The water here is a ridiculous colour. Scientists have a wonderfully practical explanation involving glaciers and suspended rock particles, but I don’t think science accounts for the first instinct you have when you see something beautiful. Mine wasn’t to take a photograph. It wasn’t even to stare. It was to imagine the expression on his face if he were standing next to me. Which is terribly inconvenient, because I had promised myself—quite firmly, actually—that if I was writing about New Zealand, I would write about New Zealand. Not him. Certainly not him.

Anyway.

Lake Pukaki.

It’s one of those places that makes silence feel expensive. Everyone speaks a little softer around it, as if raising your voice would somehow wrinkle the water. I stood there for a long time trying to think of the right adjective. Turquoise felt lazy. Blue felt insufficient. Ethereal sounded like I was trying too hard. He would’ve laughed at the amount of time I spent looking for the perfect word when “pretty” would’ve done the job. He always thinks I’m incapable of using one adjective when six are available. He’s wrong, obviously. Sometimes I use seven.

I’ve noticed that New Zealand has an unfair advantage over the rest of the world. Nothing here competes for your attention. The mountains don’t beg to be looked at. The lakes don’t sparkle on command. Even the sheep seem oddly secure in themselves. They simply exist, completely certain that you’ll eventually notice them. I admire that. I wish I possessed that kind of confidence. Instead, I’m the sort of person who sees a mountain and immediately thinks, He would’ve made me stop the car here. Not because he likes mountains particularly. Mostly because he knows I do. Love, I’ve discovered, is often just becoming an expert in somebody else’s excitement.

There are cafés tucked into corners of towns so small you’d miss them if you blinked. They sell cinnamon scrolls the size of your face and coffee strong enough to reorganize your personality. I sat by the window in one of them for nearly an hour, watching strangers come and go. Across from me was an elderly couple who barely spoke. Every few minutes one of them would slide the sugar across the table before the other even asked. That’s the kind of intimacy nobody writes poems about. Everyone wants fireworks and airport reunions and declarations in the rain. Personally, I think love is remembering how somebody takes their coffee before they’ve had to ask. I wanted to text him that thought immediately. Instead I wrote it down here, which is arguably worse.

This country has a habit of making you feel small, but not in the lonely way. In the comforting way. As if the mountains are gently reminding you that your problems have arrived a few million years too late to impress them. I stood looking at one for several minutes, waiting for it to rearrange something inside me. Travel writers are always talking about moments like that. The life-changing view. The sudden clarity. The spiritual awakening. I got none of those. I just wondered whether he’d remember to pack a jacket if he’d been here. He wouldn’t have. I’d have given him mine. We’d have argued because he’d refuse to take it. I’d have won because I usually do when the argument is about someone being cold.

It’s irritating, really.

Not the distance.

Distance is measurable.

Twelve thousand-odd kilometres. A few flights. Several time zones.

What’s irritating is discovering how aggressively love inserts itself into unrelated subjects. It has no respect for paragraphs. You’re trying to describe a mountain and suddenly you’re remembering the way he smiles when he’s pretending not to laugh. You’re writing about the colour of a lake and somehow you’ve ended up thinking about the blue shirt he wore the day you first realized missing someone could begin before they’d even left. You tell yourself to focus. You delete the sentence. You write another one. The next one does exactly the same thing.

I keep trying to tell you about New Zealand.

I really am trying.

I’d like to mention the beaches before this essay is over because they’re quieter than beaches have any right to be. I’d like to tell you about the wind that arrives without warning and leaves your hair looking like you’ve had a disagreement with electricity. I’d like to describe the lupins blooming in impossible shades of purple and pink as though someone accidentally dropped paint across the countryside and everyone collectively agreed not to clean it up.

I’d like to tell you about all of it.

But every beautiful thing here arrives with the same quiet ache.

Not because it isn’t enough.

Because I wanted him to see it too.

Maybe that’s the problem with extraordinary places. They don’t make you love the people waiting at home any less. They simply hand you a longer list of things you wish you could’ve experienced together.

I’ve spent days trying to write something worthy of New Zealand. Instead, I’ve accidentally written the geography of missing someone.

I suppose that’s still a travel story.

Just not the one I thought I was telling.

But the first thing I noticed walking through the airport was a shawarma place. You love shawarma. Not in a poetic, cinematic way. In a very committed, “I could eat this three times a week and never complain” kind of way.

A few hours later, on my flight they handed out Kit Kats. Your favourite chocolate.

Then I ordered a wrap. I took one bite before realizing there were tomatoes in it. My first thought wasn’t I should’ve ordered something else. It was, He would’ve asked them to remove the tomatoes.

It’s almost insulting how ordinary these moments are. Nobody tells you that missing someone isn’t dramatic most of the time.

It’s embarrassingly mundane.

It’s grocery stores.

Chocolate bars.

Airport food.

Seeing something red because it’s their favourite colour.

Hearing a song they’d definitely pretend not to like before secretly adding it to their playlist.

It’s your brain building a home inside another person so thoroughly that the world starts translating itself into their language.

I think that’s why people who haven’t loved like this think it’s obsession. It’s not. It’s just that once someone becomes part of the way you experience the world, removing them isn’t like deleting a contact. It’s like asking your eyes to stop recognizing colours.

People always ask, “Why them?”

I think it’s the wrong question.

The world is full of people who are funny, kind, beautiful, thoughtful. There are people who would probably love me. People who would make logical sense. People who live closer. People who come without complicated conversations about visas, time zones, airport goodbyes or countdowns to the next flight.

