isolation in aesthetic packaging

hey, i know it has been a while.

life has been crazy, but it hit this strange, quiet patch lately where i am not even sure if it is real. it is not exactly calm; it is just quiet in a way that makes the silence feel heavy.

growing up, i always looked forward to this exact point in my life. i wanted to be strong, independent, and capable. i wanted to be the girl who finished her education, started earning, and finally had the agency to support her family. but looking back, i realize i only ever focused on getting here. i never actually stopped to think about what feeling or milestone i was trying to tick off once i arrived. and now that i am standing right in the middle of it, it has never been crazier, or more real.

whatever i set out to do in life, i think i just wanted to make an impact, not gain popularity. i believed, and still believe, that we were all sent here with a specific purpose to fulfill. becoming the headline seems glamorous from a distance, but in reality, it is just a heavy weight on your shoulders. when that weight falls, it can shatter the very world you thought you lived in. and that has happened. the weights fell, and the cracks on the surface became ever so apparent.

people look at me and assume i have everything someone could wish for, or an endless circle of people to talk to. but having people around doesn't mean total transparency. i’ve learned that true gratitude for people comes with accepting what they can offer without digging into every nitty-gritty detail; keeping parts of myself private isn't distance, it's just letting relationships exist as they are. at the same time, being able to articulate how i feel often feels more like a curse than a blessing. people see you express yourself and assume it comes naturally, as if vulnerability is a talent rather than a choice. but expressing things isn't about being fearless. getting your heart broken or being misunderstood is just part of the price of admission. nothing you ever valued was truly yours to own anyway, so what is the harm in just letting yourself be seen?

there were times people saw an ideal version of me, projecting everything they wanted onto who they thought i was. when everyone around you tells you something is perfect for you, it makes you question your own sanity for walking away. i caught myself playing villain arcs just to break illusions, choosing to look like the wrong choice rather than living up to a version of myself that wasn't real. walking away from what looked like a blessing on paper left a strange kind of loss, the kind where you wonder if the world was right and you were wrong. but deep down, choosing honesty over a comfortable lie is a choice i would make every single time.

we were all just at different stages of life, moving on different timelines. it took me a long time to realize that when things felt misaligned, it wasn't always a personal failure on my part, nor was it a fault in them. God knows how brutal, harsh, incomplete, and unfinished i am as a human being, too. we are all just carrying the weight of our own conditioning, trying to navigate what we lack while pretending we have it figured out.

for the longest time, way back before university, even before high school, i tried to live by a simple rule: want for others what you want for yourself. i wanted to treat people with respect, open up, and offer good intentions. but over time, i started questioning that logic because it felt unfair to expect my own standards from everyone else. what i want for myself isn't always what someone else wants or needs in that moment. i realized you can't force an exchange when people aren't ready to open their doors, and wanting good for others shouldn't mean exhausting yourself trying to bridge a gap that time and growth haven't closed yet.

half the burden goes away the moment you realize that not everything is meant to work out, and that the things that fell apart were often just the universe working in your favor. you give what you have, and you put out what you want to receive. it really is a simple give and take. when you put out bad, it finds its way back; when you put out good, good returns. letting go of the need to fix or control every outcome felt like a loss at first, but it turned out to be a gain. a gain of time, of honest thoughts, and of myself.

at the same time, i’ve been looking at how we navigate peace these days, and it scares me a little. it’s so easy to buy into the modern trend of going quiet, cutting people off, and building our own personal brands under the guise of self-care. pop psychology has made it so convenient to brand every inconvenience as toxic, every conflict as a red flag, and every quiet withdrawal as a power move. but i started asking myself if i was actually protecting my peace, or if i was just retreating into my own ego because keeping people at arm's length is easier than being vulnerable.

we act like we live on our own private planets, completely sovereign and self-sustaining, forgetting that we take up oxygen from the same air as everyone else. we sanitize our relationships until they are effortless, but real connection is inherently messy. when you strip away the mess, you don't get peace, you just get isolation wrapped in aesthetic packaging.

i don't want to build myself into a self-made monument. monuments are cold, rigid, and ultimately alone. i don't want my peace to come at the cost of the people around me, or at the expense of the village that helped raise me and carried me when i couldn't carry myself. if the universe was meant to revolve around my ego, i’d have my own planet full of virtue and gold. but we are placed here in the mess together for a reason, meant to revolve around the one who created us, rather than our own desperate need to be the main character in a story we didn't write.

i used to think the future was a threat i had to survive. now, i am trying to force myself to see it as an adventure. those endless uncertainties i used to fear? maybe they are just endless possibilities.