Yesterday i was sitting on a cliff, following little fishes with my eyes, the waves are hitting my legs, i had run away from my big ass family, and i was listening to music until i got sick of it, And i thought i could just listen to the waves roar for a moment

and a women was a little bit away from me but i could still hear her talking on the phone about someone who did her dirty, and i thought to myself, what is the other side’s story, is it true that shes the victim, or is she one of those people that are so deep in the victim mentality that they start thinking everyone did them dirty on purpose and that they are the axis of the universe.

That lead me to think about my own life and am i the victim or am i the bitch in some people’s stories, or all people’s stories

A victim mentality is when someone constantly feels like a helpless target of life and habitually blames everyone else for their own problems, It usually develops from past pain, abuse, or difficult experiences, eventually turning into a coping mechanism that protects their ego by shifting blame outward to avoid personal responsibility,

Over time, this mindset traps people in a cycle of bitterness and powerlessness, making them feel like life is happening to them rather than something they can influence, It also severely strains relationships, as friends and family grow exhausted by constant complaining and a refusal to try offered solutions, Breaking free requires a conscious shift: the person has to stop seeing themselves as a passive victim, take full ownership of their choices, and start focusing on the actions they can actually control.

I actually dug into this mindset for a while because someone’s actions made me feel like i wasn’t worth anything, and my self respect was so low, and it destroyed me back at the time, and then i was sucked into that hole, but i always hated that kind of thinking, so i got myself out of it so quickly

Through that experience, i realized that it only brings you strange thoughts, you get so trapped in the shell that you cant see it from another angle, you dont get out and step into the other person’s shoes, you just sit there thinking about killing yourself to make them feel guilty, literally waste your life to make them regret what they did to you for two weeks and then get back to normal

I had those thoughts, and i actually was a slave to them and i even tried to do it, thats what is so dangerous about it, it makes you a slave to your own mind and thoughts, and its completely irrational when you step back from it, because imagine someone coming to you and telling you to just kill yourself so the person who hurt you would feel bad and youll be satisfied, youll definitely think they are crazy, but when your own brain tells you that, it actually makes sense to you, youll feel like its the only choice you have, instead of just forgetting whatever the fuck that person did to you and go on with your life, you are stuck in it, for a long long time.

From time to time, i start blaming people for giving me all of these traumas, my parents, that person, that friend, that teacher, that stranger on the road, those people, and its actually relieving, you feel like you are not in charge, and those people are the ones who should apologize to you for making life harder, but it doesn’t work that way

my dad wont apologize for hitting me back when i was 6, and my mom wont apologize for pushing me out of her arms when i failed at something and i needed her to tell me that it doesn’t matter, that friend wont apologize for telling me that everyone has a life and problems so i shouldn’t be upset cause she didn’t check up on me when i was nearly going insane, that person wont apologize for saying that my emotions don’t matter, they don’t even remember, they dont care.

I had to choose if i want to spend my life waiting for apologies, i didn’t need them, probably if they apologized i will laugh about it and say that “its doesn’t matter now” so why do i crave it so bad? why am i sad for not getting those apologies? would it heal me? It wont. It will make it worse.

Maybe one night i chose to go on, not wait for anything from anyone, i dont even remember when i made this decision, but it doesn’t matter, m glad i did

i dont wanna wait for apologies, i dont want people to feel sorry for me, i want to heal, i want to look at my mom and my dad and all those people and not feel the rage and the sickness i feel Now.

i never complaint, and m not planning to, i don’t even know if its healthy to be like this, but its definitely better than spending my whole life waiting for words that doesnt mean anything.

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Even when the day is quiet, even when nothing bad is happening, there is this low, hot buzzing right behind my ribs, It feels like I’m constantly waiting for someone to spill paint on a clean rug, Like I’m sitting in a room with a fire alarm that won't stop ringing, but everyone else is just having a normal conversation while m going crazy

When people ask me what’s wrong, I usually say, “Nothing, I’m just tired.”

And I am tired, I am so fucking tired. But mostly, I’m just mad.

I’m mad at the way the light turns green right as I get to cross the goddamn street, I’m mad at the sound of someone breathing too loudly next to me on the bus, I’m mad at the gentle tone in a friend’s voice when they ask if I’m doing okay, because it feels like they’re trying to catch me slipping, I’m mad at myself for having a jaw so tight it hurts to chew dinner at the end of the day

There’s a line Chief says in Isle of Dogs:

“I’m not a violent dog. I don’t know why I bite,”

That line hurts every time I hear it, Because I don't want to hurt anyone either, I don't want to snap at people I love, or turn sharp over things that don't matter, But when you’ve been on edge for so long, biting feels like the only instinct left to protect yourself

an engine running in the background while you’re just trying to buy groceries or make a sandwich

The weirdest part is, I don’t even want to be fighting anyone

I’m not standing here with my fists up because I want to hit something, I’m standing like this because if I relax my shoulders, I feel like I’m going to collapse, I hold myself together with tension because I don't know what else is keeping me upright

My anger isn’t a flame that explodes and dies down, I almost wish it were, If it were a fire, it would burn out, leave some ashes, and let me move on

But it’s not a fire, It’s humidity. It’s just in the air of every room I walk into, It makes everything sticky and heavy and hard to breathe

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It reminds me of that scene in Fleabag where her father looks at her and says:

“I think you know how to love better than any of us. That’s why you find it all so painful.”

Except for me, the pain didn't turn into soft romantic heartbreak, It turned into a barbed wire defense mechanism

I heard someone lately said that “anger is just grief wearing a leather jacket”

I hated hearing that, It made me want to roll my eyes and ignore it, Because if it’s anger, at least I’m strong. If it’s anger, I get to be the bad guy. I get to keep my guard up, push people back, and look tough

Because if it’s grief, or fear, or just complete, bone deep exhaustion, then I have to admit that I’m hurt, And being hurt feels unsafe, Being hurt means somebody else did this to me, and I couldn't stop them

So I keep the jacket on, I stay a little mean, I stay a little too sharp at the edges, so nobody gets close enough to see how thin the ice actually is underneath me

It’s easier to let people think I’m just a bitch than to let them see how fragile I feel when the room goes quiet

In Girl, Interrupted, Susanna says

“Angry gets shit done.”

That’s the lie I’ve told myself for years, Angry keeps you awake, Angry stops people from walking over you, Angry makes sure you never get caught off guard again

But nobody tells you how heavy it gets to hold that anger long after the fight is over, filtering every word people say through your own instinct to attack before they can hurt you

I’m so tired of being the guard dog of my own life.

I watch other people just... exist.

I watch them sit on benches, or laugh at dumb videos without over analyzing them, or go to sleep without checking the locks three times, I want to know what it feels like to sit down in a chair and actually be there, Not scanning the room for danger, for judgement, Not rehearsing arguments that haven't happened yet, Not waiting for the other roof to drop so hard it breaks the ground

I read a quote one day, i don’t remember where but it says:

“Anger begets greater anger.”

It really does. It compounds. You get angry because you’re tired, and then you’re angry at yourself for being angry, and suddenly every interaction is just fuel added to a fire you didn't even want to build

I just want to sit down.

I don't know how to turn the engine off yet, I don't know how to stop the hot hum behind my ribs, or how to trust that the peace won't ruin me if I let it in

But today, I’m trying to at least unclench my teeth, I’m trying to take a breath that actually reaches the bottom of my lungs

I’m trying to say to myself: You are alright now. You can put the knife down.

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Let’s be real for a second, When Charli XCX dropped BRAT, we all expected the lime green party bangers, We expected to lose our minds. What we didn’t expect was to be personally attacked by a track that perfectly describes the absolute circus happening inside our own heads

Yeah, I’m talking about “girl, so confusing.” The internet spent weeks turning this song into a pop culture detective game about Charli and Lorde, But if you’re anything like me, the first time you heard it, you weren't thinking about pop star drama, You were thinking: “Oh Shit, Charli found my diary.”

