welcome to the pages i usually keep to myself.

— n

just a little context: i started The Artist’s Way about a year ago, and opening my journal to this particular assignment brought me back to a place i’m really grateful for. if i remember, week 10 was the week i struggled with the most. i think i redid it twice, if not three times, before finally moving on to week 11. looking back at what i wrote then feels a little surreal. i can see where i was, what i was wrestling with, and maybe even some of the things i hadn’t quite figured out yet.

so, here’s that page.

typed transcription of the entry

Artists way week 10: struggle

I am currently on week 10, ending week 10 of the artists way and one of my recap questions was: “were there any other issues this week that you consider significant to your recover?” and yes there are. I am currently working so much. almost full time. I love my job, but I hate the repeated cycle of doing the same thing. thats why I ran away from a job for so long. I burn out easily when things get repetitive. with working so much I dont have time to myself, and with that, I dont have much time for my creativity, my dog, my friends, etc. morning pages have become harder and I dont like that because I enjoyed it the most throughout this course. im trying to sleep to the last minute so im not exhausted but then have no time to eat, do my pages, or just quietly exist :( I miss quietly existing.

now, i should probably clarify that i’m not a fashion expert. i don’t know every designer. i am not the best dressed. i don’t know every collection. i couldn’t tell you what happened on every runway this season. i just like clothes. and i do notice when someone looks like themselves. and i feel like that’s becoming harder and harder to find in people.

i think the most beautiful things about fashion is that it doesn’t have to be for everyone. i actually think that’s the whole point. everyone doesn’t have to like what you’re wearing, they’re not even supposed to understand it when you look like yourself.

we have confused having access to fashion with actually having personal style. because we have never had more inspiration. and everyone is quite literally looking the same.

open any social media app and you’ll find the same formulas being passed around as individuality. the oversized clothes that swallow the body because we’ve collectively decided that being swallowed by your clothes is effortless. the perfectly neutral wardrobe. the carefully curated minimalism. the old money thing. the whimsy thing. the colors and textures and patterns stacked on top of one another because maximalism is having a moment now.

and none of these things are inherently bad. that’s not really my point. my problem is what happens when an aesthetic becomes a uniform for everyone?

i don’t think style is supposed to be universally appealing. i think style is supposed to be personal. and personal means there should be things about the way you dress that other people don’t understand. there should be things that don’t photograph perfectly for a pinterest board. there should be silhouettes that don’t flatter the algorithm. there should be colors you wear because they look incredible against your skin, even if its not the “color of the summer”.

there should be clothes that make sense because of your body. because of your hair. because of your proportions ad your measurements. because of your personality. because of the way you walk into a room. because of the lifestyle you live daily. because of the energy you carry. because of who you are when nobody is looking.

i think we’ve gotten so used to fashion being consumed visually that we’ve forgotten it’s supposed to be experienced physically.

your body is not a mannequin, your wardrobe isn’t a mood board, and your style shouldn’t be a collection of things you found appealing on twelve different women who don’t look anything like you.

i don’t think people are dressing badly. i just think they’re dressing for likes, views, and popularity. you can wear the most expensive clothes in the world and still look like you got dressed by an algorithm. you can have impeccable taste and still have no style. because taste can be learned. they are people buying an outfit straight off a mannequin or even from another person and wearing it the exact same way.

style has to be lived. style is knowing that something is beautiful and still knowing it’s not for you. style is being able to look at another person and think, i would never wear that, while simultaneously understanding that it looks good on them. because it belongs to them. thats the whole point of it.

i don’t need to want your outfit for me to appreciate that it looks like you. that’s when fashion becomes interesting. when you can look at someone and there is no question that the clothes are an extension of the person wearing them.

because they’re not following the rules of an aesthetic, they’ve figured out their own rules.

we are losing the willingness to be specific. the willingness to have preferences that aren’t universally agreeable. yall have made style so accessible that its not even personal anymore. you can figure out exactly what to buy to look like a certain kind of woman now.

there are formulas for being cool. formulas for being feminine. formulas for looking expensive. formulas for looking effortless. formulas for looking like you didn’t try while obviously trying very hard. and i understand why we love them. there is comfort in knowing what works. i guess.

there is comfort in being told that if you buy these five things, wear your hair this way, and keep your colors neutral, you’ll look chic. but chic isn’t the same thing as interesting. and interesting isn’t the same thing as beautiful. cause chic is neutrals but its also timeless pieces and high quality fabrics. your h&m oversized tee and gap jeans don’t qualify to what real chic is.

i want to see people who got it wrong again. people who are experimenting with their clothes. the woman who has a very specific obsession with vintage brooches. or the man who wears the same dramatic coat every winter. the woman whose hair doesn’t “go” with the outfit according to some invisible rule. i want to see people make choices. because choice is where style lives. and maybe this is where fashion and desire meet for me.

i don’t want to dress to be universally desirable. i don’t want to make myself visually digestible to the largest possible audience. i don’t want to look good to everyone. i want to look like myself to the person who knows me.

there is so much intimacy about being recognizable. not recognizable because you’re wearing the thing everyone is wearing, recognizable because someone can see your your shoes walking across a room and know it’s you.

that’s desire.

fashion can be an invitation into yourself. and i think that’s why i get annoyed when we reduce it to trends. and to take a step further to be reduced to people telling us how to build a capsule wardrobe or what to wear this season.

because fashion is one of the few places where we can communicate something about ourselves before without even opening our mouths. and i don’t think we should be so afraid of being disliked that we dress ourselves into neutrality. because the most stylish person in the room is never the person wearing the most fashionable thing. it’s actually the person who looks completely, unmistakably, undeniably like themselves.

and isn’t that what we’re really trying to say when we say we have style?

not i know how to dress.

but:

you can tell who i am by the way i do it.

this is why there are certain people whose style i can’t stop paying attention to. not necessarily because i want to dress like them. sometimes i don’t. but because when i look at them, i can feel the person underneath the clothes.

there wardrobes feel completely uninterested in asking for permission. they aren’t dressing to fit neatly into an aesthetic. they’re dressing from instinct. from taste. from personality. from whatever strange little thing inside of them that tells them to reach for it. and i love that. and often times they’re the ones who are actually setting the trends before they become a trend…

because when i talk about personal style, i’m not talking about some perfect wardrobe or a person who gets dressed correctly every single day. i’m talking about the people who have figured out how to make their clothes feel like an extension of who they are.

here are a few people I know and never get bored when i see them on my tl. not only are they into fashion but they have STYLE

Julia

Cjay

Fana

Fystina

Khiari

Yaritza

i need us as collective to return back to ourselves. its so easy to be and look like everyone else, especially when everyone wants be recognized or famous of some sort but we quite literally were created unlike others. fashion isn’t a popularity contest, so i will always admire people who do it for them and its visibly shown. and that’s really the highest compliment i think i can give someone who has style.

i know you showed all your cards. i know you called. i know you double texted. i know you tried to have the conversation one more time even after you probably knew how it was going to end. i know you apologized first. i know you probably did some things you swore you would never do for anybody.

and now that it’s over, you’re looking back at all of it wondering why you let yourself do all that.

but i need us all to stop doing that to ourselves. because when you really like someone, pride isn’t supposed to exist anyways. pride and ego actually.

you stop caring about whether something is embarrassing or cringe or whether you’re doing too much. you just want to see if there’s anything left to save. you want to know you tried. you want to know you said everything you needed to say. you want to know that if it didn’t work, it wasn’t because you were too scared to reach for it.

and maybe you chased a little. so what? you were trying to hold onto something you loved.

we have gotten so obsessed with never looking like the one who cared more that we’ve forgotten there’s nothing humiliating about caring. God forbid we are out here having feelings and what to show them. Why did we accept the fact that being heartless and careless at the expense of someone we care about was cool?

you sent the text. you made the gesture. you showed up. you said you missed her. you apologized. you tried again. you probably embarrassed yourself a little. okay. and? would you really rather have sat there pretending you didn’t care because you wanted to maintain your pride? because i wouldn’t. and I hope the person who wants to spend the rest of their life with me wouldn’t either.

i’d rather look back and says, damn, i really did everything i could, than the one who spends the next five years or any period of time wondering what would have happened if i would had just sent the text or called or just tried again.

and yes, there comes a point where you have to stop. there comes a point where the door isn’t opening and you have to stop knocking. but stopping doesn’t mean everything you did before that was pathetic or a waste.

it just means you finally realized there was nothing left to do. and thats okay.

there’s something so honest about being able to say that you exhausted every option, in my opinion. you loved with your whole chest. you showed all your cards. you put your ego down and said, okay, but do you want to figure this out? that’s not stupid to me.

what would actually scare me is being so prideful that you never let yourself do any of that.

stay far away from me if you’re too prideful to admit when you’re wrong. if you’re too prideful to apologize first. if you’re too prideful to put someone else before yourself sometimes. if you’re too prideful to care about how your actions made someone feel just because your intention was good. stay far away from me if you think being right is more important than understanding the person you love.

i don’t want a relationship where everybody is constantly protecting their ego.

sometimes you have to say, you’re right. sometimes you have to say, i’m sorry. sometimes you have to realize that even though you didn’t mean to hurt someone, you still did.

sometimes you have to do something you don’t particularly want to do because it matters to the person you love. sometimes love asks you to surrender. not your self-respect. not your standards. not yourself. but your PRIDE.

and that’s why I can never judge anyone who showed all their cards. because i do the exact same, and respectfully you were supposed to. you were supposed to let yourself be seen. you were supposed to care. you were supposed to try. you were supposed to be a little embarrassing. a little cringe. a little too earnest.

because what is the point of loving someone if you’re going to spend the entire time making sure they never know how much you love them?

and sometimes, you aren’t chosen. and it still ended, and all the trying and chasing didn’t change the outcome. but at least you know.

at least you didn’t leave wondering if you should have called one more time. you didn’t leave wondering if you should have apologized. you didn’t leave wondering if you should have said how you felt.

you said it.

you did it.

you tried.

and then eventually, you stopped. and that’s not embarrassing. that’s closure.

so please, can we not miss out on loving or caring about people because were so afraid of looking stupid?

just a small way to say thank you and help me keep writing. no pressure, no expectations. my writing stays free, as always. i just wanted to create a tiny door for anyone who feels like saying, “hey, I appreciate what you’re sharing” and leave a little something behind.

buy me a coffee

we say it like a conclusion. like once the words leave our mouth, there isn’t really anything left to discuss. i’m protecting my peace. i’m choosing myself. i’m setting a boundary. i’m removing myself from the situation. and that’s just it.

and sometimes, we should.

i want to make that very clear before i go any further because i am not about to sit here and tell anyone to stay somewhere they are being mistreated just for the sake of being more understanding. some people know exactly what they’re doing. some people hurt you repeatedly and call it a mistake every single time they’re held accountable. some people manipulate, lie, disrespect you, and only apologize because they don’t want to deal with the consequences.

you don’t need to stay around long enough to collect enough evidence to justify leaving. you are allowed to protect yourself. you’re allowed to say enough. you’re allowed to close the door.

but what i’m wondering is whether we’ve gotten so good at recognizing what we won’t tolerate that we’ve forgotten how to recognize a human mistake. because to me there is a difference.

someone disappoints us and suddenly they’re a bad friend. someone says the wrong thing and suddenly they’re toxic. someone doesn’t respond the way we hoped and suddenly they’re emotionally unavailable. someone makes a mistake and we’re questioning their entire character.

we’ve become really good at diagnosing people. maybe too good, and not nearly as good at letting people be people.

because people are going to get things wrong. they’re going to forget things. they’re going to misunderstand you. they’re going to say something that comes out completely wrong. they’re going to have a bad day and respond poorly. they’re going to make assumptions. they’re going to disappoint you. sometimes they’re going to hurt your feelings without ever intending to.

and that doesn’t mean you have to accept it. but it also doesn’t always mean you have to end the relationship. i think somewhere between “that wasn’t okay with me” and “you no longer get to exist in my life” there is supposed to be a conversation. and a lot of us are skipping it.

