1:16 AM

It’s 1:16 AM, and I’m spiraling.

Not in the way that’s loud or visible. Just a slow, quiet kind of unraveling — the kind that starts with a thought and ends with a memory. The kind that makes me question everything: the people I’ve trusted, the friendships I’ve held close, the version of myself I have learned to show the world. I know we’re wired to connect. To be surrounded. To be known. But there are nights like this when I wonder — what’s the point of it all?

It’s not that I don’t value friendship. I do. I always have. But some days, I feel the urge to build walls so high that no one can see over them — not even me. I sit among my friends, present in body but far away in thought, and I wonder who I am in those moments. Is this version of me the real one? Or have I simply learned to shape myself into whatever makes others comfortable?

Maybe my truest self is the one who prefers silence over conversation. Maybe I don’t dislike people — I’m just more at ease in the quiet. And I wonder if that preference comes from all the times I’ve been overlooked, from years of being unseen and unheard, of having my emotions dismissed, of watching myself fade into the background of every room I’ve entered. I’ve been important only when it was convenient. And even then, there’s a difference between being wanted and being needed. The difference between being wanted and being needed isn’t lost on me. I’ve felt that distance in the way I’m invited into spaces, in the way I’m only important when it suits others. It’s not that they don’t care — it’s that I’ve learned how to disappear when I’m not essential.

So I learned to adapt. To play roles. To be charming, witty, presentable — whatever the situation required. I never felt like I was losing myself, exactly. It was more like switching gears. I kept a more polished version of myself on standby, ready to be activated when necessary. But over time, that polished version started to feel more accepted than the original.

Now, I have friends. I have people around me I care about. But the instinct to self-protect hasn’t gone away. It’s not that I’m afraid of heartbreak. I’ve lived through enough of that to know I can survive it. It’s more a matter of energy: Why bother opening up when I’ve learned how to carry it all on my own?

There’s something powerful — and perhaps dangerous — about becoming emotionally self-sufficient. I don’t ask for shoulders to cry on because I’ve convinced myself I don’t need them. When the hard moments arrive, I tell myself I’ve survived worse — and that I can survive this too, alone.

Sometimes, I feel like a character written into the margins of a romance novel. The kind of girl who doesn’t believe in needing anyone. The one who says, “I’m fine on my own,” and half-means it. The kind people root for but always fear will run the other way. A girl so used to standing alone that when love finally knocks, she peers through the door and asks, “Why are you here?”

Because I’ve learned to do life solo. I’ve patched myself up with silence and independence and a quiet kind of resilience.

And yet… a part of me, the buried part, still dreams.

Of someone who says, “I know you don’t need saving. I know you’ve built your walls strong. But I want to sit beside them anyway.”

Not to fix me. Not to carry me. Just to stay. It’s a fantasy — soft and cinematic, hopelessly distant from reality. 

But maybe if I ever met that kind of love, I’d ruin it. I’d look at them and ask, “Why do I need you?” — not out of cruelty, but out of habit. Out of fear.

Because sometimes love doesn’t feel like safety. It feels like surrender.

The signs that I might die single are subtle, but they’re there. And weirdly enough, I don’t fear that. I find a strange comfort in the idea that I might always be enough for myself.

I’ve craved intimacy. I’ve longed for meaningful friendships — especially the deep, feminine kind filled with vulnerability and softness. And now, I have them. I’m grateful. But there are still days when I pull away. Days when I feel the need to guard my heart, to retreat into myself, to remember the strength it took to survive before these friendships existed.

If someone asked me whether I could survive without all of it — the love, the support, the people — my honest answer would be yes. Not because I don’t value them, but because I know I can. I’ve done it before.

Does that make me ungrateful? I don’t think so. I’m thankful. I really am. But I also know that I’ve built something within myself that doesn’t crumble when others walk away.

If I were to sit across from the people I’ve closed chapters with — the ones who became footnotes in the new chapters of my life — over a warm cup of chamomile tea, I think I’d smile. I think I’d tell them my life has been good. That I’ve grown. That I’ve bloomed, even. That the bruises faded eventually, that I’m happy now, healed — or something close to it. I’d tell them I’m okay.

I’m okay, aren’t I?

I did it alone. I did it with tears silently soaking into my pillow. I did it while clutching my chest at 3 AM, praying for the ache to pass, curling into myself because no one else was there to hold me. I survived the kind of hurt that doesn’t even know how to scream — the one that just sits quietly in your body, like a weight, like a ghost.

Sometimes I think I’d hand those people a stack of papers — messy, unbound, stained with metaphors and metaphysical blood. My poetry, if I ever dared to write it, would be made of wounds. Open ones. Not to shock. Not even to be understood. Just to be seen. I would remember the pain — the real, physical tightness in my chest, the nausea in my stomach, the desperate need to be held. And how, in the absence of anyone else, I held myself.

Is that what it takes to be seen? To bleed a little louder? To be tragic enough for someone to pause and look your way? I’ve always been the wallpaper in everyone else’s portrait — familiar, overlooked, fading into the background. Not unnoticed, but never really seen. I’ve lived in the quiet spaces, where people forget to look. And maybe that’s what I’ve been all along: a shadow that blends in, hoping someone might stop long enough to see the color in it.

No one looks twice at the ordinary.

And if being extraordinary means being loud, then maybe I never stood a chance.

But that’s not who I am. Not always. Not entirely.

Do you get what that feels like? To be both seen and unseen at once, caught between the longing for connection and the fear of losing yourself in it? To crave something real, yet run from the very thing you need?