If you’ve ever looked in the mirror and thought, “I love myself, but also I’m my own worst enemy and I don’t know who I am today,” this track is your ultimate soundtrack, And thats exactly how Charli mapped out our deepest, messiest self inflicted anxieties and made it a club anthem

- The Overthinking Spiral (Featuring Your Own Worst Enemy)

The Lyric: “Man, I don't know, I'm just a girl (girl, girl, girl, girl) / Yeah, I don't know if you like me / Sometimes I think you might hate me / Sometimes I think I might hate you / Maybe you just wanna be me / You always say, "Let's go out" / So we go eat at a restaurant”

When you direct these exact lines inward at your own reflection, it becomes the ultimate breakdown of low self esteem and internal comparison

That opening "Man, I don't know, I'm just a girl" hits like the ultimate shrug of self doubt that feeling when you throw your hands up because your own brain feels too complicated to navigate, and like “i am just a girl i dont how to explain it more” Then comes the dizzying loop:

• The Hate and Jealousy : Am I proud of who I am, or am I totally embarrassed by myself? Do I love my life, or am I desperately wishing I could be an idealized, better version of "me"? ("Maybe you just wanna be me")

- The War Between Who You Are and Who You Want to Be

The Lyric: “You're all about writing poems / But I'm about throwing parties / Think you should come to my party / And put your hands up / I think we're totally different / But opposites do attract / Maybe we're so meant to be / Just you and me”

This hits right at the core of internal conflict., We all have these contrasting sides of ourselves fighting for control

the quiet, reflective version that wants to “write poems” (writing poems is a symbol) and isolate ≠ the social, chaos seeking version that wants to "throw parties" and act like everything is fine

When you apply this to your own mind, it's about trying to make peace with your own contradictions, You feel like two totally different people trapped in one body, trying to convince yourself that "opposites do attract" and that maybe, just mayyyyybe, you can get these conflicting parts of your brain to actually coexist

- The Existential Questioning

The Lyric: “Girl, it's so confusing sometimes to be a girl (girl, girl, girl, girl) / Girl, it's so confusing sometimes to be a girl (girl, girl, girl, girl) / Girl, how do you feel being a girl? (Girl, girl, girl) / Girl, how do you feel being a girl, girl? (Girl, girl)”

This chorus takes the whole experience and turns it into a giant, echoey question mark, Navigating girlhood and young adulthood with all its societal pressure, aesthetic standards, and emotional whiplash is overwhelming enough on its own

When you ask yourself "how do you feel being a girl?", the answer is usually a blurry mix of "I have no idea" and "exhausted." It’s a moment in the song where Charli steps back from the specific drama and just admits how confusing it is to carry the weight of identity, gender, and performance every day

So the next time your brain starts bullying you, just blast the track, shake your head at the mirror, and remind yourself: Yeah, girl, it is so confusing. Now turn it up.

I just finished Carrie Soto Is Back, and I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever related to a fictional character this much in my whole life

Not because of the tennis, I know nothing about being a tennis professional player

It’s Carrie.

It’s the way her mind works.

The entire time I was reading, I kept thinking, “This is exactly how my brain works”

Carrie isn’t obsessed with winning just because she likes being the best, She needs to be the best because somewhere along the way, she started believing that her achievements are what make her worthy, The moment she stops achieving, she starts questioning herself.

And I hate how much I understand that, how much i relate to the bones.

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I’ve always been the kind of person who can’t sit still after accomplishing something, I’ll reach a goal, be happy for maybe five minutes, and then my brain immediately starts asking, “Okay… what’s next?”

It’s like I never let myself enjoy the moment because I’m already chasing another one

Reading Carrie felt like looking into a mirror.

One thing I loved about her is that she’s unapologetically ambitious, She wants to be the best, and she doesn’t pretend otherwise

People call her cold, arrogant, selfish, difficult… but I think a lot of them completely miss what’s underneath all of that

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To me, Carrie isn’t driven by ego.

She’s driven by fear.

The fear of becoming irrelevant.

The fear of not being enough anymore.

The fear that if she isn’t winning, then who is she?

That question followed me through the entire book because it’s something I’ve asked myself too, just in different ways

I realized that I tie so much of my self worth to what I achieve, If I’m productive, I feel good about myself, If I’m working toward something, I feel like I’m moving in the right direction, But the moment I’m not doing enough, I start feeling guilty, like I’m wasting time or falling behind

It’s exhausting.

And seeing Carrie live like that made me realize how exhausting it actually is

There were so many moments where I wanted to tell her to slow down, to breathe, to realize that she doesn’t have to prove herself every single day

Then I realized…

I should probably be telling myself the same thing.

I also loved that Taylor Jenkins Reid never tried to make Carrie more “likable.” She didn’t suddenly become sweet or stop being competitive, She stayed Carrie until the very end, and I appreciated that

Instead, what changed was the way I understood her.

The more I got to know her, the more I saw someone who had spent her entire life believing that her value came from what she could accomplish

That’s what made me emotional! Not the tennis, Not the records, Not even the comeback.

It was watching someone spend so much of her life carrying the pressure of having to prove herself over and over again

I think that’s why this book is going to stay with me for a long time

Because it wasn’t really about sports, It was about identity, It was about perfectionism

It was about never feeling like you’ve done enough, even when everyone else thinks you’ve done more than enough

And maybe that’s why Carrie Soto became one of my favorite fictional characters

Not because she’s someone I aspire to be, But because she’s someone I already understand

Sometimes reading a book introduces you to a new character

Sometimes it introduces you to yourself

For me, Carrie Soto Is Back did the second!

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Dear reader,

If you look at someone’s Letterboxd Top 4, you aren’t just looking at a list of good movies, You’re looking at a psychological map of their deepest emotional wounds

You’re looking at exactly what makes them cry at 2:00 AM on a random weeknight

My Top 4 don’t really make sense on paper, We’ve got 1980s neo noir surrealism, a gut wrenching Chinese teen drama, a devastating french coming of age story, and Julia Roberts aggressively yelling about water pollution in the year 2000

But if you look closer, they all have the exact same heartbeat! they are about innocence being completely shattered, and the desperate, messy things we do to survive it

Let's talk about them, honestly.

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1. Blue Velvet (1986)

David Lynch is a madman, but he’s a genius because he understands that the world is inherently terrifying, Blue Velvet starts with the ultimate Americana imagery, red roses, yellow robin birds, a smiling fireman, and then immediately plunges you into the dirt to find a severed human ear crawling with ants

When i watched this movie, I feel like I'm looking at something I'm not supposed to see, Jeffrey is all of us! desperately curious, a little naive, trying to play detective in a world that is way too dark for him

And Dennis Hopper’s Frank Booth? Genuinely one of the most terrifying villains in cinema history because his evil feels so volatile and unhinged

Why it’s in my Top 4: Because it perfectly captures that exact moment in late adolescence where you realize adults don’t know what they’re doing, the world is deeply broken, and the monsters are real, and they live right down the street from you

2. Better days (2019)

If you haven’t seen this Chinese masterpiece, please stop reading this right now, go watch it, and prepare to cry enough tears to dehydrate yourself

It follows Chen Nian, a high school girl dealing with the absolute hell of severe school bullying and the crushing pressure of college entrance exams, who ends up forming this intense, protective bond with a street thug named Xiao Bei

This movie is hard to watch. The bullying is visceral and systemic, and the adults in their world are completely useless, But the relationship between Chen Nian and Xiao Bei is the most fiercely romantic, devastating thing ever put on film

They are two discarded kids who decide to become each other's armor, The scene where he walks a few paces behind her just to make sure she gets home safe? It ruins me every single time.

Why it’s in my Top 4: It is a masterclass in empathy! It proves that even when the entire world is actively trying to crush you, finding just one person who truly sees you can keep you alive.

3. Close (2022)

I am still mad at Lukas Dhont (the director) for making this movie because I don't think my heart has ever recovered.

Close is about two 13 year old french boys, Léo and Rémi, who have this beautiful, innocent, deeply intense best friendship

They share everything, But then their classmates start making comments about their intimacy, and Léo cracks under the peer pressure, He pulls away. He gets defensive. He leaves Rémi behind to try and fit in with the "normal" boys.

What happens next is a tragedy so heavy it makes your chest ache. The second half of this film is just a pure, unadulterated study of childhood grief and the suffocating weight of guilt

Eden Dambrine’s performance as Léo is unreal, you can see the entire history of his heartbreak just in the way he blinks

Why it’s in my Top 4: It’s a devastating reminder of how cruel the world is to soft things, It exposes how quickly we will abandon the people we love just to protect ourselves from being perceived as "different."

4. Erin Brockovich (2000)

Look, after the absolute emotional devastation of the last two movies, I need a win.

Enter Erin Brockovich, This movie is my comfort food, my hype track, and my emotional anchor

Julia Roberts is at the absolute peak of her powers here as a broke, twice divorced single mom who stumbles onto a massive corporate coverup involving a power company poisoning a town's water supply

What I love about Erin is that she doesn't fit the mold of a "respectable" hero! She’s loud, she’s dressed in miniskirts, she has no law degree, and she does not care about the optics

She wins because she actually cares about the human beings affected by the crisis while the lawyers only care about the numbers, The scene where she tells off the corporate lawyer by reminding her exactly how many chromosomes the poisoned kids lost? Absolute cinema.

Why it’s in my Top 4: Because after watching movies about the world crushing innocent people, I need to watch a movie where an ordinary, underestimated human being stands up, refuses to back down, and absolutely crushes the system right back.

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If you look at these four together, I guess my cinematic brand is "vulnerable people navigating hostile environments”

Whether it's Jeffrey stumbling into the dark underworld of Lumberton, Chen Nian trying to survive high school, Léo carrying the weight of an unspoken apology, or Erin fighting a multibillion dollar corporation

I am apparently obsessed with the human struggle to keep caring in a world that makes it incredibly hard to do so.

And thats all.

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Dear reader,

If you asked me six months ago what my favorite album was, what I wanted for dinner, or what a perfect Saturday looked like, I would have given you a beautifully tailored answer

But it wouldn't have been my answer, It would have been a curated response designed to match the mood, preferences, and comfort of whoever was sitting across from me

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For a long time, I wore my empathy like a badge of honor, I prided myself on being the person who could read a room in seconds, anticipate a partner’s anxiety before they even felt it, and smooth over the jagged edges of everyone else’s bad days

I thought it made me a good friend, I thought it made me easy to love.