because leaving feels decisive. leaving feels powerful. leaving means you don’t have to sit in the uncomfortable part where you explain why something hurt you and wait to see what the other person does with that information.

you don’t have to risk them becoming defensive. you don’t have to hear their side. you don’t have to admit that maybe you misunderstood something. you don’t have to give them the opportunity to disappoint you again.

and sometimes, honestly, that is exactly what we need. but sometimes leaving isn’t self-respect. sometimes it’s just avoidance with a much more understanding label that people won’t question.

and there’s another part of this that i just want to say. because i notice how quickly women, especially, can be willing to cut off a friend. a sister. a cousin. a mother. somebody we’ve known for ten, fifteen, twenty years. one disagreement, one betrayal, one season of not feeling understood, and suddenly it’s, “i’m protecting my peace.”

but then they get into romantic relationships and somehow the standard changes. all of a sudden there’s more context.

maybe he’s just going through something. maybe she’s never been loved properly before. maybe they have a hard time communicating. maybe they’re afraid of intimacy. maybe they’re working on themselves. maybe they didn’t mean it that way. maybe they’ll change. maybe they just need time.

we can become incredibly fluent in explaining the behavior of the person we’re in love with while being completely unwilling to extend that same curiosity to the people we call our friends.

and for us to go and say, “i’m protecting my peace”?

girl, boo. because what exactly are we protecting ourselves from?

a conversation?

being disappointed?

having to admit that someone we love is imperfect?

having to sit with conflict long enough to find out whether the relationship can actually survive it?

because if your boyfriend can hurt your feelings and you can have three conversations, two arguments, a cry, a breakthrough, a five-hour phone call, and somehow still believe the relationship is worth fighting for, why does your best friend get one bad moment before you decide she’s no longer your person?

why does romantic love get the benefit of the doubt that friendship doesn’t?

why are we willing to call a relationship “complicated” when it’s romantic but “toxic” when it’s platonic?

and i’m not saying this because i think women should tolerate bad behavior from their partners. actually, quite the opposite. i think it’s worth asking why we sometimes reserve our deepest patience for the person we’re dating while expecting our friends and family to get everything right.

because friendship is a relationship, too. family is a relationship, too. community is made up of relationships.

and if we want the kind of community we keep saying we’re looking for, then we have to be willing to practice the same things inside of our friendships that we expect from our romantic relationships: communication, accountability, patience, forgiveness, repair.

we can’t keep saying we want community while treating every rupture as a reason to leave it. because sometimes people really are showing you who they are. believe them. absolutely. but sometimes people are showing you something else. they’re showing you that they’re human. and those are not always the same thing.

i think sometimes we’ve gotten so good at recognizing red flags that we’ve forgotten that not every uncomfortable thing is a warning sign. sometimes it’s just a conversation we haven’t had yet.

and that’s the part i’m really trying to get at.

we don’t need to become people who stay everywhere just because leaving is hard. but i also don’t think the goal of healing is to become so independent that nobody is ever allowed to inconvenience, disappoint, misunderstand, or hurt us.

because that isn’t peace. because “protecting my peace” can mean protecting yourself from genuinely harmful people. but it can also mean protecting yourself from the possibility of being uncomfortable. and those are not the same thing.

there’s a certain amount of humility required to be in relationship with other people. you have to accept that the people you love are not always going to love you perfectly. your friends won’t always show up perfectly. your partner won’t always say the perfect thing. your family will misunderstand you. you’ll misunderstand them. and eventually, you will become the person who makes the mistake, too.

that’s the part that’s easy to forget when we’re standing on our high horse.

we want grace when we’re the one who messed up. we want people to understand what we meant. we want them to consider our intentions. we want them to remember everything good we’ve done before this one bad moment.

we want them to say, “that’s not like you.”

but when someone else does something that hurts us, suddenly their entire character is on trial. we don’t want context. we don’t want explanations. we don’t want nuance. we want a verdict.

and maybe that’s because we’ve become a little too comfortable believing that everyone else should have done the same work we’ve done.

because i’ve learned how to communicate, you should know how to communicate. because i’ve learned my triggers, you should know yours. because i’ve learned how to apologize, you should apologize the way i would. because i’ve learned what healthy love looks like, you should already know how to practice it.

but that’s not really how people work.

people are at different stages of understanding themselves. they have different histories, different communication styles, different blind spots, different ways of processing conflict. some people are learning things about themselves in real time.

and sometimes the person in front of you isn’t trying to hurt you. they’re just getting it wrong. that doesn’t mean you excuse it.

i don’t think that’s what grace is.

i think grace is giving someone the opportunity to correct it. there’s a difference between accountability and punishment. accountability is saying, “you hurt me, and i need you to understand why.” punishment is saying, “you hurt me, so you no longer deserve access to me.” and yes, sometimes punishment is necessary. sometimes there is nothing left to repair. but sometimes what we call a boundary is really just our refusal to let another person make a mistake in our presence.

and how can anyone actually build intimacy with us if they’re never allowed to get anything wrong?

how can friendships deepen if the first real conflict is the end? how can romantic relationships become secure if every disagreement is treated like evidence that the relationship is fundamentally unsafe? how does community even exist if everyone is constantly waiting for the moment someone proves they don’t deserve to belong?

we talk so much about finding our people.

but finding your people also means learning how to keep your people. and keeping people requires repair.

real relationships aren’t built on never hurting each other. they’re built on what happens after.

someone says something wrong. you tell them it hurt. they listen. maybe they get defensive at first. maybe you do too. eventually somebody takes a breath. somebody apologizes. somebody adjusts.

and then you continue.

that’s relationship. that’s friendship. that’s community. that’s being a person around other people.

of course, there are situations where there is nothing to repair. some people don’t want to change. some people repeat the same behavior because they know you’ll forgive them. some people weaponize your grace. and that is when leaving becomes necessary. but discernment is knowing the difference.

it’s being able to look at someone and say, “you hurt me, but i don’t think you intended to.” or, “you hurt me, and you’ve shown me that you don’t care.” those are very different situations.

and i don’t think we need another therapy term to tell us which one we’re dealing with. sometimes the person who hurt you isn’t toxic. sometimes they’re just wrong. sometimes the friendship isn’t over. sometimes you just need to have an uncomfortable conversation. sometimes your partner isn’t emotionally unavailable. sometimes they genuinely didn’t understand what you needed because you never told them. sometimes someone isn’t disrespecting your boundary. sometimes they simply didn’t know there was a boundary there. and sometimes you’re not being asked to abandon yourself. you’re being asked to communicate.

there is a difference.

i think we need to stop measuring relationships by how rarely we’re disappointed by them. because if that’s the standard, we’re all going to end up alone. instead, maybe we should pay attention to how well we repair.

how willing we are to listen. how willing we are to apologize. how willing we are to forgive. how willing we are to extend the same humanity we expect when we’re the one who gets it wrong.

because the people you love will disappoint you. they will misunderstand you. they will get it wrong. and one day, despite all the healing you’ve done, you’re going to be the one who gets it wrong, too.

and when that happens, i hope the people who love you don’t hold you to an impossible standard.

i hope they don’t immediately kick you to the curb. i hope they ask what happened. i hope they let you explain. i hope they give you the opportunity to do better. because that’s what we need more of.

not lower standards. not fewer boundaries. just a little more grace for the fact that none of us are going to get this human thing right all the time.

we’ve become so good at leaving. can we try to get a little better at staying?

not staying where we’re being harmed, or disrespected, or where we have to abandon ourselves just to keep someone else. but staying long enough to find out if something can be repaired before deciding it has to be destroyed.

because sometimes protecting your peace means walking away.

and sometimes protecting your peace means having the uncomfortable conversation that might save the relationship.

you just have to be humble enough to know which one you’re being asked to do.

for anyone who has ever read my work and thought, “I want to support this somehow.”

just a small way to say thank you and help me keep creating. no pressure, no expectations. my writing stays free, as always. I just wanted to create a tiny door for anyone who feels like saying, “hey, I appreciate what you’re sharing” and leave a little something behind.

buy me a coffee

i keep thinking about this and honestly, i don’t even know if i’ve fully processed it yet. the funny thing about being a people pleaser is realizing that most people aren’t even pleased with themselves. they don’t even like who they are. they’re questioning their own choices, carrying their own insecurities, trying to figure out their own lives.

and somehow, we spend so much of ours trying to make sure they’re okay with us.

i don’t know why that bothers me so much.

maybe because i think i’ve spent a lot of my life trying to be someone people could easily be pleased with. trying to say the right thing. respond the right way. be understanding enough. patient enough. soft enough. not too emotional. not too distant. not too loud. not too quiet.

just... easy to love. easy to understand. easy to approve of.

but for what?

i don’t know. i genuinely don’t.

because the older i get, the more i realize there is no version of ourselves that will ever make everyone happy. and i think we know this logically. we probably would tell our friends this. we’d tell someone else to stop caring so much about what people think.

but when it’s us? suddenly it’s different.

we answer the text exactly how they wanted. still wrong.

we explain ourselves more clearly. still misunderstood.

we take the advice they gave us. now they have different advice.

we become quieter. now we’re distant.

we become louder. now we’re too much.

we try harder. now we’re doing too much.

we stop trying. now we don’t care enough.

the rules are always changing.

and i think that’s what eventually makes people pleasing so exhausting. not just the trying, but the fact that you can never actually arrive anywhere.

there’s no final version of you where everyone suddenly gathers around and says, “okay, perfect. now we all agree on who you are.”

someone will always think you’re too emotional.

someone else will think you’re detached.

someone will tell you to speak up.

someone else will tell you to calm down.

someone will tell you to dream bigger.

someone else will tell you to be realistic.

and somewhere in the middle of all of those opinions, i think we can lose ourselves a little. or maybe a lot.

i have a question written on a blank page in my journal that says:

“who are you actually trying to impress?”

and you can see, i never answered it.

i never wrote anything underneath it. not a name. not an idea. not a specific person in my life.

nothing.

just a question sitting there on an otherwise completely blank page.

and sometimes i think about that. because i think, subconsciously, i already knew the answer. i just didn’t know how to put it into words.

i knew i was constantly trying to please the people around me. i knew i was paying attention to how i was being perceived. adjusting myself accordingly. making sure i wasn’t too much or too little for whoever happened to be standing in front of me.

but it had become so normal that i didn’t even realize i was doing it anymore.

and looking back, i think that’s the part that scares me.

when you spend so much of your life trying to be who people need you to be, you can become completely unfamiliar with who you are when no one is asking anything from you.

like...

who am i when no one needs anything from me?

who am i when no one is disappointed?

who am i when no one is watching?

i don’t know.

and maybe that was the problem.

we get so used to checking the room before we check in with ourselves. so used to asking, “are they okay with me?” that we forget to ask, “am i okay with me?”

and maybe that’s what that blank page was really asking.

not who am i trying to impress?

but who am i when i’m not trying to impress anyone at all?

at the time i couldn’t answer it, but now i have much better idea.

but i do know that a lot of the people whose approval we’re chasing aren’t even living our lives.

they don’t wake up with our responsibilities. they don’t carry the weight of our decisions. they don’t have to live with the consequences of our choices. they only see a small piece of the story, and somehow, we let their opinion of that tiny piece become our entire understanding of ourselves?

which is kind of insane when you think about it. and even if someone could fit into our shoes, they still couldn’t walk in our path. i think we forget that. we give people so much authority over us when they’re just people, too.

people who are confused.

people who are insecure.

people who are trying to figure themselves out.

people who don’t always know what they’re doing either.

a lot of the people we’re trying so desperately to please aren’t even pleased with themselves.

and no shade to them.

but they’re fighting their own battles. questioning their own choices. trying to make sense of their own lives. they’re carrying things we know nothing about. and yet somehow, we hand them the authority to decide whether we’re doing enough.

why?

why do we do that?

why does someone else’s dissatisfaction with us automatically become evidence that we’re doing something wrong?

sometimes someone’s inability to understand you has absolutely nothing to do with you.

i finally got to a place to understand that people respond to us from their own fears, their own expectations, their own wounds, their own unfinished relationships with themselves. and that’s a really heavy thing to carry when we’re already struggling to figure out who we are.

