I’ve been waiting for you to stop trying to be extraordinary, to stop trying to be ‘them’, all so I can love you as you are.

Of how too much possibility can fray the edges of a person.

Let go of the performance. The great myth was that you had to earn your aliveness. But you don’t. You never did. You are, in this very moment unfolding.

What if I told you this hunger to endure everything, this ceaseless reaching, this need to feel something more, is not curiosity, but self-exile? Somewhere along the way, you began to believe that living meant becoming exceptional; being seen; being chosen.

And I do not want more doors—I want to walk through one without looking back. I want to love something long enough to feel it love me in return. I want to lay foundations on imperfect soil and call it home anyway.

But I have lost myself in a million other people. I’m no longer fluent in my own language. I’ve consumed so many dreams that weren’t... See more

But I have lost myself in a million other people. I’m no longer fluent in my own language. I’ve consumed so many dreams that weren’t mine, I don’t recognise the hunger of my own longing.

This isn’t freedom. It’s erosion. This is the slow disintegration of self beneath the illusion that we can be anything, everything, all at once.

I mourn strangers I nearly loved; left behind in unread messages. Because what if , there’s someone else; gentler, funnier, easier, more aligned with me just one scroll further?

Before our feet touch the earth, our eyes have already wandered into someone else’s world. We didn’t notice when we stopped living and began watching others. We’ve become spectators of everyone and participants in nothing of our own.

I am only 23, and already I am grieving a life I’ve been disloyal to; too busy auditioning for all the ones I could have instead. I’m haunted by the time I’ve given to this never-ending feed. How many sacred moments have I missed, peering into someone else’s backyard; only to rip up my own seedlings and plant what they had sown?