Nobody wakes up on a random Tuesday and thinks, I’m going to miss this one day.

You’re just sitting in the back of your friend’s car. Walking home from school. Playing FIFA 16 until someone’s mom tells everyone to leave. Listening to music through one earphone because you forgot yours. Laughing so hard your stomach hurts over something that won’t even matter tomorrow.

Then tomorrow becomes years.

And somehow, those completely ordinary afternoons become the moments you’d give anything to experience just once more.

I don’t think nostalgia is just remembering.

I think it’s grieving.

Not because someone died.

Because a version of your life did.

People talk about grief as if it only belongs to funerals, but I don’t think that’s true. Sometimes we grieve old routines, friend groups that quietly drifted apart, the way our parents looked before they started getting older, the neighborhood before it changed, and the version of ourselves that still believed life would always feel that simple.

There’s a reason we’re all...

Photo keepers.

Message rereaders.

Song replayers.

Memory reminiscers.

We keep trying to visit places that don’t exist anymore.

Not physically.

Emotionally.

Sometimes Spotify betrays me. A song I haven’t heard in years starts playing.

Maybe it’s We Are Young.

And just like that, I’m not twenty four anymore.

I’m sixteen.

I’m worrying about exams that don’t matter anymore. I’m texting people I haven’t spoken to in years. I’m waiting outside school for my friends. I’m planning a weekend that felt like the biggest event in the world.

For four minutes, time forgets what year it is.

Then the song ends.

And I’m here again.

I think that’s why “One year ago today” is such a dangerous notification.

People act like it’s introducing you to a memory.

Trust me.

I remember.

I just wasn’t planning on missing it today.

Sometimes I think I’d do anything to go back. Not forever. Just for one afternoon.

To be a teenager in 2016 again.

At a crowded house party. Black Beatles playing through blown out speakers while someone shouted, “Freeze!” because they wanted to film the mannequin challenge. Everyone tried not to laugh until the camera passed.

I spent the whole night acting like everything was fine, but honestly, I wasn’t fully present. Every few minutes I’d remember that I’d climbed out of my bedroom window to get there, and all I could think was, “If my mom checks my room, I’m finished.”

Looking back, it’s hilarious.

I wasn’t stressing about rent.

Or work.

Or the future.

I was stressing because my pillows were doing a terrible job pretending to be me.

Now I’d give anything for that to be my biggest problem again.

And maybe that’s the hardest part.

We can’t really bring 2016 back.

Not because time won’t let us.

Because people aren’t the same anymore.

Everything has an aesthetic now. Everything is either “cringe” or “aura” Somewhere along the way, we became too self aware, too worried about how we looked, and too afraid to be seen enjoying something wholeheartedly.

I don’t know if we lost our innocence.

But we definitely lost some of our ease.

Sometimes I miss things that don’t even exist anymore.

Kids spinning tops outside.

Playing marbles in the street.

Knocking on someone’s gate instead of texting first.

Neighbourhoods that came alive every afternoon because everyone was outside.

Nobody announced that those things were ending.

One day they just...

stopped.

I don’t think nostalgia is wanting your old life back.

I think it’s missing the person you were while you were living it.

The version of you who still believed every friendship would last forever. Who thought your parents would always be young. Who had no idea which conversations would become your last with certain people. Who didn’t know that the days you couldn’t wait to get through would one day become the days you’d ache to relive.

Maybe that’s why nostalgia feels so much like grief.

Both ask you to love something you can’t hold anymore.

The only difference is that grief mourns people.

Nostalgia mourns moments.

The afternoons that slipped by unnoticed.

The friendships that ended without a goodbye.

The songs that somehow know exactly who you used to be.

The version of yourself that didn’t realize they were living the days they’d spend the rest of their life missing.

You feel grateful that you got to experience those moments at all while knowing you’ll never experience them in quite the same way again.

The people have changed.

The places have changed.

You have changed.

Even if you could go back to that exact street, that exact house, or that exact classroom, the version of you who belonged there doesn’t exist anymore.

Maybe that’s why nostalgia is the deepest emotion I’ve ever felt.

Because it reminds you that life is always moving forward, even when your heart quietly turns around to look back.

Nostalgia is proof that you’ve lived a life worth missing.

And maybe that’s the price of a life well lived.

To miss it, even while you’re still living the next chapter.

There’s a face people make when they’ve decided not to care. I’ve made it. You’ve probably made it too. It’s surprisingly easy to recognize once you know what you’re looking for: the shrug that arrives a second too late, the casual “it’s whatever” that sounds just a little rehearsed, the delayed reply that was typed immediately but left sitting for forty three minutes because answering too quickly somehow felt more embarrassing than pretending you hadn’t seen it.