because imagine spending your whole life trying to become the version of yourself that finally makes everyone else comfortable, only to realize that some people haven’t even found that comfort within themselves.

that’s when i think we have to stop giving a f*ck.

and i mean that exactly how it sounds.

not in the sense that we stop caring about people.

not in the sense that we become selfish or careless or stop listening to anyone around us.

i think i just mean that we have to stop making everyone else’s opinion our responsibility. we have to stop treating every disappointment like an emergency. we have to stop reshaping ourselves every time someone doesn’t like the shape we’re in. because people are going to have an opinion either way.

they’ll have an opinion when you stay.

they’ll have an opinion when you leave.

they’ll have an opinion when you try.

they’ll have an opinion when you don’t.

they’ll have an opinion when you change.

they’ll have an opinion when you stay exactly the same.

and honestly? i think a lot of us are tired. because how much of our lives are we going to spend trying to control what someone else thinks of us? especially when they don’t have to live with the outcome. we do.

we’re the ones who have to wake up with ourselves every morning. we’re the ones who have to sit with our decisions when the room is quiet. we’re the ones who have to look in the mirror and know whether or not we’re actually living a life that feels honest to us.

and maybe that’s what people pleasing was really about for a lot of us. we thought we were trying to make other people happy. but the more life i experience, the more i wonder if that’s actually true.

maybe we were hoping that if everyone else approved of us, we would finally approve of ourselves, too. maybe if everyone thought we were good enough, we wouldn’t have to wonder if we were. maybe if everyone understood us, we wouldn’t have to sit with the uncomfortable feeling of not understanding ourselves. maybe if no one was disappointed in us, we wouldn’t have to disappoint ourselves.

and maybe that’s why approval is so addictive.

because every time someone approves of us, even for a moment, we get to feel like we’re finally doing something right. but approval is a moving target. you can spend your entire life running toward it and still never arrive. there will always be someone who thinks you should’ve done something differently. someone who doesn’t understand your choices. someone who thinks you’re making a mistake. someone who sees your life through the lens of their own.

and that’s okay. because the goal was never mass appeal.

the goal was never to be understood by everyone. i think the goal is just to become someone we recognize when we look in the mirror. someone we can live with. someone we can be proud of when no one is watching. someone who knows that peace is more important than being perceived correctly by everyone. and i don’t know why this feels like such a radical thing to say. but we can’t keep abandoning ourselves just to keep everyone else comfortable. we can’t keep making ourselves smaller because someone else doesn’t know what to do with our size. we can’t keep changing our shape every time someone decides they preferred the old one.

we can listen.

we can consider.

we can take accountability when we’re wrong.

we can admit when we’ve hurt someone.

we can grow.

but growth doesn’t mean constantly adjusting ourselves to fit inside someone else’s expectations. growth is finally being able to hear someone’s opinion of you without immediately making it your own.

i think that’s where i am now.

i have a backbone now.

and i don’t mean that i never care what people think of me. i do. i’m human. i don’t think i’ll ever completely stop caring. but i don’t let it decide who i am anymore. i can hear someone’s opinion of me without immediately questioning myself. I can disappoint someone without immediately assuming i’ve done something wrong. i can be misunderstood without feeling like i have to explain myself until they finally get it. i can let someone not like me and still like myself.

and i think that’s how i know i’ve changed.

because there was a time when i would’ve done anything to avoid someone’s disappointment. i would’ve reshaped myself, softened myself, explained myself, apologized for myself, made myself smaller if i thought it would make someone else more comfortable.

respectfully, nobody should live like that.

and maybe that’s why i can sit here and write this now. because i finally have a backbone. and when the people pleaser finally learns to stop giving a fuck? that's the last person you'd expect to give you absolutely nothing. and honestly? good for her. good for me.

i finally understand that caring about people doesn’t mean abandoning myself for them. that being a good person doesn’t mean being endlessly agreeable. that taking accountability doesn’t mean taking responsibility for every feeling someone has about me.

i can listen.

i can consider.

i can take accountability when i’m wrong.

i can admit when i’ve hurt someone.

i can grow.

but i don’t have to disappear in the process. and maybe that’s what it really means to stop giving a fuck. not to stop caring. but to finally care about ourselves enough to stop abandoning ourselves for the comfort of everyone else. eewww

because at the end of the day, if you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.

because people are never pleased.

they never were.

they never will be.

and you don’t have to be the one who falls just because you refused to stand for yourself.

buy me a coffee to support

I realized about myself that I’m not a romantic because I have someone to love, I have someone to love because I’m romantic.

romance used to be idolized as something that only is practiced in relationships. Candlelit dinners. Handwritten notes. thoughtful gifts. slow walks. looking at someone like they hung the moon. but all of those things never belonged to the relationship. they belonged to me.

even when I'm single, I still stop to admire beautiful architecture. I still buy flowers because they make an ordinary tuesday feel softer. I still spend twenty minutes making a playlist that perfectly captures a feeling. I still linger in bookstores. I still obsess over finding the scent that feels like me. I still tell my friends how much they mean to me. I still cry over beautiful writing.

once I removed all the things I loved about being in a relationship, I realized none of them actually required one. the relationship had become the container, but it was never the source. I was.

the love, the curiosity, the softness, the attention to detail. they didn’t disappear when I became single because they were never borrowed from another person. they were qualities I’d been carrying all along. I don’t become thoughtful because I’m in love. I love thoughtfully because that’s who I am.

I think we misunderstood romance and what it means to be romantic because romance isn't about having someone to pour your love into, it’s about becoming someone who notices beauty wherever it exists.

love was never something another person brought into my life. it was already there.

we treat romance like it’s something we unlock once another person enters the picture. as if tenderness only makes sense when there’s someone else around to witness it. we wait until we’re dating someone to light the candles, write the letter, visit the museum, plan the picnic, buy the flowers, or slow down enough to notice the sunset.

but why?

who decided those experiences needed another person in order to be meaningful?

romance isn’t an activity its a disposition. that’s why I’ve stopped worrying so much about whether I’ll find love. not because I don’t want a relationship, I do. but because I’ve realized I’m already living in the kind of world I hoped a relationship would create. a world where I pay attention. where beauty interrupts me. where I tell people I love them. where I make ordinary moments feel intentional. a partner wouldn’t teach me how to live that way. they would simply get to live alongside someone who already does.

not waiting for someone to make life feel beautiful, but deciding life is beautiful first is what romance is to me. thats a true romantic in my eyes.

I made a little Buy Me a Coffee corner for anyone who has ever read my work and thought, “I want to support this somehow.”

just a small way to say thank you and help me keep creating. no pressure, no expectations. my writing stays free, as always. I just wanted to create a tiny door for anyone who feels like saying, “hey, I appreciate what you’re sharing” and leave a little something behind.

buy me a coffee

meeting new people and hearing, “we should grab coffee sometime,” has started to feel like i’m collecting infinity stones. every new person isn’t just another conversation. it’s another relationship to maintain. another birthday to remember. another person to text back. another life to make room for.

and the truth is, i don’t really want to.

i’m the kind of person who’s perfectly content with a small circle that runs deep. i don’t crave knowing more people, i crave knowing my people better. and showing up for them better. i don’t miss the stage where every silence has to be filled with another question. where are you from? what do you do? what brought you here? i like the kind of friendship where silence isn’t awkward because we’ve already done all that. where sitting on opposite ends of the couch somehow still feels like spending time together.

the older i get, the less interested i am in collecting relationships, and the more interested i am in tending to the ones i already have.

i’ve realized it isn’t because i dont like people. it’s because i dont know how to exist comfortably in the middle. the space between someone being a stranger and someone becoming one of my people. the stage where you know someone, enjoy their company, and genuinely wish them well but they don't necessarily have a permanent seat at your table yet.

because honestly, i’ve always struggled with that middle ground. i either want to know you deeply, remember the little things, show up for you, and build something real or i’m perfectly okay with us simply being people who know each other.

what i struggle with is the space in between. the casual friendship. the “we should get coffee sometime” relationship. the person i like, but haven’t built a life with. and not because those relationships aren’t valuable but because i’ve never been very good at giving something a little bit of my heart. i also never been very good at telling those two kinds of relationships apart. i don’t know how to halfway know someone.

if i let you in, i instinctively want to know you. i want to remember the little things, celebrate your wins, be there when your life falls apart, and trust that you’ll do the same for me. and if i know i don’t have the capacity to be that person, i’d almost rather keep us as people who simply just know each other. because maybe that’s the part i’ve never really known how to explain. i don’t know how to care about someone casually. i don’t know how to learn someone’s favorite things, hear their stories, and not feel some kind of responsibility to hold them with care.

• if i know your favorite food order, your childhood stories, your insecurities, your dreams, your trauma then i’m invested.

• but if i’m not ready to be invested, i feel like I’m failing you.

• so instead of risking being a mediocre friend, i keep people at a distance.

and that’s why meeting new people always feels heavy to me because i don’t know when or how to show up as a best friend for just someone you know.

i value friendship so much that i struggle with relationships that don’t have a clear place in my life. i take friendships so seriously that i’m afraid of mishandling it and i think part of that comes from knowing that not every connection is created with the same intention.

because sometimes “let’s grab coffee” really does mean let’s grab coffee. you know it means two people who are curious about each other, who want to share stories, ideas, and experiences. but sometimes it means something else. sometimes people want access more than they want connection. they want to pick your brain, collect your ideas, learn what you know, or get closer to you because they see something they want to be around. sometimes the relationship isn’t built on genuine curiosity about who you are, but on what being connected to you might offer them.

and i think that’s another reason i struggle with the in-between. because when someone new enters my life, i’m not just wondering “could this person become my friend?” i’m also wondering “do they actually want to know me, or do they just want access to something i have?”

and maybe that sounds guarded. maybe it is.

but that’s what i wanna learn. because i know friendship isn’t just about finding your people. it’s about continuing to choose them. and i think sometimes we romanticize friendship as something that either exists or it doesn’t. like if someone is truly your person, the friendship will always feel effortless. that you’ll always naturally stay close, always know what’s going on in each other’s lives, and never have to question where you stand. but the older i get, the more i realize that isn’t always true.

friendship has labor. not in a way that makes it feel like a chore, but in the same way anything meaningful requires care. a friendship can be full of love and still require effort. it can be genuine and still need to be maintained.

people get careers. relationships. families. responsibilities. different seasons that pull their attention in different directions. and suddenly the people who used to be a five-minute drive away are people you now have to intentionally make time for. you have to get on a plane now.

and i think that’s where a lot of friendships start to hurt. because sometimes the absence of communication starts to feel like the absence of care. you dont hear from someone for a few weeks, and suddenly you’re wondering if they still value the friendship. someone doesn’t ask how you’re doing, and you start questioning if you matter to them the way they matter to you.

and sometimes that is the truth. sometimes people stop showing up because they no longer want to. but sometimes life just got louder.

sometimes the person who loves you deeply is also someone who is tired, overwhelmed, distracted, or trying to figure out their own life. and maybe that’s one of the hardest parts about growing up: realizing that love and care don’t always look like constant access. sometimes it looks like a text that says, “i know it’s been a while, but i was thinking about you.” sometimes it looks like making the plan instead of waiting for someone else to. sometimes it looks like remembering that the people we love are still people who need to be chosen.

i don’t always know how to differentiate between a relationship that is meant to become something long-lasting and depthful, and a relationship that is simply meant to be a beautiful moment in time.

i don’t know if you’re supposed to know right away. and maybe that’s the point of getting to know people. maybe you only discover the depth after you allow yourself to sit in the uncertainty for a while? maybe you have to let someone be a stranger before they can become someone who feels like home?

and i can admit that i want to get better at that.

i want to be better at meeting people without immediately trying to decide where they belong in my life. i want to be better at allowing friendships to unfold instead of feeling like i need to know from the beginning whether you’re someone i’m going to invite to my wedding or someone i’ll simply smile at when i see you.

i dont know, maybe friendship isn’t about knowing exactly where someone belongs in your life and it’s about being open enough to let the relationship become what it’s meant to become, right?