But there is a dark side to being "easy to love"

Eventually, you realize you’ve built a beautiful, sprawling bridge for everyone else to cross, only to find you walked right off your own island to do it, You loved and cared for people so fiercely, and so completely, that you accidentally ghosted yourself

We don’t lose ourselves all at once, It’s not a sudden, dramatic eviction!

It’s actually a slow, quiet erosion of boundaries that happens in the name of love

It happens in the tiny, everyday concessions!

Saying "I don't mind, whatever you want" until your own desires genuinely become invisible to you

Absorbing someone else’s bad mood and treating it like a fire you are responsible for putting out

Shrinking your own achievements or hiding your own grief because you don’t want to take up too much emotional real estate

We convince ourselves that this is generosity, We tell ourselves that pouring every drop of our energy into others is a virtue

But if we are being ruthlessly honest, it’s often a coping mechanism

We morph, we adapt, and we over give because we secretly believe that if we stop being useful, we will stop being wanted

The breaking point usually arrives without fanfare

For me, it was a quiet Tuesday afternoon when someone asked me a simple question "What do you need right now?"

My mind went entirely blank

I could have told you what my best friend needed, i could have charted a 10-step wellness plan for someone, But my own internal landscape was a ghost town

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I had spent so long learning everyone else's emotional language that I had completely forgotten my own native tongue

That is the terrifying moment of clarity, realizing that you are a stranger to yourself.

You look in the mirror and realize you’ve become a collection of the expectations, moods, and needs of the people around you

You are a chameleon who forgot what color they were originally

Reclaiming yourself after a lifetime of over loving others is an awkward, clunky process

It feels wrong. When you are used to operating like an emotional concierge, choosing yourself feels a lot like cruelty, like you are the worse person in the whole entire universe

But it isn't. Erasing yourself isn't an act of love; it's an act of survival.

I am still a person who loves deeply.

I don't want to change that about myself, and if you are reading this, I don't want you to change that about yourself either, The world needs people who care intensely.

But I am learning that I have to be included in that care

If this resonated with you, consider sharing it with a friend who might need a reminder to choose themselves today. As always, thank you for reading, and I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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Dear reader,

I’m not going to lie to you, this month has been an absolute emotional dumpster fire, it was HELL. Between the relentless stress of exam season and my own brain deciding to spiral over literally everything and anything, I’ve been feeling completely overwhelmed

You know that specific brand of panic where you look around at everyone your age and think, “Wait, does everyone else have a script for life, and did I miss the email?” and The awkwardness of trying to act like a functioning human when you actually feel like a lost toddler is exhausting, you know what I mean?

When I’m in this kind of emotional wreckage, I don’t want to watch hyper polished movies where 20somethings have gorgeous apartments and perfect careers, I want to watch someone who is just as messy as I am, or maybe worse

Enter Cooper Raiff! The star of our article today, the internet’s favorite king of awkward, sensitive, and emotionally lost cinema

Why His Directing Hits Different

If you haven’t heard of Cooper Raiff, he is a young director, writer, and actor who specializes in making movies about people who have absolutely no idea what they are doing with their lives

What makes his directing style so unique is that he doesn’t try to make his characters look cool! In Hollywood, young adults are usually portrayed as edgy, confident, or tragically beautiful with a perfect social life, Cooper Raiff’s characters are just... cringe! Lol

But in the most relatable, heartbreaking way possible, He directs with this massive amount of empathy, and I love that, He captures the exact way people stumble over their words, the heavy silence when you say something weird to a group of people, and the absolute terror of feeling lonely in a room full of friend groups in college

He basically looks at human awkwardness and says, “Hey, this fucking sucks, but let’s look at it closely”

So. I wanted to write a raw, honest review of his two biggest projects, We are going to break down exactly how he captures that exact “I don’t know what I’m doing” feeling, starting with his hit Cha Cha Real Smooth and then looking back at his indie debut, Shithouse.

This movie feels like a warm hug from someone who is also crying.

Cooper plays Andrew, a 22year old who just graduated college, has a useless marketing degree, and is living back home in his childhood bedroom with his mom and stepdad and little brother, He has absolutely zero trajectory, To make money, he ends up working as a “hype man” / party starter at local Bar, which is honestly hilarious, and the most unhinged job choice, He is literally getting paid to force awkward 13 year olds to dance to the “Cha Cha Slide” And he was actually good at it

Andrew is the poster child for post grad drift, He is so eager to please everyone else because he has no identity of his own yet, and it shows

Watching this while stressed about my future is a trip, It reminds you that even when you finish the test, or finish the degree, the “What am I doing?” question doesn’t magically disappear, Andrew is charming but desperate for connection, It’s a beautiful, messy look at loving things you can’t have and trying to find your footing when the ground keeps moving

But the movie shifts from a goofy comedy to something deeply emotional when he meets Domino (played by Dakota Johnson), a beautiful, guarded mom, and her autistic teenage daughter, Lola (played beautifully by Vanessa Burghardt)

Theres some scenes in this film that got me posing for a moment and look at the ceiling for a fat minute, and one of those is when Andrew and domino were eating ice cream oe whatever thet was, and then they started talking about “ How depression feels” and then domino stopped talking for a moment and then said the most heart shattering thing:

“It feels like, like you don’t remember what better feels like, and then you do things that you think will make you feel better but they don’t. they make it worse, and the things that m really scared of doing are probably the things that will help me the most but I just cant do them”

And this is so damn real that I felt like I wanna throw up.

And then a line domino said when andrew went to her house asking her to not marry her fiance, and while they are talking she said “Giving your heart to somebody is the scariest, most dangerous, most perplexing thing.” And yeah… so damn real.

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A literal masterpiece for anyone who has ever felt lonely in a crowd.

This was his directorial debut (which he made obviouisly with no money ), He plays Alex, a college freshman who is desperately homesick, He hates his stupid alcoholic roommate, has no friends, and spends his nights talking to his stuffed animal, Then, he has one incredibly long, weird, intimate night hanging out with his sophomore, Maggie.

If Cha Cha is about life after college, Shithouse is about the brutal transition into it, It captures that exact emotional isolation I’ve been feeling during exam season, where you are physically surrounded by people your own age, but you feel completely invisible and alienated

The dialogue in this movie is so real it hurts, It’s full of those cluky, uncoordinated conversations you actually have when you’re 19 or 20 with people you hate and wish to never see again for… no reason

Alex cries, a lot. And It’s rare to see a male director let his own character be that soft, vulnerable, and deeply uncool I guess?

It’s comforting because it proves that being an anxious mess at college is a universal experience, The heart of the film, though, is the long walking and talking sequence (Alex and Maggie) They end up going on a very bizarre mission to bury a dead pet turtle that Maggie found, It sounds incredibly silly on paper, but the scene is so tender, They dig a tiny grave in the dirt using their hands and random sticks, and they start talking about death and how weird it is (it was really deep that I spent the rest of the day thinking about the same idea) and growing up, and their parents

The dialogue isn’t polished or cinematic, they stumble over words, they make dumb dark jokes, and there are awkward silences, It feels like you are eavesdropping on a real conversation between two broken kids trying to comfort each other

But the scene that hurts the most is the morning after, Alex wakes up thinking he’s found his soulmate and his loneliness is cured! He went to the supermarket to buy a wig for a party, and sees Maggie, and he said hi, and she totally freezes him out, She acts completely distant and acts like the night before never happened, The raw vulnerability on Cooper’s face in that moment is devastating

And another scene when he went to play basketball alone RANDOMLY after a huge fight with maggie, and then a stranger joined and they played for a bit and then alex started crying and the stanger sat with him on the floor and comforted him a little bit and then left, and that was really sweet and it made me realize that in life theres people we meet rasndomly just for them to make our life a little bit better, and we can be that person for someone too.

If this month has taught me anything, it’s that being lost in your emotions is part of the gig, Cooper Raiff’s movies don’t give you a magical answer on how to fix your life, Instead, they just sit on the floor next to you and say, “Yeah, everything is confusing and awkward right now, Want to talk about it?”

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If you’re stressed, drowning in life, or just feeling weirdly out of place this summer, go watch these films, I promise you’ll feel a little less alone.

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Here is my letterboxd and pinterest if you wanna join me there, and thank you so much for reading this article, i really appreciate it, and if you like it, heres more for you to enjoy

Lately, I’ve been noticing something really odd about myself. It’s not a single emotion or a shifting mood, it goes much deeper than that

It is a loss of control over my emotions in a very weird way, I don’t know how to feel about things… Do I want it, or do I not? Do I feel happy or sad? That is why I am throwing letters here right now, trying to figure out why I am the way I am, to figure out if I am going insane, or if I just have the weirdest, most destructive issues all at once.