We’ve started calling that confidence. I’m not convinced.

I don’t think anybody actually wants to be nonchalant. I think they just got tired of caring in ways other people could see.

When did wanting things become embarrassing?

Somewhere along the way, enthusiasm started looking desperate. Reply too quickly and you’re needy. Double text and you’re obsessed. Ask where the relationship is going and suddenly you’re “doing too much.” Even saying “I miss you” has become a strategic decision instead of a simple observation.

So people adapt. Not because they stop feeling, but because they stop trusting their feelings to be received kindly.

I don’t think nonchalance is a personality. I think it’s a language people learn after enough conversations where honesty cost them something.

A text left on read. An unanswered confession. The relationship where they cared more. The friendship that quietly became one sided.

Eventually, you stop saying exactly what you mean. Not because you don’t mean it, but because you’ve learned that vulnerability has terrible timing.

The strange thing is that pretending not to care takes an incredible amount of effort. People think the emotionally invested person is the one doing all the work, but I don’t know. Keeping track of how long it’s been since they replied, waiting exactly the right amount of time before answering, deleting messages before sending them, reading your own words over and over to make sure they don’t sound too excited that sounds exhausting to me.

Real indifference doesn’t need that much administration.

I remember sitting across from someone I liked, asking a question I’d been carrying around for weeks.

“So... are we doing this or not?”

I asked it with a shrug, like the answer didn’t really matter. Like I’d be perfectly fine either way. The truth was I’d rehearsed that question a hundred different ways before I ever asked it. The answer isn’t even what I remember most.

I remember pretending it hadn’t mattered.

That’s the performance.

Not caring less.

Just making sure nobody notices how much you do.

There are a lot of ways to say, “I care about you.”

Some people say it with flowers. Some people say it with long phone calls. Some people say it every single day. And then there are the people who say it like this:

Text me when you get home.

It’s such an ordinary sentence that we barely hear it anymore. It gets said at the end of dinners, dates, late night drives, airport drop offs, random afternoons together, and the kind of evenings you secretly wish had lasted another hour.

Drive safe.

Text me when you get home.

I will.

Then we leave.

I’ve always thought it was strange that some goodbyes refuse to stay goodbye. You’ve hugged. You’ve waved. The conversation has ended. The car disappears around the corner. Technically, nothing else is required.

And yet:

Text me when you get home.

It’s love refusing to end exactly where the evening does.

I don’t think we ask people to text us because we think they’ll get lost, or because we need proof that they made it home. If that were the point, a location pin would do. An Uber receipt. A notification saying they’d arrived twenty three minutes ago.

Instead, we wait for a message.

Not because we need confirmation, but because we want to hear from them. There’s something different about knowing someone is home because they chose to tell you.

Every relationship has its own little rituals. Walking on the outside of the pavement. Saving them the last bite. Sending a photo because it reminded you of them. Remembering how they take their coffee. Calling to say you’ve landed.

Somewhere in that quiet collection of habits is another one:

Text me when you get home.

None of these things are necessary, and that’s exactly why they matter. Love is rarely built out of obligations. It’s built out of the things nobody had to do.

When I was younger, it was always my parents.

Call us when you get there.

Back then I thought it was about rules. Now I think it was about love disguised as logistics.

Somewhere along the way, the people asking changed. A best friend. A partner. Someone who quietly decided that your safe arrival had become part of their evening too.

I think that’s one of the quiet milestones of loving someone: the moment someone else’s peace of mind becomes your responsibility. Not because they asked for it, but because you wanted to give it to them.

I’ve also noticed something else.

Nobody says,

Text me when you get to the grocery store.

Or,

Text me when you get to work.

It’s always home.

Maybe because home is where the journey ends. Home is where worrying gets permission to stop. Home is where concern finally puts its bags down.

The messages themselves are almost always the same.

Home ❤️

Made it.

I’m here.

Two words. Sometimes one. They’re never particularly poetic, and they don’t have to be. The meaning was never in the words. It was in knowing that, somewhere between saying goodbye and turning your own lights off, someone remembered there was another person waiting to hear from them.

I think that’s why forgetting to send the text can feel bigger than forgetting any other message. It’s never really about the text. It’s about the silence that replaces it.

Someone glances at the time. Checks their phone. Looks again a little later. Starts wondering if they should call. Not because they don’t trust you, but because caring has made waiting feel heavier than usual.

It’s funny how quickly love turns into imagination. Your mind starts filling the silence with possibilities that probably aren’t true. Traffic. A dead phone. You fell asleep. You forgot.

And yet you still check your phone one more time.

Just in case.

