said, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.” And I think that’s why his writing feels so alive since it doesn’t shy away from darkness. It kneels beside it.

One of the ideas that changed me most is his concept of the Shadow ..the parts of ourselves we reject, repress, or deny. The anger, envy, selfishness, shame, even our hidden talents or desires. The Shadow isn’t just the “bad” in us. It’s everything we refuse to look at. He believes that everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. In 2023 I did A LOT of shadow work. I was trying to embrace the dark parts of myself, know my roots and all. I don't think there's something someone could tell me that I've never thought about it. I might mess up but I'm aware.

That line feels like truth distilled. We all know people who project their darkness outward, blaming everyone else for what they can’t face inside. Jung’s gift was not moral judgment but compassion for complexity. He saw that darkness, when acknowledged, could become a source of strength. Integration, not denial, was his gospel. I wish more people knew about him and his beliefs. They can really be of help. This is me blessing y'all with such.

That’s why he valued dreams so much not because they predict the future, but because they show us what’s missing. Dreams, he said, are “the natural reaction of the self-regulating psyche.” They’re the unconscious trying to balance what our waking mind ignores. Every symbol, every strange image, is the soul speaking in metaphor. Do you sometimes dream and start thinking "what does this mean? What is my subconscious projecting? " Although sometimes I have weird dreams and some don't even feel like they mean anything. But most of the time I do wonder what they could be trying to show me.

He treated the psyche like nature. Wild.

“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.” That line could sit at the center of his entire philosophy. The psyche isn’t linear. It spirals, it returns, it rearranges. Jung wasn’t trying to fix people, he was trying to help them listen.

His approach to spirituality was not about belief, but experience. He wasn’t anti-religion, but he resisted blind faith. He said he didn’t believe in God but he knew God. That statement confused many, but I think I understand it now. He meant that the divine isn’t something out there .It’s a psychological reality, a symbol of the Self, the totality we all move toward. This reminded me of how someone told me that they don't think there's a being that sits and watches us while we pray to them. They believe that God is in every one of us. The self.

In Jung’s universe, the divine and the human overlap. The unconscious isn’t just personal, it’s collective. It's a shared memory of humanity itself. He called it the collective unconscious, a vast field of archetypes and instincts inherited from all who came before us. It’s a wild idea, but it feels right somehow. That we carry echoes of ancient stories inside us, that our personal struggles are part of something much older.

That’s why Jung’s work feels both intimate and cosmic. He could talk about your private fears and, in the same breath, about myths, alchemy, and religion. He wasn’t afraid to mix psychology with mystery. He said that the symbols of the dream are not signs or allegories but natural products of the psyche, living entities which develop according to their own laws.

Reading him feels like walking through fog that slowly turns into light. You don’t get definitions. You get invitations. I hope you guys are having as much passion to him as I am.

Another of his great ideas and maybe his most misunderstood is individuation. It’s the process of becoming whole, of reconciling all the opposites within you conscious and unconscious, persona and shadow, masculine and feminine, reason and instinct. It’s not self-improvement it’s self-realization. Jung saw individuation as the soul’s natural path. Like a seed becoming a tree. It’s what life wants from us.

He said, “Individuation means becoming an ‘in-dividual,’ and, in so far as ‘individuality’ embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self.” It’s such a quiet kind of revolution. You know? To be fully yourself, not as rebellion, but as fulfillment.

I think that’s why his writing never feels dated. It’s not trapped in any century. It speaks to the eternal problem of being human, the struggle to belong to both the world and to oneself. He reminds me that the inner world isn’t separate from the outer one but they’re mirrors. The more unconscious we are, the more chaos spills into the collective. The more aware we become, the more the world itself heals a little.

Jung believed modern humanity was spiritually starved. Too focused on material progress, too disconnected from meaning. He said, “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” Every time I read that, I think of the endless distractions we drown in. The noise, the scrolling, the alcohol, the weed, the constant doing. What is your distraction?

I also loved how he believed there’s always a way back. Through attention, through symbol, through silence. The soul, he said, has an instinct for balance. Even in despair, there’s a pull toward light. He seems like the type of person you can tell the most diabolical shit you've done and they won't judge you. I've been believing in grace. So much. That we can't shame ourselves into evolving. Acknowledge that you are a shitty person but don't dwell on it. Yes you've done crappy stuffs but remember that your guilt won't purify you. So just shut up about it and start doing better. Omg this reminds me of this whole other article I have about BoJack. That's for another day.

What I love most about Jung is his courage to embrace paradox. He didn’t split the world into light and dark, sacred and profane. He saw that both were needed. The shadow gives the light its shape. The wound gives the healing its depth.

And maybe that’s what he teaches better than anyone. That the psyche isn’t a puzzle to solve but a mystery to live.

" The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.” That line feels like it could undo a lifetime of pretending.

To accept oneself completely hmm what does that even mean? To hold every contradiction, every fear, every impulse, and still call it me? Jung makes that sound not only possible but necessary. Because wholeness isn’t about choosing the light. It’s about embracing the entire spectrum of what it means to be human. We have our dark parts. Stop shunning them away. We are humans having human experiences. Go live. Love. Make those mistakes. But embrace it all.