what if you dont hate her?… what if you’re also just tired of carrying everything she learned to carry?

im speaking specifically to older sisters, first born daughters, the girls who are everyone’s friend but nobody’s best friend, the “moms” of the friend group, the girls who walk into a room and always make sure everyone else is good before checking on yourself.

im a first born daughter and i dont want to speak for all, but we don’t actually hate our younger selves. we kinda just resent how early we had to become useful. i used to feel so robbed of mistakes and childlike behavior because we had to be the responsible ones, the emotionally mature ones, etc etc etc.. we were often rewarded for being very low maintenance.

so we become good at carrying things before we even knew what they were, before we we’re good at naming them. one of the quietest losses is that no one notices when your childhood ends. there isn’t a moment where someone pulls you aside and says “from this point on, were going to expect more from you,” it kinda just happens. you’re now old enough to help, old enough to understand, old enough to set the example, and now you’re being praised for the things kids were never supposed to have to hold.

you’re “so mature for your age” “so responsible” “such a good helper”. all compliments of course, but when you’re little you dont realize how they were rewards for growing up too soon.

i think that’s why so many first born daughters carry a strange grief, at least i do. its not that i had a terrible childhood, because i didn't and im sure many of us were deeply loved, but at some point our identities became being the dependable one. we knew how to regulate ourselves, and comfort our siblings, anticipate our parents moods, save problems before they became emergencies. we just become very good at carrying emotional weight and what we, or i, didnt become very good at….. was putting it down.

and that’s why i feel i was robbed of ordinary childlike mistakes and growth. i wasn’t always given the luxury of being impulsive, dramatic, messy, or unsure. when you’re the example, mistakes are heavier because they become cautionary warnings for everyone coming behind you. you aren’t just making a bad decision, you feel like you’re setting an example so you become careful and measured. you start editing yourself way before you even know who you are. sometimes i wonder how many first born daughters became adults before they ever really got the chance to be children.

is that what leads us to being everyone safe place when we get older? because we know how to listen from paying attention to other people’s needs. we been doing it for as long as we can remember. we remember birthdays, we check in after difficult conversations, we notice when someone’s voice sounds different over the phone, and we became the friend everyone calls when life falls apart. while there is something beautiful about being trusted that deeply, there’s also a loneliness with always being the one who holds everyone else together.

you can be surrounded by people who love you and still quietly wonder what it feels like to be someone’s first phone call. to be the person who gets checked on before having to ask. to be loved not because you’re dependable, smart, or emotionally capable but just because someone wants to know how your heart is doing today.

i dont want healing for me to be looking back at a girl who got me here and finally forgiving her. maybe its looking at her and saying “you dont have to keep doing that anymore.”

you don’t have to be the emotionally mature one in every room. you don’t have to make yourself smaller so everyone else feels comfortable. you don’t have to anticipate everyone’s needs before your own. you don’t have to earn your place by being useful. you also don’t have to carry the conversation. carry the friendship. carry the family. carry the relationship. carry everyone else’s emotions as if they were your responsibility.

you’ve carried enough.

i think that’s what happens to so many first-born daughters. we become so accustomed to holding everything together that even when life gets lighter, our bodies don’t know how to set anything down. we reach for the heavy thing because that’s what we’ve always done. Because if we’re not carrying something... who are we?

i used to think my strength was found in how much i could hold. how much i could sacrifice. how much i could endure without asking anyone else to step in. but i know now how different strength can look like in asking for help. and how there’s strength in letting someone show up for you without feeling guilty. saying, “i’m actually not okay,” before you’ve already figured out how to fix it yourself. maybe it’s allowing someone else to remember your birthday first and them showing up. to ask how your day was. to notice when you’re quiet. to carry you for a little while……

because being dependable has no correlation with being undeserving. we, and i, became so comfortable being everyone’s safe place that we forgot we were allowed to have one too. so again, no i don’t hate the girl that got me here. i love her more than i ever have. i love the little girl who thought being responsible would keep everyone safe. i love the teenager who believed she had to have all the answers. i love the young woman who carried things she never should have had to carry because she genuinely believed that was what love looked like.

she was never too much. she was just carrying too much.

and thats what i want every older sister, every first born, every woman who has spent their life being “the strong one” to hear.

you dont have to spend the rest of your life proving that youre capable. you’ve already proven it. the people who love you dont need another demonstration of your strength. they want your honesty, your softness, your presence, and all the parts of you that never got to be little.

so part l was about not hating the girl that got you here….. part ll is about letting her rest. she has been carrying you for a very long time. its okay to tell her “ive got it form here.”

language is one of the only things we build that other people have to live inside long after we’ve left the room. we like to think of conversations as temporary, or even transactional. words are spoken, the moment passes, and everyone moves on. but conversations rarely end when a voice stops. they linger and they replay on quiet drives home, or in the middle of a regular ass day months later. the words themselves may fade, but the feeling of having lived inside them often doesn’t.

and thats because, maybe language has never simply been about words. its architecture

no building appears because someone laid a single perfect brick. it becomes something through repetitions, brick by brick, conversation by conversation, interaction by interaction. and eventually, you’ve built something. the question is whether it’s somewhere people want to keep coming back to. every conversation is a room youre asking someone to step into. your words build the walls. your tone decides whether that room feels like a home or a courtroom. your delivery determines whether those walls become a shelter or a cage.

we believe communication happens the moment words leave our mouths. we measure ourselves by what we intended to say. but communication isn’t complete when something is expressed. it’s only complete when it’s received. and somewhere between those two moments, language becomes far more complicated than vocabulary. messages dont travel by words alone. they trade through tone, facial expressions, volume, timing, silence, body language, the pause before an answer, the sigh after a question, the glance toward the ceiling. almost everything else.

all of these become part of the sentence whether we intended them to or not. we spend so much time refining what we want to say, yet surprisingly little time considering what it will feel like to hear. you can speak with perfect clarity and still communicate poorly if the only thing the other person can hear is your frustration, your impatience, your contempt, or your superiority.

words carry information. delivery carries meaning.

and people almost always remember meaning more than information. i think thats why two people can walk away from the exact same conversation carrying completely different realities. one can leave thinking “we finally had an honest conversation” and the other thinking “i dont feel emotionally safe around you anymore”. neither person is necessarily dishonest, they’re just measuring different things. the speaker remembers intention and the receiver remembers impact.

and relationships are often lost somewhere in between.

architects rarely experience their buildings the way the people living inside them do . they remember the blueprint, the measurements, the reasoning behind every decision. while the people inside remember something entirely different. whether the roof leaks, the rooms have natural light, does the space ever truly feel like home.

language is no different.

we remember what we meant. other people remember what it was like to exist inside what we created. this is why the smallest moments often become the strongest memories. the eye roll that silently says “youre ridiculous”. the laugh that makes someone regret opening up. the interrupted sentence that teaches someone their thoughts arent worth finishing. the constant correction that slowly replaces confidence with self-consciousness. the sarcastic “okay”. the dismissive “whatever”. even profanity that isn’t inherently aggressive can change the emotional temperature of an entire conversation.

none of these moments seem significant on their own but neither does a single brick. but architecture is never judged by one brick, it’s judged by the structure they collectively create.

people rarely leave the relationships because of one conversation. they leave because, over time, they’ve learned what kind of room they’re expected to enter every time your name appears on their phone. some conversations feel like walking into sunlight. others feel like walking on eggshells. not because of what we said, but because of what the environment has taught them to expect. eventually, the body learns the architecture before the mind does.

you begin preparing yourself before the conversation has even started. that’s the invisible strength of language.

every interaction becomes a blueprint. every conversation teaches people what to expect from you. whether a disagreement will be met with curiosity or defensiveness. whether vulnerability will be met with compassion or ridicule. whether honesty will be met with understanding or punishment. long before people trust your opinions, they learn whether they can trust the environment your language creates. but that’s also what makes language so beautiful. the same architecture capable of becoming a prison is also capable of becoming a sanctuary. language is the only home we can build inside another human being without ever touching them. and that’s why it deserves more care than we often give it.

a home isn’t simply a place someone enters. it’s a place where they can exhale. where they don’t have to rehearse every sentence before speaking it. where disagreement doesn’t threaten belonging. where honesty isn’t punished. where curiosity is met with curiosity. the beautiful thing is that we build places like this every day without realizing it.

sometimes with the way we listen. sometimes with the way we respond. sometimes with nothing more than choosing patience instead of pride. the beauty of language is that it has always offered us this choice. the very thing capable of creating distance is also the only thing capable of closing it. no bridge has ever existed without language first making it imaginable. no friendship has ever deepened without someone finding the courage to say, “im telling you this cause I care about you.” no forgiveness has ever happened without someone deciding that understanding mattered more than being right. even disagreement/arguments carries this hidden invitation.

we see conflict as the place where connection falls apart, when in reality it may be the first real opportunity for it to grow or get closer. every disagreement gives us a choice. to protect our ego. or to pursue understanding. one builds walls. the other builds rooms large enough for two different perspectives to exist. sometimes the strongest relationships aren’t built because conflict was avoided. they’re built because someone made the other person feel emotionally safe enough to survive it.

and i think that’s why some of the most unforgettable conversations happen with people we’ll never see again. a stranger notices the exhaustion on your face and tells you they hope your day gets better. someone sitting beside you shares a story that somehow answers the question you’ve been quietly carrying for months. a cashier compliments something about you that you’ve spent years doubting. none of these people know your history. they don’t know your heartbreak. they don’t know the version of yourself you’ve been fighting to become. yet somehow, a sentence from someone who owes you nothing arrives exactly at the moment you needed it. sometimes healing doesn’t arrive through years of knowing someone, it arrives through a few unexpected words from someone you’ll never meet again.

we rarely realize how often we’re standing at the edge of changing someone’s day, someone’s belief about themselves, or even someone’s life with nothing more than the way we choose to speak.

we imagine that changing someone's life requires grand gestures, when sometimes all it asks is a sentence. a compliment someone has never heard before. a kind observation made without expecting anything in return. a reminder that they're seen. that they matter. that they're doing better than they believe. kindness has always been one of language's quietest superpowers. it rarely announces itself, yet people carry it for years. long after they forget your name, they may still remember the sentence that made them stand a little taller when they walked away.

is this not the responsibility we overlook most? We often ask ourselves whether we told the truth. far less often do we ask what kind of place our truth became once someone else had to live inside it. because language has never just been about saying what we think. it’s about creating a space where another human being can exist without shrinking themselves to survive the conversation.

with every sentence we place another brick. with every conversation, it becomes another room. with every relationship slowly becoming a building. and whether we realize it or not, every one of us is an architect. When the conversation is over and you’ve both walked away... what kind of place have you left someone to live in?

i’ve learned the worst thing about pain is we don’t usually die from it. and i know that sounds dramatic but i think we’ve all felt or experienced a pain that felt almost terminal.

the loss of someone, the betrayal of someone, the version of yourself that existed before something happened, a pain that makes you stare at your ceiling at 2 a.m. wondering how something invisible can hurt so much. the kind of pain that sits in your chest and never goes away to convince you that life as you knew it is over. and yet the next morning comes anyways. your alarm still goes off, you rent is still due, the dog still needs to be walked, your friends still text, life still goes on. and there you are stuck in a moment of pain.

that’s the thing nobody ever tells you about pain. the worst part about it is we usually don’t die from it, even though we wish sometimes. and not because we want death, because we want relief. because there are certain pains that don’t have remedies. there’s no prescription for missing someone, no surgery for grief, no cast for disappointment…..some wounds heal without ever fully disappearing. they just become quieter roommates, and for a very long time it feels very unfair.

because if pain isn’t going to kill us then what exactly are we supposed to do with it? suffer, I guess.

thats what most of us learn. to carry it, or protect it, feel it, sit in it, to tell the story over and over until the wound becomes the most interesting thing about us. and i don’t say the judgmentally, i just think that’s what happens when something hurts long enough. eventually we stop introducing ourselves as who we are and start introducing ourselves as what happened to us. the heartbreak, betrayal, abandonment, grief, disappointment, etc.

and while pain deserves acknowledgment, i dont think it was ever meant to become our identity.