I think I’ve been living in a constant push and pull between wanting to move closer, to love more, to be the “lover girl” I always hated myself for being, and wanting distance, wanting to run and escape all of those emotions. For so long, I didn’t know how to deal with it or even what to name it

So, I just called it trauma or confusion, Sometimes I said it was hormones or mood swings, or even just, “I don’t feel like talking now.” But is it really just that? Or is it something deeper and more complicated, something that has been shaping how I connect with people without my consciously choosing it?

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My problem is that when I feel someone getting closer, I always think of how I am supposed to feel instead of just feeling it like a normal human

So, instead of feeling calm and comfortable, I just feel pressure, It is not directly from the other person, but from the idea that I am now seen! I feel pressure from the expectation to stay consistent, to respond properly, and to be emotionally available in a way that feels natural to them but exhausting to me. The strangest part is that I really want closeness… I just don’t know how to enjoy it without wanting to run away, to escape.

The thing is, I don’t escape.

I always thought that my problem was that I ran away, but lately, I realized that isn’t entirely true, the truth is that I stay. I stay through the discomfort, through the overthinking, through the urge to disappear, through the urge to die… Then, I feel it all for a week or more before I pretend like everything is alright and that I got over it.

Sometimes I stay even though everything in me screams to leave and to protect my heart from whatever is going to happen in the future

And I think that is what makes it so fucking exhausting, so destructive

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People often talk about this in a very different way from how I feel it, They speak as if it means being a badass, not caring, not being attached, and not needing people around… But for me, it is more like caring while weirdly wanting an emergency exit just to breathe, It is like being at a party and enjoying it, but constantly looking for a door, not because you want to leave, but because knowing you can leave makes you feel safer.

I can be enjoying the conversation, laughing, feeling understood, loved, safe, and connected, and at the exact same time feel the need to retreat into myself, This happens not because anything bad occurred, and not because they did something wrong, but because closeness itself feels overwhelming.

And that is the part I don’t think many people understand.

The fear is not always about them hurting my emotions or doing something bad, Most of the time, it is about being afraid of losing the version of myself that only exists when I am alone.

It is about being known! It feels as if they broke the wall I built for too long, leaving me standing naked, They can see all of my stupid thoughts, my weird opinions, my childhood traumas, and my issues, They know more about me today than they did yesterday

This sounds very ridiculous and silly when I write it down. Aren’t we made for this kind of connection? Isn’t it good to be known, loved, and understood? Why is it scaring the shit out of me? Somehow, my brain treats it like a threat and a comfort at the same time, It just doesn’t make any sense.

I’ve noticed that most of my energy is not spent on pushing people away. No, it is spent on stopping them from crossing the invisible line I made in my head like my life depends on it, I want people to be near me, but not too near. I want to be understood, but not examined. I want to be known, but not completely.

Every time someone crosses that damn invisible line, I feel the urge to build a new one, and then another new one, and another, until they are so close to me that I panic and try to run from them

The funny thing is that despite all of this, I never leave. I stay. Even if they want me to leave, I rarely do.

I stay. But the fear doesn’t disappear; I carry it with me while staying. Isn’t it pathetic?

I still answer the message even when I want to throw the phone across the room and vanish for three days, I allow people to care about me while resisting the urge to tell them I don’t need anyone, I sit in the discomfort instead of immediately trying to escape. What I realized lately isn’t that I always run away, it is that I constantly fight the urge to, Every connection costs a war between these two versions of myself:

The first version wants to be loved, understood, and held… It wants to belong, to have a shoulder to cry on, someone to rely on, and the kind of connection that makes life feel less lonely

And the second version wants freedom from expectations, freedom from responsibility, freedom from emotional exposure, and freedom from the possibility of disappointment

Neither version ever wins, There is always a war, and it is emotionally exhausting. I always exist somewhere in the middle, staying, wanting to leave, leaving a little mentally, coming back, and staying again.

It is like living with one foot on the gas and one on the brake. You are moving forward, but everything is harder than it should be

Maybe that is why attachment and avoidant issues are so difficult to explain, From the outside, people only see what you do. They never see the constant debate happening underneath every action, because trust me, it is hell. They don’t see the courage it sometimes takes to simply remain present

Lately, I am trying to stop judging myself for that contradiction, Maybe I am not broken because a part of me wants to leave. Maybe the more important thing is that, despite wanting to leave, I often choose to stay, Not perfectly, and not without overthinking and analyzing every little thing

but I stay.

The most honest thing I can say about myself is that I am someone who is learning that courage doesn’t always look like chasing connection. Sometimes, it is resisting the urge to run from it.

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Dear reader,

Sometimes I wonder who I would have been if nobody had been watching, Not in a dramatic way, and Not in a movie scene where someone finally breaks free and runs toward their destiny while inspirational music plays in the background

I mean genuinely…

Who would I have become if nobody had handed me a list of rules before I even knew who I was? Who would I be if I wasn’t taught to stay quiet, be careful, be realistic, be polite, be normal, be grateful, be reasonable? Who would I be if fear wasn’t introduced to me before freedom was? Because the truth is that I don’t think I lack talent, and you know what? That’s the worst part.

It would almost be easier if I genuinely believed I wasn’t capable of anything extraordinary, Then at least I could accept my life for what it is But somewhere inside me exists a version of myself that I can’t stop thinking about

The version that actually tries, The version that speaks, The version that creates.

The version that doesn’t spend hours imagining a life she could have and then doing absolutely nothing about it, I know she’s there because sometimes I catch glimpses of her In random moments.

When I get an idea that makes my heart race, or When I start a project and become obsessed with it for three days

When I read about someone successful and instead of feeling inspired, I feel strangely angry, Not because they succeeded, Because I know I could have tried… And I didn’t.

There is a specific kind of pain that comes from wasted potential, Not failure, Potential. Failure means you jumped, but potential? Potential means you stood at the edge of the cliff your entire life, imagining the view from the other side

I think a lot of us were raised to become spectators of our own lives, We learned how to admire courage, We learned how to applaud ambition, We learned how to consume the stories of people who changed the world… But nobody taught us how to become those people.

Instead, we learned caution, We learned consequences, We learned embarrassment, We learned that making mistakes was dangerous, We learned that standing out attracted attention, And attention was something to avoid, So we became experts at shrinking, Experts at becoming acceptable… Experts at becoming invisible.

I grew up believing that safety was the highest achievement a person could reach, Choose the safe option, Wear the safe clothes, Have the safe opinions, Dream safe dreams, Take safe risks, Stay inside the invisible fence

And after enough years, something strange happens, The fence disappears, But you don’t leave… Because eventually the prison moves into your head, Nobody has to stop you anymore.

You stop yourself! You become your own guard! Your own parent! Your own critic! Your own limitation.

The world tells us that courage looks like climbing mountains or starting companies or becoming famous, But I think real courage is much smaller than that, Real courage is posting the thing, Sending the application, Speaking in the meeting, Starting the business, Wearing what you actually like, Admitting what you want, Telling people who you are.

And somehow those tiny acts feel impossible, Because cowardice rarely feels like cowardice, It feels like waiting, Planning. Preparing. Thinking. Researching. Perfecting.

One more week, One more month, One more year, One more excuse, One more reason why now isn’t the right time.. Until suddenly you’re looking at a life that never happened, And nobody knows you were supposed to be brilliant Not even you anymore.

I hate how much fear has stolen from me, Not fuckin dramatic fear, Not even life or death fear!! its The ordinary kind, The embarrassing kind, The kind that whispers:

“What if they laugh?”

“What if you fail?”

“What if you’re not as talented as you think?”

“What if people judge you?”

The funny thing is that fear never asks the opposite questions.

It never asks:

“What if you’re incredible?”

“What if it works?”

“What if you’re right about yourself?”

“What if the life you’re imagining actually exists?”

Fear has always been a terrible statistician because It calculates every possible disaster and ignores every possible miracle.

And for years I listened. Years. Years spent hiding behind potential because potential is comfortable, Potential asks for nothing, Potential lets you imagine yourself as a genius without ever risking discovering you’re human

As long as the book stays unwritten, it might be a masterpiece.

As long as the business stays an idea, it might become an empire.

As long as the dream remains a dream, it can never fail.

But it can never live either, That’s the trade

Cowards don’t always choose failure, Sometimes they choose fantasy Because fantasy is safer, You can be brilliant forever inside your imagination

Reality demands evidence.

Sometimes I think about all the people who became extraordinary, And I realize something uncomfortable!! Most of them weren’t necessarily less afraid than I am, They were just willing to look ridiculous. That’s it. That’s the secret nobody wants to hear, its that simple.

its Not confidence or talent, Not genius

Its The willingness to survive embarrassment, The willingness to be bad before becoming good, The willingness to be seen trying, I don’t think my biggest enemy is society anymore, Or my parents, Or the rules I grew up with, Those things built the cage, But I’m the one maintaining it now, And that realization hurts because it removes my favorite excuse! It means that every day I remain where I am, I am participating in my own imprisonment, Maybe not intentionally and Maybe not happily… But still.

And that’s difficult to admit, Because there is comfort in blaming the past, There is comfort in pointing toward old wounds and saying, “That’s why.” Sometimes it’s true, But eventually the question changes, its Not longer “Why am I like this?” But “How long am I willing to stay like this?”