The older I get, the more I realize that love isn’t made up of grand gestures nearly as often as we pretend it is. It’s built from tiny habits. Knowing they take one sugar instead of two. Remembering to buy their favorite snack without being asked. Sending them a picture because you saw something that would make them laugh. Waiting until they get home before you finally stop worrying.

None of these things change the world.

They just make one person’s world feel a little safer.

Maybe that’s why I love that sentence so much.

Text me when you get home.

It’s such a small request. It takes five seconds to keep. Three or four words to fulfill. But hidden inside it is something much bigger.

I care what happens after I can’t see you anymore.

I won’t really stop thinking about you until I know you’ve made it.

Maybe that’s why some goodbyes never feel finished. Maybe love was never meant to end at the front door, or the train station, or the airport gate.

Maybe it lingers a little longer.

Long enough for one last message.

I’m home.

And somewhere else, another person smiles, puts their phone down, and finally lets the rest of their evening begin.

The moment you call something “rotting,” you’ve already decided it’s a bad thing. You’ve attached shame to it before anyone has even explained why they stayed in bed in the first place.

Words are powerful

There’s a version of this where I tell you I spent Saturday in bed until four in the afternoon, phone six inches from my face, curtains still doing their job from the night before, and you’re supposed to feel a little concerned for me.

That’s the shape the internet has given this.

Bed rotting as decline. Bed rotting as laziness. Bed rotting as the thing that happens right before someone posts, “I think I need help.”

Maybe sometimes that’s true.

I just don’t think it was true for me.

What was actually happening was much quieter.

Nobody could really reach me. Not because they couldn’t text. My phone was beside me the entire time. Messages came in. Notifications stacked themselves on the lock screen. Every now and then I’d unlock it, scroll for a few minutes without really seeing anything, lock it again, then reach for it five minutes later as if something inside it had changed.

It hadn’t.

The room hadn’t changed either. The mug on my bedside table was still there. The hoodie I’d thrown over the chair earlier that week was still waiting to be hung up. A thin strip of sunlight had started slipping through the gap in the curtains, quietly reminding me that the day was moving even if I wasn’t.

For a few hours, though, none of it asked anything from me.

No inbox. No “Can I ask you a quick favor?” No pretending to have everything under control.

Just the specific, private agreement between me and a mattress that, for once, I didn’t owe anybody anything.

I think that’s the part nobody wants to admit.

Sometimes bed rotting isn’t collapse.

It’s refusal.

Not an angry refusal. Not a dramatic one. Just a quiet boundary drawn by someone who’s forgotten what it feels like to stop without first asking for permission.

Because it’s not just about lying in bed doing nothing.

It’s about escaping the world for a little while. It’s about not feeling obligated to answer anyone. Not feeling like you have to be productive, or useful.

Just existing.

I used to think rest had to be earned.

You finished everything on your list. You replied to every message. You cleaned your room. You exercised. You became the version of yourself you were supposed to be.

Then, and only then, you could rest.

The problem is that the list never ends.

There’s always another email. Another load of laundry. Another deadline. Another version of yourself you’re supposed to become.

More disciplined.

More productive.

More successful.

If rest only comes after you’ve done enough, it never really comes at all.

Why do people have such a problem with bed rotting?

Let me rest.

Let me disappear for a few hours without making it sound like I’ve committed some moral failure.

Maybe that’s why the name caught on so quickly.

Not because lying in bed is new. People have been doing that for as long as beds have existed. The name just gave us permission to admit something we were already doing.

“I’m bed rotting.”

It’s much easier to say that than:

“I’m overwhelmed.”

Or:

“I don’t have the energy to be useful today.”

Humor has always been one of our favorite ways of carrying heavy things.

I won’t pretend every day in bed is healthy, though.

There’s the version where you eventually get up, shower, make something to eat, open the curtains, and the world feels manageable again.

Then there’s the other version.

The one where every hour you stay makes getting out feel a little more expensive than the hour before.

One more video.

One more scroll.

One more hour.

The day keeps unfolding without asking whether you’re ready to join it.

Someone is walking their dog.

Somewhere a child is learning to ride a bicycle.

Somewhere someone is falling in love.

Your room stays exactly the same.

And somehow that sameness starts to feel safer than the unpredictability waiting outside your bedroom door.

The uncomfortable truth is that, from inside the bed, those two versions feel almost identical. You can’t always tell whether you’re recovering or hiding until you’re already standing again, looking back at the day.

Sometimes people stay in bed because they think tomorrow will feel lighter.

Then tomorrow comes.

And it doesn’t.

I still think about that Saturday.

The curtains stayed shut.

The messages waited.

The world carried on without me for a while.

And for a few hours, I let it.

Maybe it was recovery.

Maybe it was avoidance.

I’m still not completely sure.