And yet…

None of them are you.

How strange is that?

Eight billion people.

Statistically speaking, I should be replaceable.

You should be too.

But once I’ve known you—really known you—how could my heart pretend not to? People love giving love rules. Don’t do long distance. Don’t make someone your whole world. If it’s meant to be, it won’t be hard. If it’s hard, leave. Protect your peace. Never chase. Always chase. Be vulnerable. Not too vulnerable.

Apparently everyone is an expert until it’s their turn to explain why they stayed for someone who made absolutely no logical sense.

I don’t think love has ever cared much for logic. If it did, airports wouldn’t exist. Neither would love letters. Or songs. Or novels. Or half the art hanging in museums.

Love has never been interested in efficiency. It’s deeply inconvenient. It ruins productivity. It makes you smile at shawarma shops. It makes you think about tomatoes. It makes you cry over customs barriers. It makes twelve-hour flights feel simultaneously too long and somehow not long enough. It turns tiny things into sacred things. And maybe that’s the point.

There’s this image that won’t leave me.

He’s asleep beside me curled up like someone who’s finally convinced his nervous system that, for tonight at least the world isn’t asking anything more of him. One hand loosely going under my shirt. Not in a sexual way. In a way that just needs some proof that I exist. Not tightly. Not desperately. Just enough. As though somewhere in his body lives the memory of things disappearing and even in sleep he’d rather be certain I’m still there.

Earlier that evening forehead pressed into my neck, he whispered, “When I’m with you its like I can finally rest”

I don’t know if he realizes what it means to hear someone say that. To realise they’ve trusted your presence with something they couldn’t trust silence with. He sleeps like life has finally stopped chasing him. And I lie awake wondering how someone who carries so much can become so impossibly light in my arms.

People talk a lot about being loved. I don’t think we talk enough about being trusted. About becoming the place someone finally rests.

What an unbearable privilege.

What an impossible thing to hold.

I don’t know what love is supposed to look like anymore. I don’t know who invented all these rules we’re apparently failing. Maybe love isn’t supposed to be measured by convenience. Maybe it isn’t supposed to fit timelines or countries or other people’s expectations.

Maybe love is just this.

A Kit Kat on a plane.

Tomatoes you instinctively notice because someone you love would’ve asked for them to be taken out.

A body that finally sleeps.

A thousand microscopic reminders scattered through an ordinary day until the ordinary itself becomes unbearable.

So when people ask me, “Why you?”

I never really know how to answer.

Because there are people everywhere who are everything you are.

But somehow…

None of them are you.

And once I’ve seen you, once I’ve known you, once I’ve loved you— how could it ever be anybody else?

I landed in a new country this week. And somehow, every few hours, I keep bumping into you.

You are nowhere near me.

And somehow, you are absolutely everywhere.

We say it after failed relationships, awkward conversations, and family dinners that leave us feeling like badly translated books. We mourn being misunderstood as if it were the greatest injustice one person can inflict upon another.

But lately, I’ve begun to wonder whether our relentless desire to be understood isn’t always a longing for intimacy. Sometimes, I think, it’s vanity in softer clothing.

To want to be understood is to believe that there exists a version of ourselves so coherent, so internally consistent, so fascinating, that another person ought to dedicate enough time and attention to deciphering it completely. We expect people to excavate our silences, contextualize our contradictions, forgive our inconsistencies, and lovingly assemble a portrait of us from scattered clues.

And perhaps that is asking a lot.

After all, most of us barely understand ourselves. We revise our opinions, betray our values, repeat mistakes we promised we’d outgrow, and wake up some mornings feeling like strangers inhabiting familiar bodies. Yet we are disappointed when others fail to grasp what we ourselves cannot clearly articulate.

Maybe what we really want isn’t to be understood. Maybe we want to be accommodated.

We want people to say, “I know you cancelled at the last minute, but I understand you’re overwhelmed.” We want our sharp remarks translated into hidden wounds, our withdrawal interpreted as sensitivity, our indecision mistaken for complexity.

To be understood is wonderful. To be granted endless interpretive generosity is intoxicating. And perhaps this is where narcissism quietly enters the room.

Not the loud, obvious narcissism of grandiosity, but the subtler conviction that our inner world deserves exceptional effort from others. That our motives are nuanced while other people’s actions are simply inconsiderate. That we are mysteries waiting to be solved while everyone else should have come with instructions.

The older I get, the less interested I am in being fully understood. I’d rather be known imperfectly by people who witness me consistently than admired for depths they imagine I possess.

After all, there may be something profoundly human about remaining partially untranslated. Perhaps love was never about being completely understood. It’s about being somewhat misunderstood and staying anyway.

Not about love. Not about how women wake up with perfect hair or how apparently every New Yorker can afford a two-bedroom apartment with exposed brick and unresolved trauma.

I mean the part where people change.

In movies, there is always a moment.

The protagonist gets dumped, loses their job, almost dies, sees an old photograph, attends one therapy session, or stares dramatically at themselves in a bathroom mirror. Suddenly, something clicks. Their eyes widen. The soundtrack swells. They finally understand.

Cut to six months later.

They’re running marathons, speaking fluent Italian, opening bakeries in Tuscany and have somehow become emotionally available.

Beautiful.

Meanwhile, in real life I have had the same realization approximately forty-seven times.