you aren’t only the thing that happened to you. but pain has a funny way of convincing us otherwise. it also has a funny way of changing how we move through the world. someone lies to us and suddenly trusting people feels irresponsible. someone breaks our heart and suddenly depending on anyone feels naive. but pain rarely stays where it happened, it always spreads. thats why someone can hurt you years ago and people you’ve never met are still paying the price of it.

pain doest just hurt us, it makes us very cautious. and guarded and suspicious and sometimes it disguises that fear as “wisdom”.

i think that’s why so many of us confuse isolation with healing. we convince ourselves that we’re protecting our peace, and sometimes we are, but sometimes we’re just protecting our fear. there’s a difference between solitude and withdrawal, one helps you find yourself and the other helps you avoid being found.

don’t get me wrong, i’m aware how tempting it is to withdraw and how distance is safety. that if nobody gets close enough, nobody can hurt you. it feels like touching a hot stove twice.

but i don’t think pain was ever meant to teach us how to stop loving. i think it was meant to teach us how to love better, more honestly, and intentionally, with better boundaries, with more discernment, and still with our hearts open. because pain can make us mistake survival for living, and they’re not the same thing. getting through the day is not the same thing as experiencing it, being alive is not the same thing as participating in life.

but survival has never been the highest expression of being human. its connection. its love. it’s trying again.

one of the saddest things pain steals from us is our ability to imagine a future. when we’re hurting, tomorrow feels so far away, feels almost impossible. not because it is but because pain is a terrible narrator. it speaks in absolute and tells us this feeling will last forever. that we’ll never recover, never love again, never trust again, never feel joy again. and although every single time its usually wrong but pain continues to reminds us this is the end and you cant take no more. but if you lived long enough, you’ve already survived things you once thought would destroy you.

there was a version of you that couldn’t imagine making it through, and yet here you are. reading this. breathing. continuing. becoming.

so maybe the goal isn’t to eliminate pain. maybe the goal is to stop worshipping it. because the world doesn’t need more martyrs. it has enough people slowly dying from their pain already. what it needs are people willing to live in spite of it. it needs lovers. people willing to keep participating and keep showing up. people willing to keep being kind even after learning how cruel people can be. people willing to keep trusting after being lied to. people willing to keep reaching for others even when the very thing that hurt them came through another human being.

the world has enough people proving how much they’ve suffered. what we’re short on are people willing to remain soft after life has given them every reason not to.

people willing to create things. build things. share things. say i love you. make art. raise children. hold hands. call their friends. send the text. buy the flowers. start over. and try again.

because one of the realest parts of being human is realizing everyone is carrying something. we all have suffered. the cashier. the stranger walking past you. your best friend. your mother. the person who broke your heart. everyone here is trying to survive something. everyone is grieving something. everyone is learning how to live with something. and maybe remembering that doesn’t make pain disappear. but it does make it feel less lonely.

which is important because i don’t think we were ever meant to carry pain by ourselves. for all our talk about independence and self-sufficiency, almost every meaningful healing experience involves another person. a friend. a sibling. a therapist. a partner. a stranger. a writer. someone who reminds us that pain may be personal, but suffering doesn’t have to be solitary.

because pain really won’t kill us. but if we’re not careful, our fear of experiencing it again might.

and maybe healing isn’t about getting rid of pain. maybe healing is deciding that pain will not be the most important thing that ever happens to us. maybe healing is refusing to hand it the pen. refusing to let it write the rest of the story.

maybe healing is calling a friend.

falling in love.

making art.

taking the trip.

laughing too hard.

buying the flowers.

writing the book.

telling the truth.

being seen.

seeing others.

maybe healing is every small act that reminds us we are still participants in life and not merely witnesses to our own suffering. because I think we conquer the slow death of pain the same way we conquer most things. never all at once, or extravagant, or perfect, or a big epiphany, but by giving life full try anyways.

I made a little Buy Me a Coffee corner for anyone who has ever read my work and thought, “I want to support this somehow.”

just a small way to say thank you and help me keep creating. no pressure, no expectations. my writing stays free, as always. I just wanted to create a tiny door for anyone who feels like saying, “hey, I appreciate what you’re sharing” and leave a little something behind

buy me a coffee

but this song feels a little different to me. and it’s because it doesn’t sound like she’s yearning for someone. it sounds like she’s yearning for herself or the version of her that’s “ready” for another relationship. for peace. for healing. for whatever version of herself existed before life got heavy in love. before she stopped herself from loving someone else.

“don’t touch me there, i’m not ready.”

“leave me in peace, all alone.”

“oh, i need to feel it so i can heal it.”

“and you swear you’ll carry me through the flood but when it rains, it pours.”

those lyrics feel SO familiar. especially for a woman but also for a hopeless romantic and not because they’re dramatic, although being a hopeless romantic is, but because it’s relatable.

i think a lot of people know what it’s like to want love while simultaneously being terrified of it. to crave connection while still carrying the residue of someone else. to know you deserve something healthy while still flinching every time its in front of your face.

the way i interpret the song, it feels like she is trying to open herself up to love after surviving a painful experience. she wants to be open to someone else. but she understands she still needs time. she needs to grieve and heal. she knows healing doesn’t happen overnight.

and it has me thinking about what it means to love someone who isn’t fully ready.

but not to fix them or in a save them kind of sense. more so of in a deeply, compassion and empathetic human kind of sense.

like the way you meet someone and can tell life hasn’t always been gentle with them. and you notice the hesitation before they trust. the way they apologize for things that don’t require an apology. the way they brace themselves for disappointment. the way they struggle to believe kindness can exist without conditions attached to it or with an ulterior motive.

and maybe because i’ve been that person before, but i always find myself wanting to love those people a little more softly. i want to love someone so purely that they feel safe. i want to love someone so consistently that they stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. i want to love someone so gently that they discover parts of themselves they didn’t realize were still hurting.

not because i’m trying to rescue them. but because i know what it feels like to survive on crumbs and call it girl dinner. to mistake inconsistency for passion. to think being chosen occasionally was enough. to shrink yourself into something easier to love.

and that’s why the song been on repeat, cause i been there. we all have. although you absolutely need the time to heal and grieve, i think you also shouldn’t rob yourself the opportunity to be loved again.

because i don’t believe love heals you. i believe love shows you where you’ve healed. and it shows you where you haven’t.

but just as much as i believe people should take that time before entering something new, i also don’t think healing happens entirely alone.

there are some wounds you don’t discover until someone tries to love you. there are some fears that don’t resurface until challenged. there are some insecurities that stay hidden until somebody actually chooses to stay. you can spend years convincing yourself you’ve moved on from something. then one healthy person walks into your life and suddenly you realize there are still rooms inside of you that need sunlight. and that’s why I will always think that healing is not a finish line.

i think healing is a relationship.

a relationship with yourself. a relationship with your past. and eventually, if you’re blessed, a relationship with someone who handles your heart carefully. not someone who isn’t responsible for your healing. but becomes a safe place for it to continue. because healing never really ends. it just changes shape and looks differently.

so when i say i want someone to drown in my love, i don’t mean i want them dependent on me. i don’t mean i want to save them. i mean i want to love someone so graciously, so compassionately, and so unapologetically that they experience a version of love that doesn’t require walls up. not a love that keeps score. not a love that punishes vulnerability. not a love that makes them earn basic tenderness. just the kind of love that feels like a big ass exhale.

the kind of love that reminds you healing isn’t always found in solitude. sometimes it looks like existing beside someone who loves you so well that one day you realize you’re no longer carrying the things you thought you’d carry forever. not because they carried them for you, but because they created an environment where you finally felt safe enough to put them down.

and maybe i feel so strongly about this because i’ve spent enough of my life being loved by people who made tenderness feel conditional. people who only knew how to love in portions. people who wanted closeness but didn’t know how to create safety. people who cared, but didn’t always know how to be gentle. people who loved me, but didn’t always know how to hold me.

and i think there’s something beautiful about becoming the thing you once needed.

i’m so tired of watching people drown in everything that was bad for them. fear. disappointment. loneliness. grief. half-love. the kind of things that slowly convince you to keep your guard up and your heart closed. the kind of things that make you believe softness is something you have to earn instead of something you deserve.

i just want us to have more examples of drowning differently.

i want someone to drown in patience. i want them to drown in safety. i want them to drown in tenderness and understanding. i want them to drown in the certainty of knowing they are loved without having to perform for it. i want them to drown in the kind of love that teaches them they no longer have to survive it.

something that reminds us healing doesn’t always happen alone. sometimes it happens in love. and love was never meant to be another thing to survive.

it started because we were talking about our relationships and catching each other up on life since i moved. but more specifically, we were talking about what it feels like to be with people who are genuinely rooting for you. people who want good things for you. people who celebrate your wins as if they’re their own. and in the laughing, sharing stories, and comparing notes, we both realized we had lived through a very similar experience before.

we had both dated our biggest hater.

and i don’t mean that dramatically. i mean there are people walking around in relationships with partners who secretly resent them. partners who compete with them. partners who get uncomfortable when they start succeeding. partners who somehow find a way to make every accomplishment feel smaller than it actually is. not because they’re evil, but because your growth highlights something they’re unwilling to confront within themselves.

the strange part is that most people don’t realize they’re dating their hater while they’re in it. because your biggest hater rarely introduces themselves that way. sometimes they text you good morning. sometimes they remember your favorite snack. sometimes they tell you they love you every night before bed. sometimes they do everything that, on paper, looks exactly like love.

but still, something feels off.

i think that’s because being loved and being understood are not always the same thing. sometimes someone loves you, but only the version of you they can comfortably hold. the version that doesn’t challenge them, outgrow them, or dream quite so loudly.

and without realizing it, you begin editing yourself.

you stop talking about certain goals because the response is always lukewarm. you stop sharing certain ideas because they seem to land with confusion instead of excitement. you start presenting smaller versions of your ambitions because it’s easier than feeling dismissed. little by little, you become more digestible. more manageable. more convenient.

and i think that’s one of the loneliest experiences a person can have.

to be loved, but not fully witnessed.

to be cared for, but not fully understood.

to feel like pieces of yourself need to be folded away in order for the relationship to remain comfortable.

because love should never require you to become smaller.

the right person doesn’t just love your existence. they make room for it. all of it. the ambitious parts. the complicated parts. the dreams that sound ridiculous when you say them out loud. the ideas that are still half-formed. the things you’re scared to admit you want. they don’t just tolerate those parts of you. they celebrate them.

and maybe that’s why being loved well can feel surprisingly emotional at first.

because it doesn’t just feel like support.

it feels like grief.

grief for all the times you thought you were asking for too much when you were really just asking the wrong person. grief for every goal you stopped talking about because nobody seemed excited to hear about it. grief for every version of yourself you slowly shrunk down because you thought that was what love required.

because once someone starts celebrating you naturally, you start realizing how often you were making yourself smaller before.

you realize how many rooms you entered already prepared to downplay yourself. how many accomplishments you announced casually because you didn’t want to seem arrogant. how many dreams you spoke about apologetically because you were used to people looking at you with skepticism instead of enthusiasm.

and then one day someone looks at those same dreams and says, “that’s incredible.”

and suddenly you’re left wondering why you ever thought they needed to be hidden in the first place.

i think that’s what being seen feels like. not being tolerated. not being accommodated. not being managed. being seen.

and once you’ve experienced that, it’s very hard to return to relationships that only have room for half of you.

somewhere in the middle of all of this, nia and i started talking about something completely different. the simple things. or what people love calling “the bare minimum.” and honestly, i think we’ve become a little weird about that phrase.

because yes, your partner should support you. they should remember important things. they should celebrate your accomplishments. they should communicate with you. they should make you feel cared for.

but when did “the bare minimum” become synonymous with “meaningless”? those aren’t the same thing.

a bouquet of flowers after accomplishing something. a text message wishing you luck before a big meeting. someone remembering you were nervous about something and checking in afterward. someone being proud of you out loud. someone wanting good things for you without needing to benefit from them.

none of these things are grand gestures. and none of them are particularly cinematic. but yet they matter.