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life mourning a person who never existed, The brilliant version of me, The fearless version, The damn perfect version.

Maybe she isn’t waiting somewhere in the future, Maybe she only appears whenever I do something despite being terrified, Maybe courage isn’t a personality, Maybe it’s a decision, A thousand tiny decisions… Made badly, Made shakily, Made with trembling hands, Maybe brave people are just cowards who got tired of watching their lives happen from the sidelines

I don’t know.

What I do know is that I am exhausted by my own hesitation, Exhausted by all the doors I never opened, Exhausted by all the conversations I never had, Exhausted by all the versions of myself I abandoned before they had the chance to exist.

I don’t want potential anymore, Potential is a beautiful prison, I want evidence, I want failed attempts, I want embarrassing stories, I want unfinished projects, I want the ugly, imperfect reality of trying, Because one day all of us will discover who we became

And I think the saddest realization imaginable is not that you failed, It’s realizing you never gave yourself the chance to find out what you could have been.

Maybe I could be brilliant.

Maybe I couldn’t.

But there is only one thing worse than discovering the answer.

Never asking the question at all.

A GIFT (it might ruin yr life):

Dear reader,

There is a scene in Pride and Prejudice where Elizabeth Bennet says, “I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.” I think about that line constantly because it explains something ugly about me: I can survive disappointment easier than vulnerability, Humiliation stays in my body longer than heartbreak does and The idea of being unwanted, abandoned, too much, too emotional, too attached, it terrifies me more than loneliness ever could

And maybe that is why I became avoidant.

Not in the cool, detached, mysterious way people romanticize online, Not in the “I don’t need anyone” kind of way

Mine is uglier than that, Mine feels like standing outside my own life with my hand permanently hovering over the emergency exit

I leave too soon, I panic too fast, I ruin things before they ruin me.

And yet somehow, despite all of that, I still ache for closeness with an almost embarrassing intensity

That is the contradiction that shapes my entire life, I crave love with my whole body while treating it like a loaded weapon the second it comes near me

People misunderstand avoidance because avoidant people are often good performers, We know how to appear calm and Independent and Untouchable, also We know how to turn distance into elegance plus We know how to make detachment look intentional instead of terrified

But inside, it feels less like confidence and more like being hunted

There is another line I think about often, this one from Call Me by Your Name:

“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty.”

That is exactly what avoidance feels like to me, Self-removal.

A slow emotional bankruptcy

You cut away parts of yourself to survive, You stop expressing too much affection, You stop admitting you care, You stop asking for reassurance, You stop being honest about how deeply things affect you, You make yourself smaller and colder and harder to reach because vulnerability starts feeling like financial ruin, Like one wrong investment could destroy your entire emotional economy, literally.

And after all of this, you wake up one day unable to tell whether you are protecting yourself or simply disappearing

The strange thing is that I do not always run, Sometimes I stay.

And nobody talks enough about how staying can feel just as destructive for avoidant people, Because when I force myself to remain emotionally present, when I answer the text, continue the relationship, allow myself to become attached, let happiness linger too long then my brain begins turning against me instead

The panic does not disappear, It just relocates.

Suddenly every interaction feels fuckin dangerous
Every silence sounds fuckin loaded
Every delay becomes fuckin suspicious
Every tiny shift in tone feels fuckin catastrophic

I become hyperaware of the possibility of loss

And once fear enters the room, I stop experiencing love naturally, I start monitoring it, Managing it, Preparing for its death before it has even fully lived

That is the exhausting thing about avoidance because even when good things finally arrive, I cannot simply receive them, I interrogate them first

I search for hidden endings inside beautiful beginnings

I think that is why I become so tired in my relationship, friendships, opportunities, even happiness itself, I am never just experiencing them, I am trying to survive them emotionally

And survival is exhausting

There is a moment in Little Women where Jo says:

“I’m so sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for.”

But what always destroyed me about Jo was not her independence, It was how deeply she wanted closeness while pretending she did not need it, The contradiction felt painfully familiar to me, Because avoidance is not the absence of desire, It is desire contaminated by fear

That is why avoidant people often look contradictory from the outside

We pull people closer and then panic when they arrive
We long for intimacy and resent it simultaneously
We beg internally for permanence while acting emotionally temporary

I have done this my entire life

I have cared for people desperately while secretly preparing myself to leave them
I have wanted stability while sabotaging every chance at it
I have wanted to be understood while hiding every real part of myself

And the worst part is that sometimes I do not even realize I am doing it until afterward

After the distance
After the emotional breakdown
After I become cold for no reason
After I convince myself something beautiful suddenly feels “wrong.”

The sadness always arrives late, so damn late

It comes after the self protection
After the emotional numbness fades
After the adrenaline of escape disappears

And then I am left alone with the realization that I did not actually leave because I was unhappy, I left because I was scared

Or worse:

I stayed, and fear poisoned the experience anyway

That is the part currently ruining my life

People assume avoidance only destroys things through leaving, But sometimes it destroys things through staying in the most miserable way imaginable, Staying while internally collapsing, Staying while becoming resentful, Staying while growing terrified of your own attachment, Staying while secretly hating yourself for needing people so much

I think that is when avoidance becomes truly dangerous, when it transforms from a coping mechanism into a worldview

Because eventually fear stops attaching itself only to relationships, it was never just about relatuonships, It begins infecting everything

Opportunities feel threatening
Hope feels embarrassing
Commitment feels claustrophobic
Dreams feel dangerous because failure would hurt too much

And slowly, your world shrinks

Not dramatically, Quietly.

You become someone who almost lived

Almost loved, Almost tried, Almost stayed, Almost trusted, Almost became..

There is a devastating line in The Bell Jar where Esther describes life like a fig tree, each fig representing a different future, and she starves because she cannot choose one without losing the other, That is how avoidance feels too

A paralysis born from fear of pain

You become so afraid of suffering that you accidentally create a life entirely shaped by it

And what frightens me most is how normalized this has become inside me, The constant emotional preparedness for disaster, The inability to relax inside happiness

The instinct to search for exits even during beautiful moments

Sometimes I genuinely wonder what life feels like for people who are not terrified of attachment, People who can simply enjoy being loved without immediately imagining abandonment, People who can receive affection without questioning its permanence, People who do not experience closeness as both heaven and threat simultaneously.

Because for me, love has never felt soft, It has felt enormous, Heavy, Dangerous.

Like holding something fragile with trembling hands while already grieving the possibility of dropping it

And maybe that is why I become angry sometimes, Angry at myself, Angry at the world, Angry at how human connection demands vulnerability as an entrance fee

There are moments where I hate how deeply I feel things, Moments where I resent my own emotional intensity because of what it does to me internally, Because once something matters to me, it gains the power to destabilize me completely

And I do not know how to experience attachment halfway

I either detach entirely or drown in emotional anticipation of loss

Nothing feels balanced.
Everything feels absolute.
You detach because loss would devastate you
You become cold because warmth makes you vulnerable

Everything traces back to fear

Fear of abandonment.
Fear of humiliation.
Fear of dependency.
Fear of needing someone more than they need you.
Fear of building a future that can collapse.
Fear of finally receiving something beautiful and still losing it anyway.

So you begin living defensively.

And defensive living slowly drains the color out of existence.

I think that is the grief underneath all of this, not simply losing people, but losing versions of myself, The version who could have stayed relaxed inside happiness, The version who could have trusted love before interrogating it, The version who did not see emotional closeness as the beginning of grief

Because avoidance steals from you long before anyone else does.

It steals presence.
It steals softness.
It steals possibility.

And eventually you realize you are not protecting your life anymore and that You are watching it happen from a distance

Maybe that is why this feels so consuming lately, Because I am beginning to understand that avoidance is not just about running away from others, Sometimes it is about running away from yourself, From hope, From vulnerability, From the terrifying act of wanting something enough to lose it

And I do not know yet how to stop being afraid of beautiful things.

But I know I am tired of experiencing life like every good moment is a future wound waiting to happen.

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I Miss Eating Without Thinking

I miss when food was just food

When I could sit down and eat without a voice in my head counting, Without doing math

Without feeling watched, even when I was alone

I don’t remember exactly when it changed

I just know one day I stopped tasting my food

I started calculating it..

It began in a harmless way

“I just want to feel better”

“I just want to lose weight”

“I just want to look better”

“Just wanna wear cute outfits”

That’s how it always begins..

You learn the numbers, You memorize them

You feel smart for knowing them, the smartest actually

Suddenly you don’t see a slice of bread, You see a number, a beast..

And numbers don’t care if you’re tired, They don’t care if you’re sad.. They don’t care if you’re hungry, They only care if you stayed under, if you stick to the plan

There is something addictive about control, Saying no feels so damn powerful at first, Ignoring your hunger feels like strength, like you are better than EVERYONE

Watching the number go down feels like winning, Until it doesn’t, until it takes over

Because hunger doesn’t disappear, It waits, it hides, It grows louder, it gets worse

It turns into thoughts that won’t leave you alone day and night

You start thinking about your next meal while you’re still eating the first one

You go to sleep planning what you will allow yourself tomorrow

Food becomes the center of your world, no no.. it becomes your whole world..

even while you’re actually trying to eat less of it

The strangest part is how normal it all looks, Everyone is dieting, Everyone is tracking, Everyone is “being healthy” so you feel like you are just being dramatic, you are just a pig.