Lemme tell y'all something funny. Hehe. Sometimes when I read Jung, I imagine him sitting across from me calm, observant, maybe a little amused as I try to make sense of his words. And I think he’d just smile and say, “Pay attention to what your soul is trying to tell you.”

That’s all he ever wanted, really, for us to remember that there’s an entire universe inside us, waiting to be known.

And I think that’s why I love him. Because he doesn’t promise answers. He promises depth. He gives you permission to go inward, to wander, to ask. He makes the unconscious feel less like a darkness and more like a night sky. vast, full of stars and alive.

So I’ll keep reading him, spreading his thoughts wherever I can. He teaches the art of being human. Raw, flawed, luminous, and endlessly becoming. I always tell my loved ones to show me every part of them. The raw unfiltered messy parts. Yes. I want to see all that. Don't suppress anything with me. And watch me stay and love the heck out of it.

And maybe that’s all the awakening really is. It's not light breaking through darkness, but learning to see that both were always part of the same sky. I hope this means something to you.

Happy Halloween.

Some of my favorite quotes btw:

I listened to “the sick" by Bella Kay and it reminded me of my previous relationships. But I think, if I’m honest, I knew from the start. I knew it will end I just didn't know when. There was something in the way he carried his sadness, it was anger. One that he never wanted to let go of.

I used to believe that loving someone meant helping them heal. That if I poured enough softness into their cracks, maybe the light would finally leak through. That belief was the beginning of my sickness.

At first, it felt like something cinematic you know? the kind of connection that makes you forget what time it is. I saw him as misunderstood. Yes, misunderstood. I told myself I understood him in a way no one else could. That I was meant to be the calm in his storm. But storms swallow the calm sometimes.

It’s strange how slowly the unraveling happens. You never notice the first thread coming loose. One day, they cancel plans because they’re “not feeling it " and then it becomes a pattern. Then they start snapping over things that don’t matter. They start making you walk on eggshells. You start to shrink yourself, your needs, your voice, all because loving them begins to feel like walking on glass barefoot, hoping you don’t bleed too much this time.

That’s what it means to love the sick. You start to mistake the cuts for proof that you care. The proof of how deeper you can go.

The illusion of saving someone

I think people like me..the ones who stay, carry a quiet delusion. We believe we can save someone by loving them harder. We call it loyalty, or patience, or forgiveness. Name it. We write about them. I told myself he was just lost, that he needed someone to believe in him. To give him a home. A place to belong. I ignored the way he made me feel small. I ignored how my body would tense when he raised his voice, how I’d apologize just to keep him by my side a little longer. Because I always knew someday it'll end. Just not today.

I wanted to be his cure. I wanted to him to choose me.

But I was never the remedy.

Every time I tried to love him, he'd push me away. Every time I pulled back, he’d find a way to draw me close again. It was a cycle of ache and relief, like holding your breath underwater and gasping for air the moment you surface. I confused the gasp for love. They were right. Loving someone that doesn't love themselves, they'll punish you for it. You are handling them something they've never had their entire lives. It overwhelms them.

You don’t realize how draining it is. Carrying someone else’s darkness until you start to forget your own light or even worse,they steal it. .

That’s how the sickness spreads. It starts in them, but it doesn’t stay there. It infects you too.

The breaking point

There wasn’t one big explosion. Not a big fight ..Just a slow exhaustion that finally reached its limit. I remember sitting on the edge of my bed contemplating if it's worth it or not and rereading the same old text "I’ll do better.”

He always said that. And maybe he meant it, but meaning doesn’t heal wounds. Effort does. And effort never came.

I wanted to believe him one more time, but my body said no. My hands were shaking, I could feel my heartbeat whenever I wanted to tell him to end things and I realized that I wasn’t scared of losing him, I was scared of losing myself completely if I stayed. That was the moment I knew love had turned into survival.

Leaving wasn’t a single decision. It was a series of tiny ones. Choosing to cry without texting him. Stopped updating him of every single thing that happened through out the day..the choices did hurt yes, but they were really necessary.

People talk about leaving toxic love like it’s empowerment, like it happens with one thought. But truthfully, it’s messy. You leave in pieces. You mourn not just the person, but the version of yourself that believed love could fix whatever the pain they inflicted. You mourn what could have been. I mourned for so long especially when together.

Whenever we broke up I missed the chaos, the highs. You miss being needed, even if it was only in their weakest moments. You dream about them, and in the dream, they’re kind. In the dream, they finally say sorry and make it right.

You wake up crying. Then they apologize and the cycle begins again.

Healing doesn’t start with forgetting them. It starts with forgiving yourself for staying as long as you did. I used to beat myself up for that. I’d ask, “Why didn’t I leave sooner?” But the truth is, I stayed because I loved him. I stayed because I thought love was supposed to hurt a little. I stayed because I wanted to be chosen. Because I was scared that if I left, no one would ever love me with that same intensity again or more so, I'd never love anyone like that again.