i think somewhere along the way we became so focused on not settling that we forgot how to appreciate. as if gratitude somehow lowers our standards. as if saying “that meant a lot to me” is an admission that our expectations were too low to begin with.

but i’ve never understood that.

if someone holds the door for me, i say thank you. if someone checks on me after a hard day, i say thank you. if my partner remembers something important to me, supports me, celebrates me, or shows up for me in a meaningful way, i’m going to say thank you.

and not because they deserve a trophy. not because i owe them for treating me well. but because kindness deserves acknowledgment. because appreciation is a form of love too. i don’t think saying “they should be doing that” should stop us from recognizing when someone actually does. you can expect flowers and still smile when they arrive. you can expect support and still feel moved when it’s given. you can have standards and still be grateful.

those things have never been opposites.

in fact, i think the healthiest relationships are built on both. high standards and deep gratitude existing side by side.

because the truth is, there are people walking around who have never been celebrated. people whose accomplishments were ignored. people who spent years with partners who treated every achievement like a threat. people who have survived emotional neglect for so long that tenderness feels foreign.

so no, i’m not going to pretend flowers mean nothing. i’m not going to act unimpressed when someone remembers something important to me. i’m not going to downplay being loved thoughtfully just because someone online decided to label it the bare minimum.

and maybe it is the bare minimum. maybe support, encouragement, and flowers are all the bare minimum. but the bare minimum is still care. the bare minimum is still someone thinking about you when you’re not in the room. the bare minimum is still someone paying attention. the bare minimum is still love when it’s offered intentionally.

and i don’t ever want to become so focused on protecting myself from disappointment that i lose my ability to appreciate tenderness when it arrives.

because being celebrated feels good.

being remembered feels good.

being supported feels good.

being considered feels good.

and i think we’re allowed to enjoy that. without apologizing for it. without downplaying it. without immediately reminding ourselves that it should have happened anyway.

maybe that’s what nia and i were really talking about the entire time.

not flowers. not relationships. not even the bare minimum. but what it feels like to finally be around people who want good things for you. people who don’t need you to be smaller in order to feel comfortable. people who celebrate your wins without competing with them. people who make room for all of who you are.

it’s funny because our conversations always do this. they start somewhere and end up somewhere completely different. one minute we’re talking about dating, and the next we’re accidentally unpacking why tenderness feels so rare, why gratitude feels almost rebellious these days, or why being genuinely supported can feel so unfamiliar when you’ve spent years surviving without it.

i don’t think either of us got on that facetime call intending to talk about any of this. but i’m glad we did.

because if there’s one thing i left that conversation knowing, is this:

the bare minimum isn’t meaningless. being rooted for isn’t small. being celebrated isn’t something to downplay. and being loved by people who are genuinely happy you’re here is one of the most beautiful things a person can experience. but also don’t become so focused on what’s expected that you forget to appreciate what’s beautiful when it shows up.

sometimes the simplest things are the things worth holding onto the longest.

but it seems as if people don’t actually know how to have someone. they know how to want you. they know how to admire you, talk about you, think about you, even fantasize about what it would be like to be with you. but when it comes down to actually showing up, actually choosing you in real life, actually rearranging parts of their life to make space for you… it gets quiet.

and that’s where the disconnect is.

wanting someone is easy, having a crush is easy. it doesn’t require anything from you. you can want someone from a distance, from your phone, from your comfort zone. you can want someone while still entertaining other options, while still being unsure, while still keeping one foot in and one foot out. wanting someone doesn’t cost you anything. but having someone? it requires more from you, that requires movement. and i think a lot of people are fumbling people they really like, not because they don’t feel enough, but because they don’t do enough. and i understand taking things slow, i understand not showing all your cards, i understand being reserved till someone shows you more. i get it

there’s this over-romanticizing of yearning right now. like if someone is thinking about you all the time, talking about you like you’re this amazing, rare person, saying things like “i’d do anything for you” or “i don’t want to lose you,” that’s supposed to mean something on its own. and i hate to say it, but it doesn’t. because if you say you would do anything for me, then I should see something. i should feel a shift. i should feel like i am being prioritized, not just spoken about like i am. if you say you don’t want to lose me, then why do i feel like you’re comfortable risking me? and that’s what doesn’t add up.

too many people speak in extremes, but move with hesitation. and that gap is where people get lost because it’s confusing to be on the receiving end of someone who sounds so sure, but moves like they’re not. i’m just not impressed by words anymore. although i love them, and they’re my language. they’re beneath bare minimum to me, they’re like brushing your teeth, taking a shower, feeding yourself. they’re necessary, expected, but not impressive on their own.

but not because i don’t value communication, but because i’ve seen how easy it is for people to say things they haven’t actually decided to stand on. anyone can tell you how much they like you. anyone can describe how they feel about you. anyone can create a moment that feels intense and real and full of potential. but i think the people who actually get to keep you are the ones who wake up the next day and act the same way. and the day after that. and the day after that.

consistency is the part people skip over because it’s not exciting. it’s not performative. it doesn’t give you that immediate rush. but in some cases it’s the only thing that’s real.

so if you say you want someone, then want them in a way that shows up in your decisions. not just in how you talk, but in how you move. in what you prioritize. in what you’re willing to let go of to make space for them. because people can always tell when they’re just being fit in instead of actually chosen.

and to be honest… a lot of people don’t struggle with the part of finding someone they like. they struggle with committing to what comes after that.

because once you actually have someone, there’s a level of responsibility that comes with it. you can’t hide behind “i’m just seeing how it goes” or “i don’t know yet” or “i just really like you” without backing it up. having someone means you have to be clear. you have to be intentional. you have to invest. you have to be consistent. and a lot of people avoid that by staying in this in-between space where they can keep the feeling of wanting you without ever fully stepping into choosing you.

i don’t think anyone wants to be almost chosen. no one wants to be the person you talk about like they’re special, but treat like a optional. we don’t want to feel like we have to decode how you feel based on small moments and half-effort. if you want someone, it should be obvious. not loud , but clear. and steady. undeniable. because at this point, no one is asking for anything unrealistic. if your words say one thing, your actions should echo it. if your feelings are as strong as you say they are, then you and them should feel safe in that, not confused by it.

and if you’re not ready to move like that, that’s fine. but don’t dress it up as something deeper than it is.

don’t call it “i really like you” when it’s really just “i enjoy the feeling of you.”

the truth is, a lot of people don’t lose good people because they weren’t enough. they lose them because they stayed comfortable in wanting… instead of stepping up to what it takes to actually keep them.

and at some point, you have to decide which one you’re capable of. because yearning might feel good to you, but it’s not enough to keep you from losing someone.

i learned how to make my feelings easier to carry for there people. easier to digest for other people. easier to ignore for other people. all these things for other people and not myself. i learned how to say “it’s okay” before someone even apologized. that used to be my thing actually, telling someone “it’s okay” in a tone that felt forgiving and understanding. i learned how to water myself down before entering a room. learned how to sit with disappointment quietly so nobody had to deal with the inconvenience of my hurt. and i thought this was maturity or being the bigger person. i thought being “easygoing” meant never asking for reassurance. never needing clarity. never expressing when something hurt me. never admitting when i felt unloved.

i thought love required me to need less.

which is such a heartbreaking thing to realize about yourself because i look back now and i can see how often i abandoned myself just to keep other people comfortable.

how often i swallowed my feelings because i didn’t want to be perceived as difficult. how often i convinced myself that asking for effort was somehow asking for too much.

and honestly? i think i became proud of how little i required from people. like look at me. look how understanding i am. look how patient i am. look how low maintenance i can be. look how quietly i can carry hurt without making anyone else feel bad about causing it.

that isn’t strength by the way. that is survival.name there is a difference.

because love should not constantly feel like surviving your own emotional needs. it should not feel embarrassing to want tenderness. or consistency. or warmth. or reassurance. or softness. or effort. somewhere along the way people started acting like emotional availability was asking for too much. like wanting someone to communicate with you clearly is clingy. like wanting reassurance means you’re insecure. like wanting intentional love somehow makes you needy.

and maybe i believed that for a while because i kept placing my heart into emotionally unavailable hands. hands that only knew how to hold me when i was convenient. or loved me best when i was detached, easy, quiet, self-contained. that could only handle me in small doses.

so of course i started thinking i was too much. because i was asking people with shallow emotional capacity to hold very deep parts of me. and maybe that’s the actual heartbreak of it all. not that i loved too deeply. but that i kept offering depth to people who only knew how to meet me on the surface.

i’ve noticed recently, how different i feel around emotionally safe people. how my voice softens naturally. how i stop rehearsing conversations in my head before having them. how i stop feeling guilty for existing out loud. how i laugh harder. talk longer. stay present instead of emotionally preparing for abandonment. my body literally feels different around people who handle me gently.

and as i shared in a previous substack “being loved well will change you”, that’s what love is supposed to do.

not make you smaller. not make you quieter. not make you easier to digest. but make you feel safe enough to fully arrive. because the right people will never punish you for your humanity. they will never make you feel dramatic for needing care. they will never make you feel guilty for wanting closeness. they will not only love the polished, easy, emotionally edited version of you. they will hold the trembling, scary, dark parts too. the overthinking parts. the sensitive parts. the parts that need reassurance after a hard day. the parts that love loudly. the parts that ache.

and maybe this is where i mention the fact that i literally have “handle with care” tattooed across my lower back. which honestly sounds like a joke until i explain i mean it with a lot of sincerity. like yes, sexually of course since it is a tramp stamp. but also emotionally. mentally. spiritually. conversationally. romantically. domestically. all of it.

handle me with care when i tell you about the things that hurt me. handle me with care when i’m trying to communicate instead of shutting down. handle me with care when i finally admit i need reassurance. handle me with care when i’m soft with you. handle me with care when i hand you the parts of myself i don’t normally let people touch.

because i think people hear “soft” and assume “fragile,” and that’s not what i mean. i am not fragile. i just don’t think love should require brutality to prove it’s real. i don’t think being understood should feel like a fight every single time. i don’t think care should arrive through confusion. and although that tattoo started out as something sexually, it also became more honest over the years than i even realized at the time i got it. because all i’ve ever really been asking for is to be handled properly. like something valuable. like something human. like someone whose heart is alive and capable of feeling everything deeply.

and i think there’s something almost funny about the fact that i spent years with “handle with care” written directly on my body while continuously handing myself to people who handled me recklessly anyway. like the warning label was literally right there.

and now, being loved by someone gentle feels like the first time someone actually stopped long enough to read it. because the most healing part of all of this has been realizing what happens when you finally end up in the hands of someone who can actually hold you properly. because suddenly… nothing about you feels excessive anymore.

the way you love is no longer “a lot.” your softness is no longer inconvenient. your emotions are no longer treated like problems that need to be managed. you are not constantly shrinking yourself to avoid being dropped. you are just loved. fully. calmly. safely.

and it’s strange at first. being handled with care when you spent so much of your life preparing yourself to be mishandled. sometimes i still catch myself apologizing for things that don’t require apologies. still bracing for distance after expressing a feeling honestly. still waiting for someone to act overwhelmed by me. and then they don’t. they just hold me closer. they listen. they reassure me. they make space for me without making me feel guilty for taking up any.

and i think that’s when i knew that i was never hard to love, just was placed in the wrong hands to show me.

emotionally, spiritually, and internally there is something so haunting about experiencing existence alone. because yes, people can surround you. your phone can stay busy. your friends can love you deeply. your family can support you endlessly. you can laugh at dinner tables and still go home feeling like there is a quieter part of you untouched by all of it.

it’s a much deeper loneliness. the kind that doesn’t come from lacking attention. but the kind that comes from lacking accompaniment.

i really think we as humans were not meant to do life alone. because life itself is already hard enough. not just devastating moments either, but the ordinary ones too. the constant responsibilities. the dishes in the sink. grocery shopping. bills. commuting. carrying stress silently through your body while still answering texts and calls and pretending you’re okay. eating dinner alone after a long day. laying in bed with thoughts that have nowhere to go but deeper inside yourself. and i think we got to a place of underestimating how lonely adulthood can actually feel.