I have realized I need better boundaries. I have realized I shouldn’t chase people who consistently make me feel unwanted. I have realized that sleeping at 3 a.m. because I was busy overthinking a conversation from 2019 is not, a personality trait. I have realized that my body stores stress like a squirrel preparing for winter.

And yet.

There I am. Responding too quickly. Explaining myself too much. Checking my phone for messages from people who have already demonstrated their communication style through interpretive dance and prolonged silence.

Movies would have us believe that awareness is the finish line. But awareness is often just the waiting room.

You can know exactly why you do something and still keep doing it. You can understand your attachment style, identify your childhood wounds, listen to podcasts, highlight therapy quotes, journal under a candle, drink matcha, and still text the person you promised yourself you wouldn’t. Because human beings don’t change the moment they understand themselves. They change when understanding finally becomes more uncomfortable than changing.

And that takes time.

Sometimes a ridiculous amount of time.

Nobody talks about the purgatory between knowing and doing. The months, or years, where you become painfully self-aware.

Where you’re watching yourself make the same mistake in high definition. You’re practically providing your own commentary track.

“Oh look, she’s about to abandon her needs again. Fascinating. We’ve seen this scene before.”

It reminds me less of a movie and more of Groundhog Day.

Not because every day is identical, but because growth doesn’t arrive as a lightning bolt. It arrives as repetition. Tiny deviations. Small refusals. One different choice. Then another. Then ten more. Phil doesn’t wake up transformed because he understands he’s trapped. He changes because he has to live through the same day enough times to become someone else.

Maybe that’s what real change is. Not one cinematic epiphany. Not a dramatic speech. Not a makeover montage set to an indie song.

Just accumulating enough evidence that the old version of you is exhausting. Until one day, without fanfare, you do something differently.

You don’t send the text.

You leave the conversation.

You say no without writing a thesis to defend it.

You go home.

You rest.

And nobody claps.

There is no soundtrack. No one even notices. Except you.

And maybe that’s the most honest kind of character development there is. Not becoming a new person overnight. Just getting tired enough of being the old one

Not the soft parts first. Not the comforting things. Not the recipes or the weird sayings or the way they knew exactly how to cut fruit when you were sick.

No.

It starts with the things you hated.

The things you swore with the dramatic certainty only wounded children possess — would die with them. You grow up making blood oaths to yourself.

I will never speak to someone like that.

I will never make someone feel scared in my presence.

I will never guilt people into loving me.

I will never become emotionally unavailable.

I will never make my child feel alone in a house full of people.

And when you’re young, you mean it with your whole body.

Because children notice everything.People think kids forget. Kids don’t forget shit. They remember tone. The silence after arguments. The way love sometimes felt conditional. How affection disappeared after disappointment. How one parent became too loud and the other became too absent. How apologies never came. How emotions sat in the house like guests nobody acknowledged.

Children become experts in emotional weather. You knew when the room felt unsafe. You knew when to stay quiet. You knew when someone was angry before they even said a word. You knew the sound of disappointment. You knew the version of yourself that had to shrink to survive. And quietly, without ceremony, you made promises.

I’ll never be like this.

You carry that promise into adulthood like religion.

Until one day life humiliates you. Not dramatically.

Quietly.

You’re tired. Stressed. Heartbroken. Overwhelmed.

Someone says the wrong thing and suddenly—

You hear yourself.

The tone.

The sharpness.

The withdrawal.

The coldness.

You say something cruel just to protect yourself. You make someone feel small because, for one ugly second, power feels safer than vulnerability. You punish instead of communicate. You go silent instead of honest. And after it’s over, you sit there feeling physically sick.

Because there it is. The thing you feared most. Not failure. Not heartbreak. Not loneliness. Inheritance.

You became the thing you spent years trying to outrun. Nobody tells you how grief-filled that moment feels.

Because it feels like betrayal.

Like your younger self is staring at you saying:

Seriously?

After everything?

You too?

And the worst part?

Sometimes you understand your parents right after.

That part feels awful.

Because understanding feels dangerously close to forgiveness, and some wounds still feel too alive for that. But adulthood keeps handing you inconvenient truths.

Like this one: Your parents were people long before they became your parents.

Broken people sometimes. Immature people. Exhausted people. People carrying pain they had no language for. People raised by people who hurt them too. And suddenly memories rearrange themselves.

You realise maybe your father wasn’t emotionally distant because he didn’t care. Maybe nobody ever taught him how to be emotionally close. Maybe vulnerability looked dangerous to him. Maybe survival took up too much space.

Maybe your mother wasn’t controlling because she wanted power. Maybe anxiety lived inside her so deeply that control became the only way she knew how to feel safe.

And yet— Knowing this doesn’t magically erase what hurt. This is where people get healing wrong. Understanding pain does not cancel pain. You can love your parents and still deeply resent what they gave you. You can understand why someone hurt you and still hate that they did.

Both things get to exist.

Holding contradictions until your hands hurt.

Because maybe your father provided everything and emotional safety still somehow went missing. Maybe your mother loved you fiercely but criticism arrived louder than tenderness. Maybe nobody screamed in your house, but nobody talked either. And silence can bruise too.

People always talk about trauma like it has to look catastrophic. Sometimes trauma looks ordinary. A home where emotions were inconvenient. A house where love existed but softness didn’t. Parents who cared deeply but had no idea how to show it without fear, pressure, guilt, or control.

And maybe that’s what makes the fear of becoming them so unbearable. Because you know exactly how much damage small things can do.

You remember what it felt like.

You remember becoming hyperaware.

Hyper-independent.

Hyper-anxious.