But intensity isn’t intimacy. It took me some time to learn that.

Learning to breathe again

There’s a strange peace that came after the last heartbreak. The kind that doesn’t feel like peace at first. It’s quiet, empty, unsettling. You start to miss the noise because silence feels too loud. But slowly, the quiet becomes familiar. You begin to fill it with small joys. The little things that remind you life can be gentle.

For the first time in a long time, I started sleeping through the night. I stopped having random crash outs. I stopped basing my moods off someone else's. I realized healing isn’t this sudden, dramatic revelation..it’s ordinary. It’s choosing not to go back when nostalgia tries to trick you into forgetting why you left.

I stopped checking his social media. I stopped replaying old memories like they could change their endings. I stopped needing closure from him, because I started giving it to myself and reminded myself every act he did was closure.

Understanding “the sick”

Somewhere along the way, I understood what “the sick” really meant. It wasn’t just about him. His habits, his self destruction, his inability to love me right. “The sick” was everything in me that thought love was supposed to be painful. It was the part of me that confused chaos with affection. The part that believed I had to earn love by enduring suffering.

We inherit that sickness sometimes. From broken homes, from watching people around us confuse endurance for devotion. We grow up thinking love is something you survive, not something that sustains you. Crazy right?

But love isn’t supposed to make you sick. It’s supposed to make you steady. Safe. Seen. The kind of love that heals doesn’t take your peace. It protects it.

When I finally saw that, I forgave both of us. Him, for not being ready to be loved in a healthy way. And me, for thinking I could love him into wholeness.

The first time I heard the song, it felt like someone had written my exact experience. Just with a better tune. Haha. The lyrics still hurt, but in a familiar way old wounds ache when you scratch them. The memories no longer bother me. It's just filled with nothingness.

When she sang, “You were wrong for what you did to me, but I was sick for kinda liking it." I knew exactly what she meant. I had lived it. And I had learned that acknowledging your own sickness is the first step to healing from it.

No one tell you the day finally comes. You look at them you can't feel anything except the urge to leave. I clocked out all socials, photos, everything. Not out of anger, but out of peace. I no longer needed to prove I’d moved on. I just had. I didn't feel like playing tug of war anymore. I knew this was it . There was no going back . And it felt really peaceful.

Reclaiming myself

After the storm, you rediscover who you were before you started shrinking. You begin to remember what you loved, what made you laugh, what made you feel alive. You start to recognize yourself in the mirror again, not as a savior or caretaker, but as a person with her own needs and dreams.

I started writing again. I got back into philosophy. I could see my eyes lighting up again. I talked to people. Had lovely interactions and life was worth living again. It didn't feel lonely. I was free. There’s a kind of quiet strength that grows out of heartbreak. The kind that doesn’t really announce itself, but stays with you, grounding you.

You meet someone new. Someone calm. Someone kind. And instead of feeling bored, which the old me would’ve mistaken for lack of passion,you feel safe. Seen. I realized that real love doesn’t keep you guessing. It doesn't hurt you. It doesn't raise their hand at you. It chooses you everyday. And for the first time I was so warm. I was so light. I could almost float.

Healing doesn’t mean forgetting

Sometimes, healing is romanticized like it’s the end of pain. But I've learnt that it's remembering without bitterness. It’s being able to say, that hurt me, but it taught me. It’s knowing that what broke you also built you. That the version of me who loved him wasn’t dumb actually, she was hopeful. She just didn’t yet know the difference between love and rescue.

I still think about him sometimes, but not with longing. More with understanding. I hope he finds his own healing. I hope he learns to face his sickness instead of passing it on. But even if he doesn’t, that’s no longer my burden to carry and no one will ever love him enough to save him. It doesn't work like that. No one can save me. No one can save you. You can only do it yourself. No one is coming to save you.

I think that’s what closure really is. It's not an apology, not a final conversation, but acceptance. Accepting that some stories don’t end with reconciliation or even knowing why that happened. They end when you stop writing them. When you stop opening that book.

I realized I was not weak for loving him, not foolish for believing in his potential. But I did not owe my softness to someone who kept cutting me open to see if I could still bleed for them. I found a love that doesn’t require me to heal them just to feel worthy. That I'm loved just for my mere existence.

You actually never recognize you've healed until one day, you wake up and realize you haven’t thought about them in weeks. You realize you stopped writing about them. You stopped seeing them in things / places around you. I was actually so hesitant to heal/ let go. Why? Because that meant it was really over. That I've actually given up on them and I never wanted to. But when I eventually let go, I just fell into it.

You realize that “the sick” no longer defines you.

You start to love yourself the way you once loved them. Fully, fiercely, without condition. And that love, the one you pour inward, becomes the cure. It really does. I came to see that my love is mine and I've never loved anyone who's never needed it and any form of love I've ever given out really does come back and in hundredfold. It's present in my friends. My family. My day to day activities.

Because maybe that’s what all this was for. To teach me that I can’t save anyone who doesn’t want to be saved but I can always save myself. To teach me that sometimes the greatest act of love is walking away and not because I stopped caring but because I finally cared enough to choose myself.