and i know friendships matter. family matters. community matters deeply. i dont say any of this from a place of dismissing those loves because they have carried me in so many ways. but there is still a layer of me that remains unfulfilled without a romantic partnership.

a quiet deeper layer.

because there is something so intimate about having one person beside you through the long unfolding of your life. not just during milestones, or tragedy, but during existence itself. i just don’t mean achievements either. I mean being human.

i think even the most ordinary parts of life to start to feel softer when shared with someone you love. grocery shopping feels different, bad days feel different, eating dinner feels different, even silence feels different. there are moments when nothing is happening at all, and somehow those are the moments that make me ache for partnership the most.

seeing something funny and instinctively reaching for your phone. turning over in bed to tell someone a thought before sleep, and i always have so many. sitting beside someone while both of you answer emails or scroll on your phone in silence. having someone pick up your favorite snack on their way home because they remembered. someone asking how your morning went and actually understanding why it mattered to you. someone existing beside you while life happens.

because i don’t think the desire for love is always about wanting a grand romance.

sometimes, i think its simply the exhaustion of carrying an entire life by yourself for too long. having every hard day end with you comforting yourself. having beautiful moments happen and instinctively turning toward nobody. having an entire inner world with nowhere soft to fully place it.

and honestly, i think that same loneliness follows people even into success.

because again, yes, people will clap for you when it finally happens. they’ll celebrate the finished product. the launch. the move. the dream job. the version of you that finally “made it.” but i dont think people talk enough about how quiet accomplishment can feel when nobody truly witnessed what it took to get there.

the sleepless nights.
the self doubt.
the rejection emails.
the starting over.
the trying again after swearing you wouldn’t.
the crying in private.
the version of you that looked ridiculous for believing anyway.

i actually think one of the most intimate experiences a human being can have is being deeply witnessed by the person they love.

not admired from afar. not perceived online. witnessed.

i just think there’s something so tender about someone watching you become.

watching you fail.
watching you rebuild.
watching you dream out loud before there’s any proof it will work.
watching you embarrass yourself trying.
watching you keep going anyway.

and still choosing to stay. because i don’t think as humans we were created only for achievement. I think we were also created for companionship. for tenderness. for someone to look at us in the middle of the mess and say “I see how hard you’re trying.”

the internet, and even our parents or elders, has convinced a lot of us that needing people is weakness. that the highest version of selfhood is becoming so independent that nothing can touch you. nobody can disappoint you. nobody can hurt you deeply enough to matter.

but i dont know.. i think that mindset is making people cold. heartless. the opposite of who we are. because although independence is important, and solitude teaches you things, and we should know how we are outside of relationships, I think a lot of people learned how to survive alone and then started pretending they preferred it that way.

and yanno maybe some people truly do. but i think many of us are simply exhausted from being un seen and being just too independent to admit it. because being loved deeply is not just about romance or attraction or chemistry. it is also about being known in motion. being known across time. being known while changing. while failing. while growing into yourself.

it is someone saying: i remember who you were before this versions of you existed. and i stayed long enough to watch you become them.

i think achievements feel better when love is involved. not because success suddenly matters more, but because you have someone to turn toward when it happens. someone whose eyes you search for first in the room. someone who understands the weights of what this moment cost you. and truthfully….. I think failure becomes softer too.

sometimes life does not go the way you planned. sometimes you pray hard and still lose. sometimes you give everything you have to a dream and it still falls apart in your hands. but there is something deeply healing about being able to come home to the arms that watched you give it everything you had. not somebody who only appears once you’ve succeeded. but somebody who was there while you were trying.

there’s a certain loneliness to constantly having to hold yourself through everything. constantly having to be you down witness. your own comfort. your own reassurance. your own soft place to land.

and yes, we should know how to stand on our own. but i dont think survival should be mistaken for fulfillment. i dont think we were created only to survive. i think we were created to share life with one another.

to love and be loved through the ordinary.
through the becoming.
through the exhaustion.
through the celebration.
through the grief.
through the trying.

i think life was meant to be shared quietly between people who choose each other again and again through every version of being human.

there’s too many birds on the ground.

and i dont mean that literally. i mean everywhere i look, i see people refusing the very thing they were built for.

people speaking loudly on subjects they have never seriously studied. people craving deep love while lacking the emotional intelligence required to sustain it. people wanting soft relationships while communicating through ego, avoidance, manipulation, and unhealed fear. people arguing online with reading levels that can barely carry the weight of the opinions they swear deserve a microphone.

and maybe that sounds harsh. maybe it is.

but i think we’ve entered an era where everybody wants the reward of things without the responsibility of becoming capable of holding them.

everybody wants intimacy but not accountability.
everybody wants to be understood but does not know how to understand.
everybody wants to speak but nobody wants to learn.

and maybe that’s part of the problem too. i think we’ve lost the ability to simply not speak.

to say:
“i actually don’t know enough about this yet.”
“i haven’t thought deeply enough about this.”
“i need more time.”
“i need to read more.”
“i need to listen.”

everything is immediate now. every opinion urgent. every thought uploaded before it’s even fully understood by the person thinking it. and maybe that’s why everything feels so shallow. because depth requires time. it requires humility. it requires being willing to look uninformed before becoming informed. and social media has made people so afraid of appearing unintelligent that they’d rather speak incorrectly than remain silent long enough to learn.

and i see it in ambition too.

so many people want to be influencers, stylists, streamers, creatives, public figures, but don’t actually study the craft they claim to love. they don’t research. they don’t develop taste. they don’t build perspective. they just want the aesthetics of being perceived as interesting. because now visibility became more important than substance.

people want audiences without having anything meaningful to say to one.
want platforms without presence.
want recognition without discipline.
want to skip the becoming part entirely and arrive immediately at being seen.

and i think that’s why so much of the internet feels hollow now. everybody is performing expertise, performing individuality, performing depth. very few people are actually sitting alone long enough to develop any of it for real. and what scares me most is how disconnected everyone feels from each other while simultaneously being more “connected” than ever.

people don’t even know how to talk anymore.

not perform.
not flirt through irony.
not curate responses.
not communicate through recycled therapy language or internet phrases.

i mean genuinely talk. to strangers. to people outside of their algorithm. to someone sitting next to them. to someone different from them. people don’t know how to hold conversations anymore because curiosity is dying. attention spans are dying. everyone is waiting for their turn to speak instead of actually listening closely enough to be changed by another person.

and it’s so sad to see but also be a victim of because conversation is one of the purest forms of humanity we have. it’s how we discover each other. how we sharpen each other. how we expand beyond ourselves. and yet so many interactions now feel transactional, rushed, filtered through performance and self-awareness.

everybody wants to fly while remaining deeply committed to the ground. but birds belong in the sky…

and i don’t think i’m above this either. there are areas of my own life where i’ve stayed grounded out of fear. places where i confused desire with readiness. moments where i wanted outcomes i had not yet developed the discipline to maintain.

and maybe this is part of why i don’t enjoy meeting new people as much anymore. because so many interactions now feel empty before they even begin. everybody is branding themselves. performing themselves. trying to appear interesting instead of actually becoming interesting. conversations feel rushed, surface-level, curated for perception instead of connection.

but i think that’s also why some of my closest friends are people who don’t even do the same things as me. they aren’t necessarily writers or influencers or creatives or even internet people. some of them have completely different interests, different careers, different lifestyles. but they’re curious. thoughtful. emotionally intelligent. they know how to ask questions. they know how to listen. they know how to hold a conversation that exists beyond themselves.

and i value that more than shared aesthetics or shared ambition. because depth reveals itself in people regardless of what they do.you can feel when someone has spent time truly engaging with the world. truly observing it. truly thinking. there’s a richness to them. a presence. a certain kind of emotional and intellectual openness that makes being around them feel expansive instead of exhausting.

because flight is uncomfortable. flight requires effort. it requires trust. it requires leaving the familiar version of yourself behind. and i think that’s why so many people stay down here.

the ground is crowded, but it’s comfortable.

just distance.

like… nothing is wrong, but my body still feels like something is missing.

this is me missing you.

i miss you in a way that doesn’t make sense, and i think that’s the part i keep getting stuck on. because nothing is wrong between us. nothing ended, nothing broke, there’s no real reason for my chest to feel this tight when i think about you. you’re still here, still mine in the ways that matter, still someone i can call, still someone who exists in the same world as me. and yet, somehow, the simple fact that you are not physically next to me feels bigger than it should. bigger than logic. bigger than reassurance. bigger than all the ways i try to talk myself out of it.

we don’t talk enough about how loud it can be to miss someone who is still yours. how it doesn’t always come in soft, romantic waves. sometimes it aches. and it interrupts you in the middle of your day, in the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a moment that should feel complete but doesn’t. it’s like my body remembers you in a way my mind can’t quiet down. like it knows what it feels like to be close to you, to reach for you without thinking, to exist beside you without effort and it doesn’t understand why it can’t have that right now.

it’s the smallest things that make it worse. the way i instinctively reach for my phone to tell you something, and then pause, because what i really want is to say it while you’re right here, close enough for me to watch your reaction in real time. the way certain moments feel unfinished, like they’re missing a piece that only you can fill. the way i can go through my entire day just fine, laughing, moving, doing everything i’m supposed to do, and still feel this quiet pull toward you underneath all of it, like something in me is always leaning in your direction.

and there’s nowhere for this feeling to go, which might be the most frustrating part. i can’t hand it to you. i can’t call you and say “come fix this” because there’s nothing to fix. we’re okay. we’re good. we’ll see each other again. and i know that. i know that in the most rational, grounded part of myself. but missing you isn’t rational. it doesn’t care about timing or distance or plans already made. it just shows up anyway, sitting heavy in my chest like it belongs there.

i think what makes it ache is that it’s so simple. i don’t need a conversation, i don’t need reassurance, i don’t need to hear you tell me anything i don’t already know. i just want you here. not on my phone, not in my messages, not in a “soon.” i want you within reach. within touch. close enough that this feeling doesn’t have space to exist the way it does when you’re gone.

until then, i just carry it. this loud, almost unreasonable kind of missing. the kind that doesn’t mean anything is wrong, doesn’t mean anything is falling apart, doesn’t mean i’m lacking anything except proximity. it just means you matter to me in a way my body refuses to ignore. and maybe that’s all it is. maybe it is just love, with nowhere to land for the moment.

so if you’re reading this, it means this letter found someone, even if it wasn’t you. and maybe that’s enough. maybe it just needed to exist somewhere outside of me, somewhere it could be held for a moment instead of carried. because missing you like this was starting to feel like something i had to survive alone.

and something about that stayed with me ever since I read it. and in a way that made me pause, revisit it, and sit with it longer than i expected to.

because at first, i think i only understood it as an idea. i liked how it sounded. i could repeat it, even believe it in theory. but i don’t think i had ever experienced it in a way that allowed me to recognize myself changing in real time. it wasn’t until i stopped trying to make sense of it that i realized i’m actually living in it now. and now that i have, i keep thinking about a version of myself who didn’t know this kind of love yet.

i think about the version of me who believed love was something you had to figure out while being inside of it. the version of me who thought confusion was normal, who learned how to sit with inconsistency and call it complexity just to make it make sense. i think about how deeply i felt things, and how often that depth was met with something that couldn’t hold it.

if i could sit with that version of myself now, i wouldn’t try to change anything they did. i wouldn’t tell them to love less or to be less open. i would just want them to understand something i didn’t know at the time: there was nothing wrong with me. i wasn’t too much, and i wasn’t asking for too much. i was just experiencing a version of love that didn’t know how to meet me properly.

and because of that, i adapted.

i became more observant, more careful, more aware of the smallest shifts in tone and in presence. i learned how to read between the lines because i had to. i learned how to prepare for distance even in moments that were supposed to feel close. i became someone who knew how to survive love, but not someone who had ever been given the space to feel safe inside of it.

and that difference is something i’m only now beginning to fully understand.

because being loved well, being loved properly, doesn’t feel like something i have to work to understand. it doesn’t leave me guessing, and it doesn’t ask me to decode. it’s not inconsistent, and it doesn’t make me question where i stand. it is clear, it is steady, and it is present in a way that feels unfamiliar only because i hadn’t experienced it before.