People-pleasing.

Avoidant.

Too emotional.

Not emotional enough.

You remember building your entire personality around surviving someone else’s wounds.

So when you catch yourself repeating even a tiny pattern—

The same tone.

The same withdrawal.

The same defensiveness.

The same inability to apologise—

You panic. Because suddenly it feels inevitable. Like pain is genetic. Like maybe no matter how self-aware you are, the people who raised you will always win.

And that thought? That thought wrecks you.

Because what if all this healing still isn’t enough? What if underneath all your therapy language and self-awareness and trying-

You’re still becoming them?

I think this is where a lot of us quietly break. Not because we hate our parents. But because we hate how much of them survived inside us. The traits we begged life not to hand us. The reactions that feel automatic. The emotional reflexes. The coping mechanisms disguised as personality. Sometimes I think the saddest part of growing up is realising your parents accidentally live inside your nervous system. You are not just remembering them. You are reacting from them. And it takes years to even notice.

Years to realise:

Oh.

That fear isn’t mine.

That shutdown isn’t mine.

That anger arrived before language.

That defensiveness was learned.

And awareness feels horrible at first. Because once you notice, you can’t unnotice. You start catching yourself mid-sentence. Mid-reaction. Mid-damage. You hear your mother in your voice. Your father in your silence. And it breaks your heart.

But here is the thing I wish more people said:

Becoming like your parents in moments does not mean you are your parents.

Patterns are not identity.

Triggers are not destiny.

Pain repeated once is not the same as pain defended forever.

The difference between inheritance and identity is interruption.

You notice.

You pause.

You apologise.

You come back.

You say:

That wasn’t okay.

I don’t want to become this.

And maybe that sounds small. But do you know how radical that is? To stop mid-pattern? To grieve what shaped you without surrendering to it? Maybe healing is not becoming someone untouched by where they came from.Maybe healing is standing in front of everything that made you and saying:

You can visit.

But you don’t get to drive anymore.

Correction: I was illegally sold a gym membership.

Apparently, minors are not supposed to be sold memberships but commission culture is a beautiful thing and there I was bright eyed, deeply unaware of how my body functioned and somehow convinced I was entering my fitness girl era.

On day one, I fainted.

Not metaphorically. Not “haha I died.” I literally passed out.

Early morning session. Empty stomach. First time strength training. I think I had done three lifts and a prayer before my body said, absolutely not.

Next thing I remember: ORS, electrolytes, concerned faces and the quiet realisation that maybe health was not just about showing up in gym clothes.

At the time, I didn’t understand why people said fitness was a “journey.” I thought you just… went. You worked out. You became hot. The end.

Unfortunately, the human body has opinions.

Somewhere in my first year of gym, I accidentally got abs.

And before anyone says, “Oh my god, goals.”

No.

No, babe.

Not goals.

I didn’t get abs because I had discipline or strategy or a beautifully color-coded meal plan. I got abs because I was under eating and overtraining. People would compliment me and ask me what I was doing. Meanwhile, I was just confused and hungry.

I have struggled with eating since childhood. Appetite? Inconsistent. Relationship with food? Complicated. Understanding that food was fuel? Absolutely nonexistent.

When gym entered the picture, I genuinely thought movement alone would fix everything. Nobody tells you this when you first start working out but if you’re burning energy and not feeding yourself properly, eventually your body sends an email. Common sense I know.

And unlike corporate HR emails, this one arrives aggressively.

Fatigue. Mood swings. Burnout. Hormonal chaos. The works.

Still, I loved being active.

Gym. Yoga. Dance. Badminton. Swimming. MMA. Kickboxing. Boxing. Zumba. Aerial dance.

At one point, I genuinely treated hobbies like trial subscriptions.

“Will this heal me?”

No.

“Will this?”

Maybe.

“Will punching things?”

Emotionally, yes. Physically? Debatable.

Yoga had actually been my first love. As a kid, I used to sit with this giant yoga book at home and copy poses like my life depended on it. But once I got into gym culture and combat sports, I developed this weird belief that yoga was somehow “too slow.”

As if calmness was inferior to suffering.

Which feels very teenage of me in hindsight.

Turns out, slow movement still counts. Gentle movement still counts. Just because something doesn’t leave you gasping for oxygen doesn’t mean it isn’t helping your body.

Then came PCOD.

Which, if life were a movie, was the plot twist nobody asked for.

For context: I go four months without getting my periods.

And I know some people hear that and think:

“Wow. Lucky.”

No.

Please.

Your hormones are throwing a riot inside your body.

That’s not peace.

That’s administrative collapse.

Around this time, I was still trying to figure out food and fitness and consistency. I was religiously drinking banana shakes trying to gain weight and pretending I had things under control.

Then suddenly — January, February — my weight shot up.

Rapidly.

Rapid enough to get stretch marks. Rapid enough for people to notice. Rapid enough for me to feel like I was looking at a body I no longer recognized.

I gained almost 10 kilos.

And no, before anyone blames the bananas, it was not because of my dramatic commitment to two bananas in a shake every morning.

It was hormones.

Insulin resistance.

PCOD.

Stress.

And probably the fact that my body had been through more confusion than a situationship.

To add to this already beautiful cocktail of hormonal chaos, this was also around the time I had a horrible breakup with the love of my life.

(Yes, we’re together now. No, he still won’t hear the end of it.)

But at the time I genuinely thought my life was over.

And for someone who historically struggled to eat, I suddenly found comfort in food.