Loving the healthy way

These days, when I think of love, I think of balance. I think of two people who choose each other without needing to fix each other. I think of gentleness. Of safe silence. Of peace. I stop wondering whether they are mad at me. I stop questioning every action because finally I'm held safely.

I don’t crave the kind of love that burns anymore. I am with the kind that warms. The kind that feels like sunlight in the morning. Yea that warmth. It doesn't burn. It kisses me so softly.

I once loved the sick. I once believed that was love’s truest form..intense, consuming, dramatic. You know? But now I know that love doesn’t have to hurt to be real. Love doesn't need to be all consuming. Love can be quiet. Love can be consistency.

I thought I'll never love someone like that again and I was right. I'm glad I was right. I never want to love someone like that again. That's the whole point. I never want to associate pain and suffering with love.

Love finally finds you and it feels really good. Your body feels so free. You can breathe without a heavy chest. It takes care of you. It holds you with so much care and admiration. It isn't unsure of you.

And that’s what I choose now. Every day, every time.

And it chose me back.

Because I’ve finally learned that I was never meant to carry someone else’s sickness. I was meant to heal my own.

We all suffer. Some more than others. It’s the one experience that doesn't discriminate between rich or poor, young or old, believer or skeptic. No one is immune to that feeling. The hollow that swells in the gut. The ache. Suffering is not an abstract concept for philosophers or poets alone; it is visceral, personal, immediate. And the more we live, the more intimately we come to know it.

But why? Why do we suffer?

Desire.

That aching wanting, the grasping at what isn’t yet, or what once was. We suffer because we want something or someone and we don’t get it. Or we get it, but it changes, or leaves, or decays. We suffer because we love and then lose, because we hope and then fall, because we believe and then get betrayed. The human condition is the tension between our dreams and our reality.

Buddhism addresses this most directly. The First Noble Truth of the Buddha is dukkha often translated as suffering or dissatisfaction. To live is to suffer, he taught. But it is the Second Noble Truth that really knocks me off my seat, suffering arises from tanha, or craving. The desire for pleasure, the desire for existence, the desire for non-existence. Our attachments, our clinging to permanence in a world that is constantly changing and that is the root of our anguish. We grasp at love as if it will never change. We build our identities around status, beauty, strength, youth as if any of it can last. We suffer not just because things go wrong, but because we expected them to go right. Is it the attachment to an outcome?

In hinduism, the concept of maya, the illusion of the material world warns us that suffering comes when we mistake the temporary for the eternal. Our attachments bind us to the cycle of "samsara" birth, death, and rebirth, and only when we relinquish desire and realize the true nature of the self (atman as one with Brahman) can we be free from suffering. Desire chains us but detachment liberates.

Christianity, too, acknowledges the place of suffering but approaches it not as something to escape, but something to endure, sometimes even to embrace. The life and death of Jesus Christ are emblematic of suffering with purpose. In his pain, sacrifice, and crucifixion, believers find not just empathy but redemption. Suffering is not just punishment or misfortune; it is a crucible through which one can draw nearer to God. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans that “suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” There is a spiritual alchemy in Christian thought that turns suffering into salvation. Still, this raises difficult questions: if God is loving and omnipotent, why allow suffering at all?

Islam also views suffering through the lens of divine wisdom. Trials are tests, and the Quran repeatedly speaks of hardship as a means through which faith is purified. “Indeed, with hardship comes ease,” it reminds believers. Suffering is not arbitrary; it is a part of God’s plan, and those who endure with patience (sabr) are elevated. Yet even within this framework, suffering can feel overwhelming and unjust, particularly when inflicted on innocents.

Judaism doesn’t offer a neat answer either. The Hebrew Bible is filled with stories of suffering from Job to the Israelites in Egypt and often, the pain is unexplained. Job suffers precisely because he is righteous, not because he has sinned. His friends try to explain it away, to impose moral order on chaos, but God’s ultimate response is ambiguous, even frustrating: the divine perspective is vast, and human understanding is limited. Suffering, then, is not always deserved. It is not always logical. And yet, the covenant between God and humanity persists, a call to wrestle, to question, to remain faithful even in the darkness.

And so we suffer. Sometimes because we want. Sometimes because we love. Sometimes for no reason we can see.

Desire is a double-edged sword. It gives us purpose, drive, ambition. It pushes us to improve, to create, to connect. But it also sets us up for disappointment. It insists on outcomes, on control, on a world that bends to our will and when it doesn’t, we break. The more tightly we cling, the more pain we feel when it slips through our fingers. And everything, eventually, slips.

But can we live without desire? Can we love without attaching? Can we strive without needing things to turn out a certain way?

Modern life makes this nearly impossible. We are bombarded with messages telling us what to want , the perfect body, the ideal partner, the right job, the house with the view. Social media amplifies our cravings and insecurities. Everyone seems to have what we lack. And so we suffer not just from what we don’t have, but from what we think we should have.

At the same time, not all suffering comes from desire. Sometimes, pain arrives without warning or cause. A child is born with a terminal illness. A family is torn apart by war. A loved one dies in an accident. There is no clear reason, no moral lesson, no fault. It just hurts. And we cry out, not with longing, but with disbelief

Why?