So you tell yourself you’re FINE, You tell yourself this is discipline

But discipline shouldn’t feel like fear, It shouldn’t feel like guilt after every bite, It shouldn’t feel like panic when plans change, It shouldn’t make you afraid of meal outside with friends or family

And then there’s the other side, The night when you’re too tired to fight it.. When you eat more than you planned, Not because you’re greedy, Not because you’re weak, But because your body is tired of being ignored

And in that moment, it feels like you failed, like your whole world just ended in front of your eyes..

So you promise to be stricter tomorrow.

You will eat less, You will be better, You will fix it, you will be stronger

But tomorrow looks exactly like yesterday, or maybe even worse

What no one tells you is that The more you try to shrink yourself, the more your life shrinks too

You stop going out, You stop being spontaneous, You stop enjoying things that don’t fit into your plan

All for a number, A number on an app, A number on a scale

A number that decides your mood for the day, the mood of you week, the mood of your month

And somehow that number starts to decide your worth

I think the saddest part is how food becomes the enemy

• Food: the thing that keeps you alive, The thing that connects families, The thing that carries memories

But suddenly, it turns into something to defeat, Something to control, something to fear, something to HATE.

I don’t think most people start counting calories because they hate themselves, i think they start because they love themselves, they want to feel safe and comfortable in their bodies

But somewhere along the way, safety turns into obsession, And obsession is a very scary, dark and lonely place

Maybe healing isn’t about never caring again, Maybe it’s about sitting down with a meal, and not feeling like you’re taking a test

Maybe it’s about eating when you’re hungry, and stopping when you’re full, without guilt being invited to the table

Maybe it’s about remembering that your body is not a problem to solve

It’s a body.

It deserves to be fed, loved, taken care of…

Theres a scene that i love and adore with my whole heart..

In Eat Pray Love, there’s a quiet, beautiful dinner scene in Rome where Julia Roberts (playing Liz) is sitting with her friend Sofi after weeks of simply eating and enjoying Italy

Liz admits she has gained weight

She says her jeans don’t fit anymore, You can see the old panic rising, that familiar fear of being “bigger” For a moment, it feels like she might fall back into guilt, or that she already did..

But liz looks at her and basically says: you’re in Italy, You’ve been enjoying yourself, You’ve been happy, So what?

Sofi tries to joke about needing bigger pants, And Sofi responds with something like, “Buy bigger jeans” As if it’s the most obvious solution in the world

No shame, No drama

Just… buy bigger jeans

Then Liz says something that changes the tone, She talks about how in America, women spend so much time trying to look a certain way, chasing perfection, But here, in Italy, people enjoy food.. They don’t punish themselves for it, They sit, They taste, They savor

And that’s when the feeling comes through: food isn’t the enemy, It’s an important part of life, its LIFE

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The whole conversation feels like permission, a permission to enjoy a plate of pasta without turning it into a moral decision, Permission to exist in a body that is allowed to change, a body that will always change

It’s not really about weight, It’s about freedom..

freedom from the thoughts they put in our heads..

Freedom from counting, judging, and measuring every bite..

Freedom to taste, to enjoy, to be present without guilt..

That quiet permission to just eat and live is what makes the moment feel so simple, so real, and so necessary..

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Everywhere we look, on our screens, in our hands, on pages, walls, billboards, headphones, and gallery halls! we are surrounded by things that were once just invisible sparks in someone’s mind.

It’s easy to consume art and entertainment and forget that behind every single piece lies a human story, a quiet hope, a fragile dream that someone dared to believe in.

A movie isn’t just a film; it’s the result of someone imagining a story late at night, sketching ideas on napkins, rewriting scenes again and again, facing rejection, self-doubt, and endless what -ifs- yet still holding on, dreaming it would be seen and loved. When we sit down to watch, we’re not just watching fiction, we’re witnessing the result of countless emotional and mental hours someone invested, dreaming their vision would find an audience.

The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)

This film is based on the true story of Chris Gardner, a man who went from homelessness to becoming a successful stockbroker. The movie, starring Will Smith, began as a deeply personal dream of Gardner, to tell his story so others wouldn’t give up. His life became a screenplay, and his dream became a global inspiration.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Created by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, this chaotic and deeply emotional film started as a quirky, experimental dream. Its absurdist take on the multiverse almost didn’t make it to the screen due to budget constraints and its unconventional style—but the Daniels believed in their vision, and the film went on to win 7 Oscars, including Best Picture.

A book? It’s not just a product or a file to download. It’s a piece of someone’s soul. Someone stayed up writing when no one else believed in their voice. They wondered if anyone would ever care about what they had to say. They edited and rewrote, pouring years of lived experience, fears, desires, and wisdom into characters and plotlines. They dreamed not just of success, but of connection. Of someone reading that one sentence and feeling like the world makes a little more sense. Or maybe someone finally feeling seen. Every book is a dream that survived doubt and delay.

Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

Rowling was a single mother on welfare when she wrote the first Harry Potter book in cafés. She was rejected by 12 publishers before Bloomsbury finally said yes. That book, originally written on a manual typewriter, became one of the best-selling series of all time.

The Diary of Anne Frank

Not written as a novel, but as the real diary of a young Jewish girl hiding during the Holocaust. Anne dreamed of becoming a famous writer, and though she didn’t live to see it, her writing became one of the most important testimonies of the 20th century.

A drawing isn’t just lines and colors, it’s emotion turned visual. It’s someone processing pain, joy, confusion, or beauty through a medium that speaks when words fail. It’s someone hoping that when others look at their work, they don’t just see ink or pixels! but feel something. Maybe understanding. Maybe resonance. Maybe healing.

Art is one of the few languages that bypasses logic and lands directly in the heart. Behind every visual piece is a silent plea: “Do you feel this too?”

Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh

Van Gogh painted Starry Night during his stay in a mental asylum. He never sold a painting during his lifetime and died believing he had failed. Today, his works are some of the most beloved and expensive pieces of art in the world.

Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portraits

Frida Kahlo painted her pain, literally. After a tragic bus accident, she lived with constant physical agony and began painting from her bed. Her self-portraits weren’t just art; they were a form of survival and expression. Today, she’s a global icon of strength and vulnerability.

A song is more than sound, it’s an offering. Someone, somewhere, wrote those lyrics in a moment of truth. Maybe crying, maybe laughing, maybe on the verge of giving up. Then they crafted melodies to wrap around that truth and released it into the world with trembling hands. Songs are one of the most intimate forms of expression! someone sings with their whole chest, with their whole broken or blooming heart, hoping that a stranger will hear it and go, “Yes, that’s exactly how I feel.” Music travels across borders, languages, and time, and still carries the original heartbeat of its creator. That’s magic.

Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen

Freddie Mercury’s epic six-minute song was called “too long,” “too weird,” and “too risky.” Radio stations didn’t want to play it, and critics were confused. But Mercury stuck to his vision. It went on to become one of the most iconic rock songs of all time.

Fast Car by Tracy Chapman

Written from the perspective of someone longing to escape poverty and hardship, Fast Car was a song of quiet desperation and hope. Chapman performed it at Nelson Mandela’s 70th Birthday Tribute in 1988, and from there, her career took off. It’s now considered one of the most poignant songs ever written.

Every creative work, no matter how big or small. is proof that someone once believed their inner world was worth sharing. And not just that!

it’s also proof that they hoped we would care. That we would listen. That we would feel it. Everything you see on a screen or a stage or a shelf or a feed came from someone’s heart first. Someone who chose to turn their dream into something tangible and then share it with the world, even though it’s scary. Even though people might not get it. Even though they could be misunderstood, criticized, or ignored.

So the next time you enjoy a movie, sing along to a song, cry over a book, or pause to admire a piece of art!

remember this: you’re not just engaging with content. You’re touching someone’s dream. You’re honoring the silent wish behind the creation. You’re proving that the risk they took to create, to express, to share

was worth it.

We live in a world built on dreams.

And when we pause long enough to recognize that, we begin to live with more intention, more connection, and more awe..

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I hate the 'I’m just a girl' trend with a fury that burns slow and deep because I AM A GIRL.

I am not a disclaimer, not an apology, not a cute little caveat to soften my edges.

'Just' is a cage, a way to shrink the vast, roaring, uncontainable thing that is womanhood into something palatable, something non-threatening, something that doesn’t take up too much space or demand too much attention. But I am not *just* anything.

I am a girl! which means I am a force, a reckoning, a living contradiction of grace and grit, tenderness and teeth.

I am the quiet before the scream and the scream itself.

I am the hands that hold and the hands that break.

I am the girl who was told to be smaller, quieter, *less*, and I am the girl who said no. So when I hear 'just a girl,' it feels like someone is sanding down my corners, dulling my shine, asking me to tuck my fire away so it doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable.