Sugar.

Sweets.

Emotional eating.

Which, for the record, is a very human thing to do.

Except my body, already struggling hormonally, decided to participate in the chaos.

I had seen myself skinny my entire life. So suddenly gaining weight was genuinely shocking. And because it was visible, people talked about it. People commented.

I had never been more body conscious.

I stopped fitting into clothes.

Refused to size up while shopping because I kept thinking, No, I’ll lose it soon.

Threw clothes away.

Critiqued myself constantly.

Downloaded calorie tracking apps.

Deleted calorie tracking apps.

Repeated the cycle every three business days.

And this is where I wish someone had sat me down and told me:

You cannot hate yourself into feeling healthy.

Around this time, I was also on antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication and other mental health treatments. And while I’m genuinely grateful for what helped me survive mentally, medications can affect appetite, hormones, fatigue and weight too.

Bodies are complicated.

Everything affects everything.

And if you’re on medication right now, I really want to say this: respect where your body currently is. Work with it. Not against it.

You do not need to train like somebody whose body is fighting completely different battles.

Then came the surprisingly boring advice that changed everything.

My gynecologist who deserves flowers forever — did not immediately put me on medication, even though my PCOD was genuinely bad.

Instead, she said:

Walk.

Or jog for 10 minutes.

Cut sugar.

Add cucumbers and carrots to lunch and dinner.

Have curd or chaas.

Keep it sustainable.

That was it.

No impossible meal plans.

No personality transplant.

No “change your entire life overnight.”

And weirdly?

That tiny shift changed so much.

My cycle improved.

My energy improved.

My body started feeling a little more like home.

And this is something I wish more people talked about: health is rarely changed by one dramatic thing. It changes through embarrassingly boring consistency.

Which is deeply annoying information because personally, I wanted transformation to arrive in one cinematic montage.

I also slowly began understanding something else that nobody teaches women enough:

We are not tiny men.

Yes, women can strength train. Yes, women can build muscle. Absolutely.

But our bodies function differently.

Hormones matter.

Cycles matter.

Energy levels shift.

There are phases where your body feels stronger and phases where it feels like it’s buffering.

I wish someone had told me earlier to actually understand what was happening in my body instead of constantly trying to discipline it into behaving.

Fast forward to now.

I have not consistently been in a class or gym routine for over a year. And honestly? It has been hard.

I tried Pilates.

Tried getting back into structured workouts.

Tried mat workouts at home.

The other day, I put on one of those workout videos on my iPad.

You know the ones.

A suspiciously fit woman smiling at you saying:

“Only 20 minutes!”

As if 20 minutes isn’t a personality crisis.

Six minutes in, I was done.

My body felt rigid.

Heavy.

Stiff.

Fatigued.

And I suddenly had this moment where I thought:

Wait.

Why am I forcing this?

So I shut the iPad.

Threw the mat aside.

Put on Rihanna.

Then Tate McRae.

And just started dancing.

Badly.

Freely.

Dramatically.

Like nobody was watching.

And suddenly, I felt amazing.

Actually amazing.

I was jumping around, moving, swaying, dancing — and then halfway through I remembered:

Girl.

You’ve been to the gym for three years.

You know exercises.

So I started adding squats.

Lunges.

Skipping.

Stretches.

Whatever felt good to my body.

No timer.

No punishment.

No obsession.

And somehow, I worked out for an hour without even realizing it.

That genuinely changed something for me because I realized:

The best workout is the one you’ll actually come back to.

Not the trendiest one.

Not the hardest one.

Not the one someone online swears changed their life.

The one you can sustain.

For me, movement feels best when it is flowy. Flexible. A little free.

I cannot, for the life of me stand in one place doing a rigid routine every day. I’ve tried. I wanted to be that person. I love routines in literally every other area of my life. I function on planners and organization and systems.

But when it comes to movement?

My body likes rhythm.

It likes music.

It likes dancing around my room pretending I’m in a music video.

And maybe that counts too.

Actually, no.

It definitely counts.

The same thing happened with food.

I tried calorie tracking.

Macro tracking.

Meal tracking.

Workout tracking.

And no shame to anyone who does it because if it works for you, genuinely amazing.

But for me?

It overwhelmed me.

I would spend more time obsessing over logging the food than actually enjoying eating it.

By day three, I’d be deleting the app.

So I stopped trying to make health complicated.

Right now, my breakfast is repetitive and easy because I know myself.

If I don’t eat in the morning, I’ll stretch it till noon, become a hungry monster and suddenly convince myself that ordering something random is self-care.

So breakfast matters.

Usually fruit and a protein shake with cocoa powder, flax seeds, sunflower seeds, chia seeds, maybe another fruit if I feel like it. Sometimes oats.

Simple.

Easy.

Filling.

Lunch is whatever is made at home plus added protein — paneer, usually.

I’m not reinventing my kitchen.

I’m not making “high-protein recipes” every day.

I’m just adding to what already exists.

Dinner is lighter because that feels better for my body.

Something easy.

Something simple.

Nothing dramatic.

And currently, my habit tracker has exactly two things on it:

Protein meals twice a day.

Movement for one hour.

That’s it.

Not ten habits.

Not a 5 a.m. routine.

Not becoming a wellness influencer against my will.

Because I know if I overwhelm myself, I’ll quit.

And honestly?

I’ve stopped stressing about doing it perfectly.

I know that tomorrow morning, I’ll probably put on some music, move my body for ten minutes, maybe more, eat something protein-rich and continue.

