Anonymous

     this year felt different. heavier. quieter. maybe this is what they call the birthday blues — that strange, hollow ache that settles inside your chest when the world expects you to be happy. maybe it’s more than that. maybe it’s something that’s been growing quietly inside me for years, patiently waiting for the right moment to rise to the surface. and today, it finally had enough space to breathe. no distractions. no noise to drown it out. just me, and the weight of everything i’ve kept tucked away.      at 4am, while the world slept peacefully, i found myself standing alone in a corridor. the floor was cold beneath my feet, grounding me in a reality i didn’t want to face. the walls were silent, but in that silence, every thought i’ve tried to bury echoed back louder than ever. i whispered a soft “happy birthday” to myself. no candles. no laughter. no warm embraces. just me and the air, the darkness holding my words like a fragile secret. i sang not b...

     Hello. It’s that time of the year again.      The kind that makes you feel a little softer, a little heavier, like your heart is remembering something your mind hasn’t quite caught up with.      I don’t know about you, but for me, this season has a way of bringing back old habits, old faces, old wounds that I thought I’d already grown out of. And sometimes, if I’m not careful, I find myself slipping into the same roles—roles I never signed up for but somehow keep getting cast in.      The friend who is always there when it’s easy to reach out. The comfort when no one else answers. The space-filler. The safe option. The “you’ll do for now.”      But I’ve been thinking: I’m not your convenience. I’m not the number you dial because everyone else is busy. I’m not the person you hold onto when your hands are too empty. I’m not here to be remembered only when remembering is simple.      I’m a p...

        Hi. How are you?       Not in the rushed, polite kind of way people ask out of habit. I mean — how’s your heart lately? Have you been sleeping well? Have you been feeling like yourself lately, or just trying to make it through the days? If no one’s asked, then let me be the one to say it now: I hope you’re okay. And if you’re not, I hope you still know you’re allowed to be held even in the middle of your mess.        This isn’t a letter filled with advice. I don’t have a list of things to fix what you’re going through, and I won’t pretend to understand everything you feel. But I wanted to say this, because it’s something I’ve been learning too: sometimes, the best thing we can do for someone is to simply stay. No grand gestures. No perfect words. Just presence — quiet, constant, and real.      There were days I felt like I was just… there. Like a background character in my own life. Not someone people missed, ...

     They say an invisible red string connects those who are meant to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. It might stretch, tangle, or get caught in storms, but it will never break. At first, I thought this was just a romantic notion—something meant for lovers in stories or dreamy quotes shared on lonely nights. But for a while,I had a conversation about it, and somehow, I was enlightened. I realized the red string doesn’t just belong to people who fall in love. Sometimes, it binds souls meant to walk together through the chaos of life—as friends, as family we choose, as anchors we never saw coming.      Life doesn’t give you a map to the people you’re meant to keep. Sometimes, you stumble into them without realizing the universe just shifted a little to make space for something sacred. Sometimes, you meet someone on an ordinary day, in the most unremarkable way, and only later realize it was the start of a chapter you’d never want to end. ...

     There is a lyric that has lingered in my mind lately,  “My skin is very young, but my heart is very old.” It captures an uncanny feeling, as if someone has placed their finger on a truth I couldn’t articulate. How can you be so young, yet feel the weight of decades in your chest? How can you carry the wisdom of experience without having lived long enough to earn it? That lyric encapsulates the strange duality of my life—of many lives, I’d imagine.      I’ve spent countless days chasing after happiness, hoping that the next milestone or achievement would bring me the fulfillment I’ve been searching for. I believed that if I gathered enough—more success, more love, more validation—I would finally feel complete. And yet, here I am, surrounded by everything I once dreamed of, realizing that fulfillment was never hidden in these external things. It’s a sobering realization, one that’s both freeing and heavy.      We live in a world that...