But what DESTROYS me, what makes my blood boil hotter than anything, is that it’s women. us.

who are perpetuating this, turning our own diminishment into a trend, a performance, a fucking *vibe*.

We took the language of our oppression and made it a hashtag, a TikTok sound, a way to make our strength seem accidental, our power seem incidental.

We’re the ones giggling behind our hands, batting our lashes, playing into the lie that 'just a girl' is charming instead of *choking*.

And that betrayal stings worse than any man’s condescension ever could.

Because we *know* what it cost to get here.

We *know* the weight of every 'too much,' every 'not enough,' every time we were told to shrink.

So why are we *still* doing their work for them? I refuse.

If womanhood is a wildfire, then I will not apologize for the burn.

If it’s an ocean, I will not apologize for the tide.

I am not *just* a girl, I am a storm in the shape of a body, a revolution wrapped in skin, a girl who has clawed her way through too much history to now playact at being small.

So no more 'just.'

No more cute surrender.

Only the unshakable, unbreakable truth, we were never *just* anything.

Women are the architects of life itself, we birth nations, nurture revolutions, and bleed so the world can keep turning.

We are the first home, the first love, the first voice a child ever knows.

We build civilizations in the quiet hours, stitching together the fabric of society with hands that rock cradles and shake mountains.

And yet, here we are, reducing ourselves to 'just', a word that tastes like ash in the mouth of a goddess.

How dare we? How dare we call ourselves 'just' anything when we are the reason humanity still breathes? We are the makers and the menders, the warriors and the wisdom keepers.

We are not 'just', we are the foundation, the fucking backbone.

So the next time you feel that word bubbling up 'just a girl,' 'just a mom,' 'just a woman'

choke it back.

Spit it out.

Because the world doesn’t get to call us 'just,' and we sure as hell shouldn’t do it to ourselves.

last but not least

And m not sorry about it.

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May again..

Three Mays have passed like a slow unraveling, like a ribbon of smoke curling from a blown out candle, each one leaving its ghost of heat behind.

The first May came sharp with endings, the kind that split you open like overripe fruit.

The second May arrived quieter, a thief slipping in through the back door of my ribs, stealing whatever hope had regrown in the hidden places.

And now this May, the third, hangs heavy as wet linen on a clothesline, sagging under the weight of all it refuses to forget.

The cruelty is in the sunlight, how it falls indiscriminate and golden, gilding the shoulders of strangers laughing outside cafés, how it pools in the hollow of my collarbone like it belongs there.

The trees are drunk on their own lushness, leaves clapping like applause for a performance I wasn’t cast in.

I watch dandelions force their way through sidewalk cracks, their yellow heads braver than my own.

The world is a banquet, and I am the guest who forgot how to swallow.

Some mornings, I stand barefoot in the grass just to feel something real. The earth hums beneath me, patient as a monk.

It doesn’t care that I’m half ghost, that my breath still hitches when the lilacs bloom.

Their perfume is a time machine.

suddenly I’m back to the first May, the second, the third, all at once. The past isn’t a line!

it’s a stain.

It seeps.

But then! the way the late afternoon light slants through my window, painting the walls the color of apricot flesh.

The way my own hands, clumsy as they are, still remember how to cradle a mug of tea until the heat soaks into my palms. Small mercies.

The body keeps its own ledger of survival.

I think maybe Mays are not a reprieve, but a reckoning.

They don’t ask if you’re ready to be reborn.

They just split the sky open and let the light pour down, ruthless and radiant, until you have no choice but to tilt your face toward it, salt on your lips, and admit..

You are still here.

You are still here.

You are still here.

I press my forehead to the window screen,

let the breeze finger my hair.

The air smells like cut grass

and someone's charcoal grill.

I want to disappear.

I want to dissolve into the golden hour, become light on pavement,

become the dandelion forcing itself through a crack in the driveway

ugly.

stubborn.

alive.

Three Mays have taught me that grief doesn't fade,

it weathers.

Becomes something you hold

alongside your keys, your phone,

the grocery list.

Today, I will buy strawberries.

Their sweetness will startle me.

I will eat them in the parking lot,

juice running down my wrist,

and for one unbearable moment,

I will be exactly here.

And maybe that's enough.

to let the contradiction live in your throat like a hymn

the brutal tenderness of being alive in May,

the way the world insists on blooming

even as it breaks your heart.

To stand in the supermarket parking lot,

sticky with proof that you're still here,

still tasting,

still alive,

Still here.

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• A Note: This poem is for anyone who finds springtime bittersweet. You're allowed to feel the sun on your skin and the ache in your chest at the same time. Some Mays are for surviving, not blooming.

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We tried to bury it, didn’t we?

Pressed our emotions down like crumpled letters never sent, folded them into smaller and smaller shapes until they fit inside the quiet.

We told ourselves it was better this way , safer, cleaner.

Silence was a kind of control.

But the heart is no vault; it does not lock away what it carries. It ferments. It swells in the dark.

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Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways. -SIGMUND FREUD

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At first, it was just a whisper, a sigh caught between sentences, a flicker of pain behind the eyes, quickly blinked away.

We smothered it with distractions, with hollow laughter, with the careful choreography of *I’m fine*.

But emotions are not obedient things.

They do not dissolve; they gather.

They coil in the pit of the stomach, thicken in the throat like a scream turned to stone.

And then, inevitably, the dam breaks.

A word spoken too harshly.

A tear that falls without permission.

A rage that erupts like a long-dormant volcano, scorching everything in its path.

We stagger under the weight of what we refused to name, as if we ever stood a chance against the tide.

The truth does not vanish just because we look away. It lingers. It waits. It grows teeth.

And when it finally rips free, it is not gentle.

It does not ask for permission.

It howls through us like a storm that has been building for years, tearing down every flimsy barricade we built in its way.

We clutch at the wreckage, stunned by its force, as if we could not have known this was coming. But we did. We always do.

Because what we silence does not disappear, it distorts. It twists into something wilder, something ravenous.

It demands to be felt. And by then, it is too late to temper its fury.

We are left breathless, ravaged by the very things we swore we would never let ourselves feel.

The lesson is emotions cannot be starved into submission. It will always find a way to breathe, even if it must burn the whole world down to do so.

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The last two years, I have felt loved. A lot of times. When my friends buy me something, even a small gesture, it makes me feel appreciated in ways words can’t fully express.

When my mom gets upset because I’m leaving the house without eating, her concern wraps around me like a blanket, showing me that even in her frustration, there’s deep care.

My siblings, when they see me crying, they don’t always know what to say, but their presence says more than any comfort ever could.

I felt loved when my aunt and cousin told me that what matters most is me. In their words, I found a reassurance that, despite everything,

I am enough just as I am.

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I felt loved when my friend told me I am the kindest person they know.

There was something in that moment that reminded me that, despite my own doubts, there is goodness in me that others see.

I felt loved when my uncle told me that I am strong, Sometimes I forget that about myself, but hearing it from him made me stand a little taller.

I also felt loved in the moments I gave that love to myself. Like when I bought myself makeup, allowing myself the joy of feeling good in my own skin, or when I kissed my own cheek in the mirror.

In those moments, I was both the giver and receiver of love, reminding myself that self-compassion is as vital as the love we get from others.

Even when I cried because I felt bad for myself, I felt love because in those tears, there was an acknowledgment of the hurt I carried! I was giving space for my pain, and that, in its own way, was an act of love.

But as much as I have felt loved, I have never felt understood.

Not once in my life.

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People have tried, and I’ve seen their efforts. They’ve asked, they’ve listened, but in the end, it always feels like there’s a part of me that remains unreachable. I don’t hold it against them because the truth is, I don’t understand myself either. So it’s okay.

Understanding feels like an elusive thing, but maybe, just maybe, love is enough for now.

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There are days when the world presses against your skin like a second gravity, when every breath feels like swallowing the entire sky, thick with unspoken words, half remembered dreams, and the echoes of every "what if" you’ve ever carried.

You are a cathedral of feeling, your ribs arched like vaulted ceilings, holding hymns of joy and grief in the same sacred space.

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The air hums with the electricity of a storm that never breaks, and your pulse thrums with the rhythm of a thousand stories you’ve lived and lost.

You feel everything: the ache of love that lingers like a bruise, the phantom touch of hands that no longer reach for you, the weight of all the versions of yourself you’ve outgrown or abandoned along the way.

And yet!

There is a hollowness in the center of it all, a silence so vast it swallows sound.

You move through the world like a ghost, fingertips brushing against life but never quite gripping it.

Laughter rings distant, as if heard through water; sunlight falls on your skin but leaves no warmth.

You are a room where the walls are made of glass, everything is visible, but nothing can touch you.

You try to name what’s wrong, but the words dissolve like smoke.

You are full of fire and yet cold to the bone, a paradox of presence and absence.

You want to scream, but your voice has abandoned you. You want to feel, but your nerves have gone numb.

It’s as if you’ve been split in two: one half drowning in sensation, the other half already dust.

You think of all the times you’ve been told to *feel less* or *feel more*, as if emotions could be measured, as if the heart could be calibrated. But this! this is the in-between, the liminal space where you are both the wound and the suture, the question and the silence that follows.