I only know this.

Maybe we should stop calling it rotting.

Because words become the stories we tell ourselves.

And I don’t think most people are rotting.

I think they’re resting.

Or trying to.

I actually said it out loud once.

We were sitting next to each other, doing nothing in particular, and before I could overthink it, I turned to you, looked at you for a second, and said, “Ninety percent of my problems disappear when I’m with you.”

You laughed like I’d said something clever.

I wasn’t trying to be clever.

I was just doing an honest inventory.

Here’s what’s still there, the ten percent: rent. The email I haven’t answered. The pile of dishes waiting in the sink. Wondering what I’m going to make to eat later. Those don’t go anywhere. They’re structural. They belong to the world, not to my nervous system.

But the other ninety percent, the low hum of dread I carry into most rooms, the running tally of everything I might be getting wrong, the bracing I do before I even know what I’m bracing for, that’s the part that goes quiet around you. Not because you fix it. You’ve never once fixed anything, not really. You just sit there, cutting up dragon fruit and kiwi at 11 p.m., asking me about my day like my day is the most reasonable thing in the world to be interested in, letting your knee rest against mine like it's the most natural thing in the world, and somehow that's enough to make the bracing stop

I think I spent a long time believing peace was something you built by yourself, in a locked room, through sheer force of discipline. Journaling. Breathing exercises. The right morning routine. And some of that helps, I won’t pretend it doesn’t. But none of it ever worked the way you do, instantly, without effort, just by being in the room.

There’s a specific kind of quiet that happens when you stop performing okay-ness for someone and just get to be whatever you actually are that day. Tired. Irritable. Too drained to pretend you’re fine. You don’t ask me to explain it. You just let it be true for as long as it needs to be true, and then it passes, the way weather passes, and we’re back to normal.

And normal with you was already good.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking life is going to be so sad when you die.

Not because I expect it to happen anytime soon. Not because I’m trying to borrow grief from the future. It’s just that loving someone this much quietly teaches you that one day you’ll have to live in a world where they’re missing from it. And every time that thought appears, I push it away almost immediately. I don’t want to spend today mourning a tomorrow that hasn’t arrived.

I’d rather spend today sitting next to you while you eat cereal, memorizing the little things I don’t ever want to forget.

I used to think love was supposed to feel like fireworks. Adrenaline. The stomach-drop of a rollercoaster. And sometimes it is that, sure, I’m not going to sit here and pretend I don’t still get that jolt when you walk into a room unexpectedly. But mostly, it turns out, love feels like the opposite of a rollercoaster. It feels like finally being able to set something heavy down. Like someone said, “You can stop holding your breath now,” and I actually believed them.

Ninety percent isn’t nothing.

Ninety percent is almost everything.

And I’ve stopped feeling embarrassed about how simple the mechanism is. A person can just sit near you, unremarkably, doing nothing heroic at all, and the weight you’ve been carrying since you were maybe nine years old quietly sets itself down.

The last ten percent, I’ll handle. The dishes, the email, figuring out dinner, the rent. That’s mine to carry, and honestly, it’s lighter than it used to be too, because I’m not carrying it alone in the way that matters.

You’re just there.

Making the whole thing feel survivable.

Maybe even good.

One unremarkable evening at a time.

That’s the whole essay, really.

Ninety percent.

I said it out loud.

And after thinking about it for a while, I realized I wasn’t rounding up.

I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did. I’d heard the warnings: devastating, relentless, not for the faint of heart. Those warnings are accurate and also entirely insufficient. They describe the experience the way saying the ocean is wet describes swimming in it.

What I didn’t anticipate was how much of the book lives in its tenderness.

Everyone talks about the trauma, and it is there, unflinching, but what undid me, repeatedly, were the small moments of care. Willem bringing Jude food. Harold choosing Jude. The way people in this novel simply keep showing up, not heroically, not with speeches, just quietly, persistently, because that’s what love looks like when it’s real and not performed.

I kept reading past the point where I should have stopped.

I know that now.

There’s a particular kind of grief the novel produces, not for a character, exactly, but for the gap between what love wants to do and what it is actually capable of doing. I’ve thought about that gap a lot since finishing it. I’ve noticed it in my own life, in ways I didn’t always have language for, in the way I sit with people I can’t fix, in conversations that don’t resolve the way I want them to.

I know people who refuse to read it. I understand that. I know people who read it once and will never read it again. I understand that too.

I’m not sure which category I fall into.

I haven’t been able to return to it, but I haven’t been able to fully leave it either.

It sits somewhere just behind my eyes, patient and unresolved.

Maybe that’s all you can ask of a book.

Not that it comforts you. Not that it resolves itself neatly.

But that it stays.