I genuinely believe the way you start your day sets the rhythm for everything else.

Sleep matters more than we admit.

Protein-rich breakfasts genuinely change your day.

Moving your body first thing in the morning, even if it’s stretching, dancing badly, or jumping around to Rihanna — changes something in your brain.

If your stomach feels nourished, your mind works better.

If you’ve slept well, everything feels a little less impossible.

And maybe the biggest thing I’ve learned through all of this is:

Health is not about becoming somebody else.

It’s about learning how to work with yourself.

With your hormones.

With your lifestyle.

With your current capacity.

With the body you have right now.

Even when it changes.

Even when it confuses you.

Even when it feels like it has completely betrayed you.

I still love a routine, a plan and the fantasy of becoming one of those impossibly disciplined wellness girls. But for now, I’m settling for a fed stomach, decent sleep, and a body that feels a little more like mine again.

Lighting a candle? Self care.

Ignoring responsibilities? Self care.

Buying things online because life has been “a lot”? Self care.

Cancelling plans you made yourself? Deeply necessary self care.

By this logic, I personally have been engaging in elite levels of healing.

To be clear, I support comfort. I love comfort. I think small pleasures are one of the few things holding modern society together. But lately I’ve started wondering if we’ve confused things that temporarily soothe us with things that actually restore us.

Because if self-care was genuinely working the way we practice it, why are we all still one mildly inconvenient email away from emotional collapse?

So in the interest of public service I would like to discuss a few things we lovingly label self-care that may in fact just be avoidance wearing expensive pyjamas.

1. Doom Scrolling “To Relax”

You know when you’ve had a long day and think:

I deserve to switch my brain off.

And suddenly it’s 11:47 p.m., you’ve absorbed fourteen strangers’ skincare routines, one breakup, a woman your age who somehow owns a house and a man explaining productivity habits that begin at 4:52 a.m.

You now know too much and feel worse.

Doom scrolling is fascinating because it tricks us into believing we’re resting. But resting generally should not leave you overstimulated, insecure, mildly anxious and somehow considering changing your entire personality.

That is not rest.

That is emotional crossfit.

2. Retail Therapy (personally guilty too)

Listen, I am not against buying things. Sometimes a little treat genuinely improves morale. Human beings deserve tiny joys.

But there is a difference between:

“I need new jeans.”

And:

“I feel emotionally destabilized so perhaps this scented candle will reconstruct my inner world.”

Online shopping has become dangerously therapeutic because it gives us three things struggling humans love: anticipation, control and a temporary personality.

For five business days your problems pause because you are now someone waiting for a parcel.

The issue is not the buying. The issue is when your emotional support package arrives and you still feel exactly the same, except now you also own another beige tote bag.

3. Cancelling Plans in the Name of “Protecting Our Peace”

Now before people get defensive: sometimes cancelling plans is absolutely the right decision. Exhaustion is real. Social batteries are real. Burnout is real.

But sometimes — and this is painful to admit — we are not tired.

We are resistant.

There is a difference.

Sometimes we cancel plans because we genuinely need rest.

And sometimes we cancel plans because we have become too emotionally attached to lying horizontally and avoiding effort.

Worse, occasionally the plan was the exact thing we needed.

Connection.

Laughter.

Fresh air.

A reminder that our thoughts are not the only people available for conversation. Few things are humbling like forcing yourself to leave the house only to realise: Annoyingly, this helped.

4. Calling Avoidance “Boundaries”

Modern therapy language has done wonderful things for us.

Unfortunately, it has also occasionally enabled nonsense.

Not every uncomfortable thing is toxic.

Not every disagreement requires “protecting your energy.”

Not every responsibility is emotional labour.

Sometimes you are not setting a boundary. Sometimes you are avoiding a difficult conversation and giving Future You an aggressively inconvenient problem.

Future You by the way is exhausted. Please stop outsourcing things to them.

5. Treating Ourselves Like We Are One Bad Day Away From Collapse

Somewhere along the way, many of us developed the belief that discomfort itself is dangerous.

Bad day? Order food.

Stress? Spend money.

Anxiety? Avoid.

Bored? Distract.

Sad? Scroll.

And again I get it. Life is genuinely hard. Comfort matters.

But sometimes the thing we call self-care is actually just refusing to feel mildly uncomfortable for twenty consecutive minutes and unfortunately some of the things that genuinely help us are offensively boring.

Sleep.

Water.

Movement.

Sunlight.

Protein.

Replying to the email.

Doing the task.

Tidying the corner of your room that has quietly become a visual representation of your mental state.

I know. Horrible news.

Actual self-care is deeply unglamorous. It often looks less like healing and more like admin.

Which brings me to an upsetting conclusion:

Maybe the real question isn’t:

“What feels good right now?”

Maybe it’s:

“What will Future Me quietly thank me for?”

Because yes self-care can absolutely be face masks, comfort shows and overpriced coffee. Sometimes healing is soft.

But sometimes self-care is going to bed on time, eating lunch before becoming emotionally unreasonable and finally booking the appointment you’ve been mentally rescheduling since February.

Not taxes. Not networking. Not another productivity system that somehow expects us to wake up at 5 a.m. and journal with perfect skin and a green juice in hand. I mean a real class on how to tell whether the feeling in your chest is intuition, anxiety, or simply the fact that your brain is bored and has decided something dramatic must happen.

Because tell me why so many of us have at some point mistaken overthinking for a gut feeling, convinced ourselves our entire life needs changing after one weird evening or almost texted something we absolutely should not have because suddenly something felt off. I say this as someone who has done all of the above.