This is where the question becomes more raw:

is suffering necessary?

If it serves a purpose ,if it teaches us, purifies us, shapes us , then perhaps we can accept it. But what of meaningless suffering? What of the pain that serves no one and breaks everything?

We can fight suffering, numb it, deny it. Or we can face it. We can let it open us.

The mystics and saints of many traditions speak of suffering as a doorway, not to despair, but to depth. Rumi wrote, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” In Christianity, the concept of the “dark night of the soul” a term mostly used by St. John of the Cross describes a spiritual crisis so deep that God feels absent, the soul abandoned. And yet, through this emptiness, something holy can emerge. The ego breaks. A deeper self is revealed.

Even outside religion, this pattern holds. In psychology, we speak of post-traumatic growth , the way some individuals, after enduring great hardship, develop greater resilience, empathy, and meaning. Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist, argued that suffering ceases to be suffering when it finds meaning. He wrote, “In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”

But must we suffer to grow? Must we be broken to be whole?

This is where opinion divides. Some argue that suffering is essential, that without it, we would be shallow, complacent, ungrateful. Others argue that this is a dangerous romanticization of pain. After all, much suffering degrades, traumatizes, silences. Many never recover. Many don’t grow, they collapse. So who gets to say whether suffering is necessary?

Perhaps the better question is: how do we live with suffering?

Because whether it’s necessary or not, it is. It shows up. In every life, at some point, in some form. And so the real task is not to solve the riddle, but to respond to the reality.

We can harden ourselves against it, choose to shield the heart, shut down. But this, too, is a kind of death. We can let it destroy us, spiral into despair, addiction, cruelty. But this multiplies the suffering. Or we can allow it to shape us and not because it’s good, not because we want it, but because it’s there, and we choose to stay human in its presence.

In that choice, something profound happens.

Compassion.

Those who suffer and survive often emerge more able to hold space for others. Pain softens the heart, breaks down arrogance, humbles. It reveals our shared fragility. The illusion that we are separate, superior, safe, dissolves. And in that collapse, connection grows. Empathy grows. Even love grows.

Maybe this is the quiet redemption of suffering: not that it’s necessary for our individual evolution, but that it can bind us to one another. It can be the thread that stitches our loneliness into solidarity.

Still, let’s not glorify it. Let’s not pretend that pain is always a teacher, that loss always leads to wisdom. Sometimes it just hurts. Sometimes it leaves scars, not lessons. And yet, even then, we endure. We carry on. We find ways to laugh again, to dream again, to hold each other through the ache.

If suffering teaches us anything, maybe it’s this: nothing lasts. Not joy. Not sorrow. Not even suffering itself. It, too, is impermanent. And in its wake, there can be something else. Maybe not peace. Not yet. But presence. A deeper way of being. A raw honesty. A quiet strength.

So is suffering necessary?

Maybe not in the grand cosmic sense. Maybe a perfect world wouldn’t need it. But we don’t live in a perfect world. We live here, now, in these bodies, with these hearts, surrounded by imperfection and beauty and pain. And in this world, suffering happens. The question isn’t whether it should. The question is: what will we do with it?

Will we let it close us, or open us?Will we let it define us, or refine us? Will we let it make us bitter, or better?

There is no single answer. No formula. Only the mystery of being human. Only the invitation to keep showing up..in joy, in grief, in love, in loss and with as much courage and compassion as we can muster.

And maybe, in doing so, we discover that even in suffering, life still pulses with meaning.

Maybe, in some strange way, that's enough.

“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

— Frederick Douglass

We are bleeding.

We are tired.

We are scared.

We are angry.

What is happening in Kenya right now is not a political issue. It is not a generational issue. It is not a tribal issue. It is a human issue. It is life and death. It is about a system so brutal, so deaf to suffering, that it would rather kill its children than listen to them.

Over the past few weeks, police brutality has escalated into a kind of state-sanctioned war on civilians. Kenyans are being gunned down in the streets for protesting, for speaking out, for daring to demand accountability. People who were once just names and faces are now hashtags and funeral programs. We've lost students, children, mothers, fathers, all innocent people whose only crime was having a conscience.

And yet, every day, the world moves on.

And somehow… so do we.

A Country at War With Its People

You step outside to march for justice, and you return limping from rubber bullets or you don’t return at all. You scream in the streets and they silence you with tear gas and threats. You chant for freedom and they shoot you like you're the enemy. But we are not enemies, we are citizens. Kenyan citizens.

The police in Kenya are not protectors anymore, if they ever were. They have become a force of terror, armed and emboldened to shoot, maim, and murder with no consequence. Their uniforms no longer represent service; they represent death. They kill mercilessly, with a precision so cruel you would think their targets were enemies of the state and not the very citizens whose taxes fund their bullets.

So how did we become the targets?

How did the institutions meant to protect us turn into tools of repression?

How do we protest one day and return to our desks the next, as though our friends weren’t murdered in broad daylight?