You are a canvas splashed with every color and then bleached white, a symphony played on broken strings. You are alive in the most unbearable way, too much and not enough, all at once.

And then, like a shift in the wind, it passes.

The heaviness lifts, the numbness recedes. You blink, and the world sharpens back into focus, The coffee tastes bitter and sweet again; the rain on your skin feels like a benediction. You exhale, and for the first time in hours? days? your chest doesn’t feel like it’s caving in. You don’t know why it comes or where it goes, this tidal wave of everything and nothing. But you know it will return.

And when it does, you’ll meet it the only way you know how: with ink and paper, with trembling hands and a heart that refuses to stop feeling, even when it aches.

Because this is the price of being alive.

This is the cost of loving the world too deeply. And you, you wouldn’t trade it for anything.

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A NOTE: thanks for reading my favourite poem, I wrote this months ago when i was at my lowest, I reread it almost every day snd i wanted to share it here with you, hope you liked it. <3

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It’s strange to be fifteen. You’re too old to be comforted like a child, too young to be taken seriously. The world suddenly grows louder and colder, but you’re expected to smile through it. You look in the mirror and wonder who that is staring back, eyes that know too much already, a body that feels like both a weapon and a betrayal.

At fifteen, the ache is constant. It’s a dull loneliness, like walking through a hallway full of people who never really look at you. You sit beside your friends in class and still feel a little apart. You scroll through Instagram or TikTok, seeing girls who seem effortless and adored, while you… awkward, uncertain, invisible! can’t help but feel like you were left out of some secret guidebook on how to be.

You think: Maybe if I were prettier. Maybe if I were louder, or quieter. Maybe if I disappeared altogether, someone might notice.

Sometimes, it feels like no one really sees you unless you’re in pain.

And sometimes, even then, they don’t. Parents dismiss your sadness as “just hormones.”

Teachers don’t ask why your homework is late. Boys talk to you like you’re a prize to be won, not a person to be understood. And still… you care.

You care so deeply it hurts.

But underneath all of this, under the ache and confusion and rage.

there’s something else too. A fire. A seed of power you haven’t yet figured out how to wield. You feel things more intensely than you ever will again.

You see the truth behind things adults have learned to ignore. You dream wildly. You cry furiously. You love recklessly.

There’s a quiet, blazing strength in all of that.

Fifteen is a war zone and a miracle.

“At fifteen, life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.”

— Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

You are miserable and unloved, maybe, but also radiant in ways no one understands yet. not even you. You carry a universe inside you. You don’t know this now, but later you will remember how strong you were just to survive this age. You will think: God, I was unstoppable.

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Because even on your worst days, when you feel ugly or forgotten or furious, you still get up. You still show up. You still believe—against all logic, that things might get better.

And they will.

So for now, wear the black eyeliner or don’t. Write bad poetry in the margins of your math notes. Listen to the sad songs. Laugh too loud. Let yourself feel it all.

This is how it feels to be a 15-year-old girl: miserable and unloved, yes. but also brilliant, defiant, and utterly unstoppable.

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“Fifteen is when you feel everything all at once: too much, too fast, too deeply.”

— The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

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• TWO ICONS, TWO WORLDS.

~ Sylvia Plath and Jane Austen stand as monumental figures in English literature, each representing a distinct voice, era, and style. While Austen chronicled the social dynamics of the British gentry in the early 19th century with elegance and wit, Plath confronted the inner battles of the self in mid-20th-century America with raw emotional power.

Despite their differences in tone and time, both authors left indelible marks on literature, particularly through their deep insight into the lives and minds of women.

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• Jane Austen: Social Precision and Subtle Irony

Jane Austen’s prose is known for its clarity, irony, and social commentary. She focused on the domestic sphere, especially on issues of marriage, class, and morality in Regency England. Her style blends free indirect discourse, a technique that lets readers enter a character’s thoughts, with sharp observational humor.

Austen’s novels subtly critique societal norms, especially regarding women’s limited roles. For example, in Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet defies the era’s expectations of submissive femininity, asserting the importance of marrying for love rather than status.

“I could easily forgive his pride if he had not mortified mine.” — Pride and Prejudice

This quote captures Austen’s talent for intertwining personal emotion with broader social tensions.

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• Best Works:

• Pride and Prejudice (1813) – A romantic novel that critiques class and gender expectations.

• Emma (1815) – A comedy of manners centered around a wealthy, self-assured heroine who misjudges the lives of others.

• Persuasion (1818) – A mature work reflecting on second chances in love and the quiet endurance of women.

• Sylvia Plath: Confession and Catharsis

Sylvia Plath is best known for her confessional poetry, a style that exposes personal and often painful emotions. Her work explores mental illness, identity, death, motherhood, and feminism. Her writing is intensely lyrical, blending beautiful language with violent imagery.

Plath’s poetry often features symbolism and metaphors, giving voice to emotions that were, in her time, often suppressed, especially for women. In her iconic poem Daddy, she explores the trauma of paternal loss and patriarchal domination:

“You do not do, you do not do / Any more, black shoe / In which I have lived like a foot / For thirty years, poor and white.” — Daddy

Her novel The Bell Jar reflects her own experiences with depression and societal expectations placed on women in the 1950s.

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am.” — The Bell Jar

• Best work:

• The Bell Jar (1963) – A semi-autobiographical novel about a young woman’s descent into mental illness.

• Ariel (1965) – A posthumously published collection of her most powerful poems.

• Collected Poems (1981) – Won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1982.

• Comparison: Emotion vs. Society

While Austen and Plath differ in time and tone, they share a core commitment: giving women a strong literary voice.

• Austen critiques external social constraints with intelligence and irony.

• Plath exposes internal emotional suffering with poetic vulnerability.

Both challenge the roles assigned to women! Austen through satire, and Plath through despair and defiance.

• Jane Austen and Sylvia Plath occupy different corners of the literary world, but both used the written word to challenge, question, and redefine womanhood in their eras. Austen did so with wit and restraint, Plath with fury and pain. Together, they shaped literature not only by telling stories of women but by telling them honestly, whether through the ballroom or the psychiatric ward.

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Today I’m going to explain how I see my favorite songs, and how they make me feel. These aren’t just tracks I play on repeat. They’re songs that feel like they know me, like they were written by someone who cracked open my chest and translated the things I didn’t know how to say. Every lyric holds a feeling I’ve carried in silence. These songs are my emotional mirrors.

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• 1. Matilda – Harry Styles

“You can let it go / You can throw a party full of everyone you know / And not invite your family…”

Matilda is the kind of song that finds the quietest, most hidden sadness inside you. It’s not loud. It doesn’t scream. It gently sits next to you and says, I see it too. When Harry sings about someone who didn’t get the love they deserved, it feels like he’s giving permission to grieve the things we were told to ignore, emotional neglect, invisible pain, feeling like the outsider in your own home. It’s one of the rare songs that offers softness to people who were never given it. And every time I hear it, I feel held.

• 2. cardigan – Taylor Swift

“When you are young, they assume you know nothing…”

cardigan captures the feeling of being someone’s almost, the one they come back to when it’s too late.

It reminds me of that ache of being loved in fragments, only when it’s convenient, and never fully. Taylor’s lyrics are nostalgic, but not sweet. They’re haunted. The song feels like looking at a version of yourself you lost when someone made you feel small. There’s so much tenderness in the way she sings about being seen and then discarded. cardigan reminds me of girlhood, softness, and how love can feel like both comfort and erasure.

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• 3. lacy – Olivia Rodrigo

“Lacy, oh Lacy, skin like puff pastry / Aren’t you the sweetest thing on this side of Hell?”

lacy is the sound of quiet envy and self-hate disguised as poetry. It’s so specific it almost hurts to admit how relatable it is. It captures the way admiration can turn into obsession when you don’t feel beautiful enough, or soft enough, or lovable enough. Olivia sings about another girl, but really it’s a mirror! she’s asking, why can’t I be like that? It’s jealousy wrapped in guilt, and longing wrapped in shame. It’s a song that says what so many girls feel but are afraid to speak out loud. And in that honesty, it feels healing.

• 4. that’s so true – Gracie Abrams

“That’s so you to say / You’re fine when you’re not okay…”

Gracie Abrams writes like someone who’s been inside my mind at 2 a.m. that’s so true is about being close to someone who’s closed off, who acts fine while everything inside them is falling apart. It reminds me of the exhaustion of loving someone who doesn’t let you in, and how you start hiding parts of yourself too just to match their emotional distance. The song is quiet, but its sadness is heavy. Gracie always finds a way to make heartbreak feel gentle, like it’s unraveling rather than breaking.

This song reminds me of how hard it is to be emotionally honest! and how much it costs when we aren’t.

These songs don’t just sound good, they understand me.

They’ve been there when I didn’t have the words, when I couldn’t explain why something hurt, or why I felt invisible, or why love sometimes feels more like loss.

Listening to them feels like I’m not alone in it. And maybe that’s why they’re my favorites not just because they’re beautiful, but because they make me feel seen.

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