For a long time, I thought every strong feeling meant something important was happening. If something felt intense enough it had to be true. If I couldn’t stop thinking about it surely it meant I should act on it. Turns out, intensity and truth are not always the same thing. Sometimes your body knows something before your brain catches up. Sometimes your nervous system is just exhausted. And sometimes, honestly, you just need to leave the house.

Let’s start with intuition, because this one annoyed me the most.

I thought intuition would feel cinematic. Like suddenly everything would become clear and some wise inner voice would appear and calmly tell me exactly what to do. Something very dramatic and spiritually evolved. Instead, intuition at least in my experience has been weirdly quiet.

It does not scream. It does not spiral. It doesn’t try very hard to convince you. It just sits there. Calmly. Repeatedly. Almost annoyingly steady.

There have been moments in my life where something felt slightly off and I couldn’t explain why. No proof. No obvious reason. Just a quiet discomfort that stayed with me. And months later, I realised I had been right. Not because I’m psychic or deeply enlightened but because somewhere along the way, my body had noticed something my brain wasn’t ready to admit yet.

That’s what intuition feels like to me: clarity without chaos. Even when the answer is uncomfortable, there’s something strangely grounded about it. One question I ask myself now is: if I removed the urgency, would I still feel this way? Because intuition can wait. It doesn’t usually demand immediate action.

Anxiety, however, behaves like your life is a group project that nobody else is helping with.

Anxiety is loud. Anxiety loves urgency. Anxiety wakes up and immediately starts throwing theories at the wall. Suddenly one delayed text becomes evidence of abandonment. One awkward interaction becomes social failure. One weird feeling turns into a full investigation about whether you should move cities, end relationships, change careers and start over.

The difficult part is that anxiety feels incredibly convincing. Especially if you’re someone who spends a lot of time thinking deeply about yourself. At some point, self-awareness quietly becomes self-surveillance and before you know it, you’re treating every passing thought like evidence.

I think anxiety hates uncertainty so much that it would rather give us a terrible explanation than let us sit in not knowing. And because it feels so intense, we mistake that intensity for truth. But I’ve had to learn that loud does not mean wise. A feeling being overwhelming doesn’t automatically make it important.

Sometimes you are hungry. Sometimes you are tired. Sometimes your nervous system needs rest, not reinvention. Sometimes you genuinely need to stop investigating your own life like an FBI agent.

And then there’s boredom, which I personally think is the sneakiest one of all.

Because boredom disguises itself as revelation.

Boredom has genuinely convinced me that my life has lost meaning, that I need to reinvent myself immediately, that something big is missing, or that I desperately need a dramatic haircut. When actually, I just hadn’t done anything remotely interesting in weeks.

I think we underestimate how much human beings need novelty. A different café. A random class. A conversation that wakes something up in you. A reason to feel curious again. Sometimes we mistake a craving for aliveness as proof that everything around us is broken.

Not every restless feeling means your relationship is wrong. Not every weird week means you’re lost. Not every uncomfortable emotion is a sign from the universe. Sometimes your brain is simply saying: please, can we do something interesting?

The question I come back to now whenever I feel emotionally confused is this: if I slept properly, ate well, stopped obsessing, went outside, and gave this a few days… would this feeling still remain?

If yes, maybe there’s something worth listening to.

If it fades, it was probably anxiety.

If suddenly I just want to romanticise my life a little and try something new, it was probably boredom.

Anyway, before you make a life-changing decision, cut bangs, move cities, suddenly become “the kind of person who only wears linen,” or convince yourself the universe is communicating through one suspiciously timed Spotify lyric… maybe do something deeply unsexy first.

Drink water.

Eat actual food.

Go outside.

Talk to a human being.

Sleep.

And I think I realised June has always lived in that house for me.

Or maybe summer did.

Either way, I don’t think I noticed how deeply I still associated this time of year with my Nanu and Nani until now. Until June started approaching again and for the first time in a while, nostalgia arrived before excitement did.

The strange thing about grief is that it rarely enters through the front door. It comes through side windows. Through smells. Through habits. Through tiny memories that don’t even seem important until suddenly they are.

For me, it comes through rose milk.

Every night at my Nani’s house, we’d all sit together and have rose milk. The kids would help make it, somebody would move the tables and chairs aside and somehow the middle of the hall would become this giant little nook made of bedsheets, pillows and blankets. Everybody sat together. I honestly don’t remember what we spoke about, which feels unfair somehow but I remember the feeling of it all so clearly. Safe. Warm. Familiar.

I remember waking up ridiculously early during summer vacations with my cousin sister—my favourite person because she was exactly my age and equally committed to chaos. We’d cycle downstairs, walk around, attempt random headstands with far too much confidence and come back just in time for breakfast with Nanu and Nani. I’m convinced we were favourite grandchildren purely because we woke up early. Very grandparent logic.

The days felt endless back then. We made blanket forts, chair tents, played teacher-teacher on wooden cupboards using chalk like they were classroom boards, bought drawing books every summer as if creativity itself had a deadline and somehow spent entire days doing absolutely everything except sitting in front of screens.

And then there was the kulfiwala.

You could hear the bell before you saw him and suddenly everyone in the house became strangely athletic. We’d run downstairs carrying a tray and come back with what felt like an unreasonable amount of kulfis for the entire family. Thirty, maybe thirty-five. To this day, I still think that was the best kulfi I’ve ever had.