It feels like we’re living in a paradox: we have the right to protest, but we can’t protest without risking death. We have freedom of expression, but expressing ourselves puts us on a list. We have a constitution, but it only seems to serve those in power. What kind of freedom is this if the cost of using it is your life?

“When the state uses violence to silence the voice of its people, it is not enforcing order, it is declaring war on its own future.”

Where Is the Church? Where Are Our Institutions?

Where are the institutions that are supposed to hold the line when government turns rogue?

The church, once a voice of moral authority, has gone quiet or worse, complicit. Pastors hold hands with politicians, offering prayers for prosperity while the poor bury their sons. Sermons are now sanitized, cautious not to offend the regime. How do you preach hope in a country where hope is being hunted?

When blood is flowing in the streets, you cannot remain neutral. Silence is not apolitical, it is violent.

Speaking out has consequences in Kenya. Our media sometimes whispers since licenses and livelihoods are being threatened. We have bloggers writing under aliases and who can blame them?

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”

— Steve Biko

But even as we tremble, we must keep speaking. Because silence will not save us.

The Personal Cost: Grief Has Become a National Language

This is not theoretical. This is not abstract. People are dying.

Mothers have lost their children.

Sisters have lost their brothers.

We are running out of ways to grieve.

How do we return to our desks, schools, businesses, when a child’s body was just lowered into the ground the day before? When a mother is still wailing in Kayole, in ng'ong , in Githurai because her son went out to demand a better life and came back zipped in a body bag?

What do you say to a mother who sends her child to school and receives a phone call that he was shot during a peaceful protest?

What do you say to a friend whose lover was beaten into a coma for simply filming a police officer?

How do you comfort someone who has lost everything to a system that doesn’t even acknowledge the loss?

We’ve gotten so used to funerals, to GoFundMe links and condolence posts. Death has become the background music of our activism. We weep today and wake up tomorrow like nothing happened because maybe that's the only routine that is sane.

Kenya is grieving. And that grief is building. It is becoming something deeper. Something dangerous. Something that might one day overflow.

A Deeper Wound: Our Women Are Being Violated, Our Men Slaughtered

As if death was not enough, violence against women has become a shadow war waged in silence.

Women protesting or even walking in the wrong place at the wrong time have been beaten, stripped, harassed, raped. Some disappear and return with bruises they can’t speak of. Others never return at all.

Our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, violated by the very forces that swore to protect them. And when they cry out, the system blames them. Asks what they were wearing. Why they were outside. As if dignity is a luxury in this place. As if womanhood itself is a crime.

At the same time, our men are being executed in cold blood. Labeled as “thugs,” “paid protestors,” “criminals” then shot like animals. No trial. No justice. Just gunshots in alleys and news reports sanitized with phrases like “police engagement.”

We are losing whole generations to this cruelty.

We are watching homes collapse under the weight of grief.

We are witnessing something beyond injustice, it is inhuman.

To be a Kenyan woman right now is to live in fear of violation.

To be a Kenyan man is to live in fear of being killed.

There is no safety.

There is no sanctuary.

There is only survival.

And even that is not guaranteed.

A People Pushed to the Edge

We’re not asking for much.

We’re asking for dignity.

We’re asking to be heard.

We’re asking to not be murdered by the people we pay to protect us.

But instead, we are met with indifference from those in power and coldness from those with privilege. We are gaslit and told we’re being “emotional,” “manipulated,” “funded.” As if we need to be paid to cry when our people are shot in the head. As if grief is some foreign agenda.

We are told to move on.

To respect authority.

To pray and be patient.

But for how long?

How long must we suffer before suffering becomes a valid reason to demand change?

How long must we die before death becomes a legitimate protest?

How long until Kenya realizes it is not just the economy that is collapsing, it is the people?

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

Patriotism Has Become Painful

There used to be a pride in being Kenyan. We wore our identity like a badge of honor. We sang the national anthem with our hands on our chests. We cheered for our athletes. We supported our local musicians. We believed.

But today, patriotism feels like betrayal.

How do you love a country that kills your kin?

How do you wave a flag that’s stained with blood?

There’s a special kind of pain in being oppressed by your own.

There’s no more patriotism left when your flag starts to feel like a shroud.

The anthem chokes in our throats.

“Justice be our shield and defender” what a lie.

“May we dwell in unity, peace and liberty” where?

We are losing that pride.

We are watching it die with every shot fired at a protestor, with every journalist arrested, with every lie told on TV. And we are told to still believe, to still be hopeful.

But hope is hard when your government sees you as expendable.

What Now?

The truth is we don’t know.

We don’t know what to do anymore.

We’ve protested. We’ve cried. We’ve written. We’ve prayed. We’ve voted.

And yet the violence continues.

We feel trapped in a cycle.

Grieve. Rage. Hope. Protest. Die. Repeat.

So what now?

We organize. We mourn together. We keep speaking even if our voices tremble. We build community. We vote wisely. We document everything. We teach each other. We protect each other. We love each other deeply, wildly, defiantly.

We do whatever we must to keep the flame alive.

Because if we give up, they win.