but truthfully, it didn’t just feel like this at first. it felt unfamiliar.

there were moments where i caught myself waiting for something to go wrong, not because anything actually was, but because that’s what i had been conditioned to expect. i would sit in something good and still feel this quiet urge to prepare myself for the moment it shifted. i had gotten so used to love being unpredictable that predictability felt temporary.and that’s something i don’t think people talk about enough.

being loved well will soften you, yes. but before that, it will confront you.

it will show you how much of your identity was built around protecting yourself.
it will show you how quickly you assume things will change.
it will show you the parts of you that are still bracing, even when there’s nothing to brace for….

there were moments where i realized i didn’t know how to just receive something without questioning it. moments where i had to actively remind myself that i didn’t need to shrink, didn’t need to anticipate distance, didn’t need to prepare for an ending that wasn’t happening.

and slowly, something in me started to unlearn.

it didn’t happen all at once. and it wasn’t loud or obvious. but i started to notice it in the smallest, most ordinary human ways.

i’ve always been a soft person at my core, at least i knew i could be, when i felt safe enough to be that. but for a long time, that softness felt conditional. like something i had to protect, something i had to earn the space to express.

and now, i don’t feel like i have to think about it the same way.

i can feel it in my body before i even have the words for it.

the way my shoulders don’t tense up as quickly.
the way my tone doesn’t come out guarded or rehearsed.
the way i don’t feel the need to measure every reaction before i express it.

even my mannerisms feel different. less controlled, less careful.

softer.

not because i’m trying to be, but because i finally feel safe enough to be.

and that’s something i didn’t realize love could do.

because when you stop feeling like you have to protect yourself all the time, you start thinking differently too.

i’ve noticed that i don’t overthink the same way anymore. i don’t reread messages looking for hidden meanings or search for something beneath what’s already being said. i don’t feel the need to shrink parts of myself just to keep something intact, or brace for distance in moments that are meant to feel close.

and what’s so beautiful to me is that it didn’t take effort. it wasn’t something i had to consciously fix or unlearn all at once. it jus started to happen. naturally. quietly. in the same way my body softened, my mind followed.

and that’s when it click for me.

i started to realize that so much of who i thought i was had actually been shaped by what i had to tolerate. the anxiety. the overanalyzing. the constant need for reassurance. for a long time, those things felt like personality traits, like they were just a part of me.

but now i can see them differently.

they were never apart of me. they were responses. ways i learned to adapt to love that didn’t feel secure, to situations that asked me to stay open while also protecting myself at the same time.

and without that environment, those parts of me don’t show up in the same way. and in the absence of all of that, i’ve started to notice that i feel like i’m meeting a version of myself i didn’t know existed.

not a completely different person, not someone new, but a version of me that was always there, just never given the space to fully exist.

a version of me that feels calm.
that trusts what’s being given.
that doesn’t feel like love is something that could disappear without warning.

a version of me that doesn’t feel like i have to earn softness. and for the first time, finally, i feel like i can exist without constantly monitoring what might change. i feel like i can finally rest.

and i think that’s what that quote really means.

the poet r.h. sin once wrote, “being loved well changes a person in the most beautiful of ways.” and i understand that now, not as an idea, not as something that just sounds good, but as something i can feel happening within me.

because being loved well doesn’t just make you feel good in the moment. it changes how you move through everything. it softens the parts of you that learned how to stay guarded. it quiets the parts of you that were always trying to prepare for what might go wrong. it gives you access to a version of yourself that was always there, but never had the chance to fully exist. and when i think about the version of myself who hadn’t experienced this yet, i don’t feel regret. i feel a kind of gratitude.

because even in the confusion, even in the inconsistency, i never let it make me hard. i never let it take away my ability to feel deeply or to believe in something softer, something real.

and now that i’m here, i understand. not in theory, but in the way i feel myself changing, gently and consistently, every day. in the way i’m becoming someone i don’t have to question. in the way i finally feel like myself. being loved well doesn’t turn you into someone new. it just allows you to meet the version of yourself that was always there, waiting to be held properly. and that, more than anything, is the most beautiful way love can change a person.

it makes me wonder how much of ourselves we misidentify, just because we’ve never been given something different to exist inside of…..

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there’s something deceptively simple about buying a woman flowers. like it’s not grand the way a trip is grand, or loud the way jewelry can be. but that’s literally where the beauty is. it’s quiet. it’s intentional. it’s observant. like it’s romantic just by existing.

buying flowers is really just noticing. it’s like, you crossed my mind when you weren’t even here. not because it was your birthday or some date on a calendar, but because something random reminded me of you and i actually acted on it. and idk, that part matters more than people think.

and that’s why i could never fully get behind what looked like a sweet gesture. because it’s actually deeper than that. everything is always deeper than what it looks like on the surface.

like i dated someone who used to send me money to go buy my own flowers. and for a minute i tried to convince myself it was cute. because technically it checked all the boxes. like okay, you thought of me, you want me to have something nice, you’re giving me the freedom to choose. cool. but i didn’t like it. at all. because if i wasn’t dating you, i’d already be doing that for myself anyway.

so it was never really about the flowers. it was about the thought that i couldn’t feel.

and the thing is girls really love flowers. like i hate that people keep missing that. most of us are gonna smile at a bouquet no matter what it looks like. it’s soft, it’s romantic, it feels good to receive. but there’s literally an art to buying them, and it has almost nothing to do with the flowers themselves. it’s not about how big they are or how expensive or how often. it’s about attention.

because doing it right means you were paying attention. like you remembered something i said in passing. you noticed what i like without me spelling it out. you know what colors feel like me. you picked something that matches my energy, who i am in that moment. it’s not just grabbing something pretty… it’s choosing something that feels like her.

and i know i just said it’s not about how expensive they are but im also not gonna sit here and act like effort doesn’t show up in what someone is willing to spend. not in a materialistic way, but in a “you cared enough to make this feel intentional” way. because the size, the arrangement, even going out of your way to get something specific… it says something.

like we can feel when something was picked up last minute just to check a box. and we can feel when someone actually stood there for a second and thought about us.

and that difference doesn’t go unnoticed.

and flowers don’t even last. like they wilt, they fade, they’re temporary. but that’s kind of the whole point. you’re not giving something permanent, you’re giving a moment. like “hey, you were on my mind and i cared enough to show it.” and when it’s done right, it doesn’t just feel like a nice gesture… it feels like you actually stepped outside of yourself and thought about someone else.

and to me… that’s what’s romantic.

because anyone can send money. anyone can say “go get yourself something nice” and feel like they did something. but not everyone is gonna take the time to learn you. to choose for you. to think about you when you’re not there and turn that into something real… something you didn’t have to ask for or build yourself.

and for some people, you know that’s enough. to just pick exactly what they want, no risk. and that’s fine. but for me, that’s the difference between being accommodated and being known. like that’s the difference between just doing something and actually bringing romance into my life.

and i’m not saying i can’t do it for myself. i can. i do. but i don’t want to feel like i have to create my own romance when i’m dating someone. i don’t want to be handed the pieces and told to put it together when i already know how to do that.

i want you to walk into a store, see something, and be like “this is her.” i want it to make sense. i want it to feel deliberate. like i can look at it and know you didn’t just do something… you actually thought about me.

because that’s what matters. at least to me.

and that’s exactly why buying my own flowers eventually started to piss me off. because it made it so obvious… the gesture was there, but the intention wasn’t..

i think one of the most disrespectful things we do to ourselves is talk about our past like it was something to be ashamed of. like the girl we used to be is someone we have to distance ourselves from in order to prove that we’ve grown. like evolution only counts if there’s a little bit of embarrassment attached to it. like healing means saying, “i would never do that now” with a tone that almost feels like rejection.

and i get it.

because when you grow, there are parts of you that don’t fit anymore. choices you wouldn’t make twice. people you can’t believe you once made space for. versions of you that feel so far removed, it’s almost uncomfortable to admit they were ever you at all. but unfamiliar doesn’t mean unworthy, and distance doesn’t mean disgrace.

because the truth is—you don’t get to where you are by accident. you got here because of her. and i don’t think we sit with that enough. we’re so quick to claim the glow-up, so quick to stand in the version of ourselves that feels more polished, more self-aware, more aligned… but we rarely turn around and acknowledge the version of us that had to figure it out without any of that.

the version of you who stayed too long taught you what your limits actually feel like, not just what they sound like in theory. the version of you who gave too much is the reason you even know how deeply you’re capable of loving in the first place. the version of you who tolerated things you now speak out against is the reason your voice has weight when you use it. and that matters.

because it’s easy to talk about boundaries when you’ve already learned them. it’s easy to recognize red flags when you’ve already been burned by them. it’s easy to say “i would never accept that now” when you’re no longer the version of you who didn’t know she deserved better.

but she didn’t know.

and i think we forget that. we judge her like she had the same awareness we have now, like she was supposed to move with the same clarity, the same confidence, the same self-respect we built over time. but she didn’t have that yet. she didn’t have the language, the boundaries, the experience to recognize what something was while she was still in it. she was learning in real time.

and if we’re being honest… learning in real time is messy. it looks like staying longer than you should. it looks like giving people the benefit of the doubt one too many times. it looks like trying to fix things instead of walking away. it looks like confusing potential with reality. it looks like holding on to something because you feel it, even when it’s not being met.

and yes, maybe you outgrew that. but that doesn’t make her foolish, it makes her human.

because a lot of those versions of us weren’t acting from a place of ignorance, they were acting from a place of hope. and i don’t think hope is something to be embarrassed about. i think it’s actually one of the bravest things about us. to keep choosing softness in a world that constantly teaches you to harden. to keep believing in love, in connection, in something deeper, even after things don’t work out the way you wanted them to. that’s not weakness. that’s courage in a form people don’t always recognize.

and if i’m being real, some of the versions of me that i judged the hardest were the ones who were just trying to survive. the ones who were navigating things they didn’t talk about out loud. the ones who were holding more than they let on. the ones who were trying to be everything for everyone else while still figuring out how to be something for themselves.

and instead of meeting her with compassion, i met her with criticism. i talked about her like she was naive, like she should’ve known better, like she was the problem. when really… she was doing the best she could with what she had. and somehow, she still got me here.

that has to count for something.

because growth isn’t supposed to feel like erasure. it’s not about becoming someone completely different. it’s about becoming more honest, more aware, more intentional… but still deeply connected to every version of you that made that possible.

i don’t want to be the kind of person who only loves myself in hindsight. who only offers compassion once i’ve already “fixed” something. who only speaks kindly about my past once it no longer feels like mine. because that’s not real self-love. that’s conditional.

and i think a lot of us are walking around calling it growth when really… we’ve just learned how to abandon old versions of ourselves more gracefully.

but i don’t want to abandon her.

i want to honor her. for trying when she didn’t have a guarantee it would work out. for loving without knowing if it would be returned the same way. for showing up in spaces she wasn’t fully ready for yet. for choosing people, choosing experiences, choosing herself, even when she didn’t always get it right.

because she didn’t need to get it perfect. she just needed to keep going. and she did. and now i’m here. more aware, more grounded, more selective, more honest about what i want and what i won’t accept.

but all of that came from her. not in spite of her.

so no, i’m not going to rewrite my past like it was something i need to separate myself from. i’m not going to talk about old versions of me like they were mistakes i had to correct. i’m going to make space for her. i’m going to let her exist without judgment, without shame, without needing to be reduced to a lesson.

because she was more than that. she was a person in the middle of becoming. just like i still am.

and maybe that’s the part we don’t say enough, that you’re not done becoming. this version of you isn’t the final one either. so one day, you’ll look back at who you are right now and realize there were still things you didn’t know yet. still ways you had to grow. still lessons you were learning in real time.

and i hope when that happens… you meet this version of you with the same grace you wish you had given your past.

because none of us are meant to get it perfect. we’re meant to live through it, feel through it, learn as we go, and carry every version of ourselves forward with a little more understanding each time.

because i am not her replacement. i am her continuation.

and that should be something I am proud of. that we all should be proud of

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