I don’t know where that man is now.

Realising that there are entire worlds you can never revisit exactly the same way again is mildly scary.

But I don’t want this to become entirely about nostalgia because strangely enough, June doesn’t only make me miss things. It also makes me hopeful.

Softly hopeful.

Not January hopeful—the kind that makes you create impossible routines and suddenly believe you’re going to become a different person overnight.

June hope feels quieter. Kinder.

It feels like wanting to become better without punishing yourself for not already being there.

Maybe this is just me but June always feels like the month of gentle reinvention. Not dramatic change. Just small things. Wanting to sleep better. Journal again. Read more. Declutter the corners of my room that somehow start feeling emotionally heavy after a point. Start swimming again. Romanticise routines a little. Feel stronger. Feel healthier. Feel more like myself.

And maybe it’s because rain is coming.

I have a very strong belief that the first rain washes away bad energy.

Not scientifically.

Emotionally.

There’s something about wet roads, cloudy skies, the smell after rain and thunder in the distance that makes life feel slightly softer around the edges. Even the inconvenience of it; the umbrellas that somehow still fail to protect you, the frizzy hair, the fact that Mumbai rains often feel less like weather and more like an obstacle course. It all still feels comforting somehow.

Monsoon to me has never felt social. Summer maybe. But rain? Rain belongs to people you already love.

It feels like bookstores on gloomy afternoons and cafés with glass roofs where you can hear the rain without getting drenched. It feels like chai and samosas, hot Maggi when the city is mildly drowning, corn chaat cravings, mangoes in unreasonable quantities, cold smoothies, popsicles and somehow convincing yourself that overnight oats are exciting.

It feels like staying in.

Or sometimes, staying in with someone.

I’m so excited rainy drives with my boyfriend where absolutely nothing important happens except the weather. Dancing in the rain on his terrace. Going for random drives just because the city looks prettier when it rains. Getting wet anyway because umbrellas are mostly decorative. Or staying home cuddling and forcing him to watch Pakistani dramas he strongly claims he doesn’t enjoy but will definitely become emotionally invested in by episode four.

I don’t know if anyone else feels this way but June always feels like a month caught between things. Between who you were and who you’re becoming. Between nostalgia and excitement. Between wanting to hold on and wanting to begin again.

Maybe that’s why I love it.

Because somehow even with the grief even with the ache of missing people and places and versions of yourself that no longer exist, June still feels hopeful.

Like rain entering through an open window.

Like healing slowly.

Like trying again, but gently.

And maybe June, according to my heart, is simply this: missing what once felt like home, while quietly building new versions of it at the same time.

Maybe in bookstores.

Maybe in rainy cafés.

Maybe over chai and coffee.

Maybe in the middle of a terrace, drenched in rain, laughing with someone you love while Saavan Aaya Hai plays somewhere in the background.

People casually ask me if I have OCD in the same tone people ask if you want extra chutney. “By the way, do you maybe have mild OCD?” And honestly the answer is: maybe. Or maybe I just like control because life has repeatedly shown me that it enjoys improv. Either way, cleanliness is not a preference for me. It is a personality trait. A coping mechanism. Possibly a sport.

Then came my boyfriend. And with him came his room.

God bless that room. Actually, no. God has clearly abandoned that room.

His room is what would happen if laundry collectively gave up on life. You cannot see the floor. I am not exaggerating. The floor is theoretical. A concept. An urban legend. There are clothes everywhere — clean clothes, dirty clothes, clothes that are somewhere in between because “I only wore it once.” Hoodies that have somehow evolved into furniture. His study table. Oh I refuse to believe that was ever its purpose. It exists solely to hold emotional support clutter: random receipts, three chargers, mysterious objects with unknown purposes, water bottles with one tragic sip left in them, novels that have not been touched since who knows when.

The blanket is never folded. The pillows look like they are fighting for survival. The towel is always somewhere it absolutely should not be. The curtain seems stuck permanently mid-argument. And me — the girl who cannot function in mess, who physically twitches at clutter, who rearranges spaces for fun; should in theory, hate every second of being there.

But I do not.

In fact, I have never felt more at home than I do in that room.

And that bothers me a little because it makes absolutely no sense.

Everything about me says this should be my personal hell. My personality should be spiraling. The part of me that color-codes things for emotional satisfaction should be deeply distressed. But somehow in that room, something in me softens. My shoulders drop. My brain quiets down. The constant hum in my head the one always trying to fix, organise, improve, prepare just… pauses.

And I think that is when I realized something uncomfortable and beautiful all at once: maybe comfort has absolutely nothing to do with perfection.

Maybe safety does not always arrive looking polished. Maybe home is the person who makes the mess feel quieter. Maybe love looks less like perfection and more like relief.

Because his room is messy. Catastrophically messy. Borderline concerning. I still side-eye the clothes mountain like it personally offended my bloodline. I still occasionally clean because some things are simply beyond romance. The towel situation alone deserves intervention. But despite all of that, that room, his room somehow feels safe to me in a way pristine places never have.

And maybe love is weird like that.

Maybe love is finding one giant exception to every rule you swore by. Maybe it is realizing that the thing you thought mattered most suddenly matters a little less when you feel seen, held, calm. Maybe it is understanding that comfort does not always come wrapped in perfection. Sometimes, it comes wrapped in unfolded blankets, misplaced hoodies, and a room where the floor no longer exists.

And somehow, against all logic and frankly every storage solution known to mankind, you call it home.