In the End

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

— John F. Kennedy

The Kenyan government is pushing its people to the edge. It is silencing voices, destroying lives, and crushing hope. But it must be remembered that there is a point beyond fear. A point where people stop running. Stop hiding. Stop caring about consequences.

We are dangerously close to that point.

This is not a threat. This is a warning. A plea. A scream.

We want peace. We want justice. We want life.

But if you keep killing us, don’t be surprised when silence is no longer an option.

Kenya is bleeding.

And we are tired of dying quietly.

— Ari Eastman

I don’t know how people do it. How they’re so chill, so collected. How they navigate relationships both romantic and platonic without unraveling into them. How they manage to withhold, to wait a few hours before replying, to casually mention something that wrecked their entire week like it was a passing comment. How they love without offering the marrow of their soul. I’ve tried to understand it. I've tried to emulate it. But the truth is, I could never be cool. I am a museum of everyone I've ever loved, everything I've ever liked, all what I've seen.

I love with every cell. I feel things deep in my bones, in the hollows of my chest, in the way my voice softens when I talk about someone I care about, the way my eyes will light up when I talk about a topic that's I'm so interested in, I do not know how to take it slow. I do not know how to ration my affection like it’s a limited resource. When I care, I pour. Not drip. Pour.

And lately, it’s been getting harder to hold that truth in a world that keeps praising emotional minimalism. We’re living in times where detachment is seen as strength and being “too much” is treated like a flaw. In both friendships and relationships, there’s this unspoken pressure to play it cool, to not text too fast, not care too loudly, not want too deeply. But I can’t do that. I can’t shrink myself into a version that fits neatly into someone’s comfort zone. I can’t keep my laughter soft or my pain quiet or my love measured or downplay my excitement.

I recently told someone how I felt someone I deeply liked, someone whose presence calmed me, who made me feel safe in little moments. The way he held me, made me feel seen, affirmed me once in a while... it meant something. But even in those tender moments, I felt this quiet ache. Like I was holding back parts of myself just to keep the peace. I needed more, more words, more emotional reciprocity, more depth and I felt like I was slowly breaking from the inside, pretending I didn’t.

I’m not nonchalant. I can’t be. I don’t love halfway. I consume and I’m consumed by the people I let into my world. And the thought of diluting myself just to be “easier to love” terrifies me more than being alone.

I don’t want to count how long I should wait to respond. I don’t want to hide details of my day because I’m scared of being “too much.” I don’t want to survive on dry replies and hope that one day someone will finally match the energy I’ve been dimming. I don’t want to beg for connection.

And I’m slowly learning that this isn’t a flaw. It’s just a different way of being. I’m not difficult. I’m just not for everyone and that’s okay. I don’t want to weaponize silence or hold in resentment. I don’t want to stay in spaces where my depth feels like a burden. I want to be where my whole self is welcome , my loud feelings, my tender sensitive heart, and all.

Maybe one day, someone will look at me and think, “I want all of that.” Until then, I’ll be here, being uncool, unchill, and unshaken in my devotion to feeling everything, fully and honestly.

But God, sometimes it’s lonely.

To be the person who notices the way someone’s voice drops when they’re pretending they’re okay. To want to talk about the movie you just watched for the fifth time and how it still wrecks you. To want to lie on your back under the sky and ramble about what you think clouds feel like, or why sunsets hurt a little. To want to tell someone, “I thought about you when I saw this flower,” or send a ten minute voice note about the way your day surprised you. All of this sits in my chest, all the time, waiting for the kind of people who don’t just tolerate it, but return it. Who see it, cradle it, and say, “Same. I feel that too.”

Because I have so much to give. So much joy. So much laughter. So much ridiculous, beautiful silliness. I want to make someone laugh so hard they cry. I want to dance in the kitchen at 2 AM and make a mess and not care. I want to tell someone, “That cloud looks like a sleeping cat,” and for them to look up and agree, even if they don’t see it. I want to hold someone’s hand and feel like it’s a conversation, not just a gesture.

I’m not ashamed of how much I feel anymore. But sometimes I wonder: do people like me just love in the wrong century? Was there ever a time where writing someone a letter that says “I miss your mind” wasn’t considered weird or clingy? Because I miss minds. I miss souls. I miss people even when they’re right in front of me , because sometimes they’re not really there. Not in the way I need them to be.

It’s hard to admit that sometimes the people you love aren’t capable of meeting you in the place you’re loving from and it’s even harder to choose yourself in that moment.

And I’ve realized: I don’t want to barter with my needs. I don’t want to convince someone that I deserve emotional presence, warmth, curiosity. I don’t want to make a case for why my way of loving is valuable. The people meant for me will just know. They’ll speak my language or at least try to learn it. They’ll want the depth, not flinch from it.

Until then, I’ll keep being this way. Fully, wildly, weirdly myself. The one who cries at films and journals about the moon. The one who gets excited about little things. The one who sends five texts in a row when a thought spirals. The one who gives nicknames, who makes playlists, who falls hard and doesn’t apologize for it.

I don’t want to be cool. I want to be real. And maybe real is messier, louder, a little more overwhelming , but it’s honest and that’s where the beauty lives. I want to emotionally undress for someone and for them to touch and make love to my emotions.

So if you’re reading this and you’ve ever been made to feel like you were too much, I hope you know: you’re not. You’re exactly enough for the right people. You’re not crazy for wanting reciprocity. You’re not wrong for craving closeness. And you don’t need to perform emotional minimalism to be loved.

You can just be you.

Even if you’re uncool. Even if you overthink. Even if you love with the kind of intensity that makes other people uncomfortable.

That kind of love, your kind of love, will find its home.

“I don’t want half-hearted love. I want love so full it spills.”

— Rupi Kaur

So no, I could never be cool.

Limerence starts like the first warm sunlight after a long, cold season. It’s exhilarating, a rush you didn’t know you were missing until it hits you. Suddenly, this person becomes the center of your world. You keep interacting with every single thought you have of them. A single message from them can lift your mood for hours. You imagine a future with them, fill in the blanks of who they are with idealized traits, and you start thanking the role fate must’ve played in bringing you together. It feels so nice,so powerful, so right. So so right. It doesn’t feel like a crush, it feels like a spiritual event. And for a while, it’s beautiful.

But slowly, the beauty begins to distort. You start to feel anxious when they’re not around. You overanalyze their silences, their moods, their responses. You seek patterns, reasons, reassurance. You daydream not just out of joy, but out of a desperate need to stay connected to them, even in their absence. When they’re distant, you spiral. When they’re warm, you feel so high. You become dependent on their attention to feel okay. The highs are everything, but the lows? They’re unbearable. And you start to wonder how something that once felt like love now feels like suffering.

This isn’t just romantic longing. It’s not about real connection. It’s about needing something so badly that you begin to obsess. It can feel like love, but love, in its healthiest form, isn’t this consuming. Limerence is more like addiction, it gives you a fix, a high, and then punishes you with withdrawal the moment the fantasy breaks. And the worst part? You know it’s unsustainable, but you can’t look away. You keep hoping if you just do the right thing, say the right words, hold on a little tighter, they’ll love you the way you’ve already decided you love them.

This obsession doesn’t come out of nowhere. It usually has deep, tangled roots. Maybe it’s from childhood, perhaps love was unpredictable or inconsistent in your early life. Maybe you had to work for affection, or felt invisible unless you were doing something extraordinary. Maybe no one ever mirrored back your worth to you in a consistent, loving way. So now, when someone gives you even a glimpse of that, it ignites a hunger that’s been waiting for years. It’s not just about them, it’s about everything they awaken in you. The parts that still long to be seen, chosen, wanted, safe.

And limerence thrives in uncertainty. It needs distance, ambiguity, the feeling that they’re just out of reach. That’s why the chase feels so intense, so romantic, it feeds the illusion that this must be real, that the pain is proof of love. But it's not. It's just a wound being pressed over and over again.

So you start to wonder: will I ever know love that doesn’t hurt? Love that doesn’t leave me drained, small, obsessed? Will I ever learn to love without gripping so tightly that I lose myself in the process?

Yes you will. I've been learning this, but it requires healing. Facing the loneliness that limerence has always tried to cover up. Learning how to sit with your own emptiness without immediately trying to fill it with someone else. It means giving yourself the care and validation you keep seeking outside. It means asking yourself “who was I before I made them the center of my life? What do I need, truly, when I think I need them?”

To love without obsession is to love with freedom. It’s to allow the other person to be a whole, separate being and not a mirror, not a lifeline, not a savior. It’s to recognize when a relationship enhances your life, not defines it. It’s knowing that love is not meant to swallow you, but to walk beside you. Quietly, respectfully, freely.

And yes, that love exists. You might not recognize it at first because it won’t feel like fire, it’ll feel like sunlight. Steady. Gentle. Safe. It may not give you the dizzying highs, but it won’t give you the shitty lows either. It will nourish you instead of draining you. It will remind you that you are enough, even in your stillness, even in your solitude.

You are not broken for feeling deeply. But you are worthy of love that doesn’t hurt. Love that sees you, holds you, and lets you breathe. Not a love that burns you out. Not a love you have to chase. Real love, healthy love isn’t something you have to earn through suffering. It’s something you receive because you exist. Because you are already enough.

And once you learn to love yourself like that, you’ll stop mistaking obsession for connection. You’ll stop feeding the ache. And when the right kind of love arrives, you’ll greet it not with desperation, but with peace.

I’m scared I’ll push them just far enough to watch them flinch, because I need to know if they’ll reach for me when I stop reaching back. Not out of cruelty, but desperation. Because that’s how I measure love sometimes, by what survives my self-destruction.

I’m scared I won’t know how to just let myself be cared for without suspicion. That I’ll mistake softness for danger, patience for pity. That I’ll look into their eyes and see only a mirror reflecting all the parts of me I was told are unlovable. Because when someone chooses you and truly sees you, it gets harder to hide.

And maybe I’m not afraid of being alone. Maybe I’m afraid of what it will reveal about me if I’m not.