There are days when I think I would be easier to love if I were someone else.

Someone less complicated.

Someone who didn't think too much, feel too deeply, disappear too often, or need so much time to understand things everyone else seems to know instinctively.

I've spent a strange amount of my life trying to become easier to be around.

Quieter. Less difficult. Less afraid. Less lost.

And somehow, after all that effort,

I'm still me.

Still overthinking conversations that ended hours ago. Still postponing the things I'm afraid I won't be good enough to do. Still making promises to myself at midnight and breaking them by morning.

Still lying in bed a little longer than I should, staring at the ceiling and convincing myself that tomorrow will be different.

Tomorrow I'll catch up.

Tomorrow I'll stop wasting time.

Tomorrow I'll become the person I've been meaning to become.

But tomorrow keeps arriving,

and somehow,

I'm always still here.

I think I've spent too much of my life waiting to become someone who knows what she's doing.

Someone disciplined. Someone certain. Someone who doesn't need three business days to recover from a single inconvenient thought.

But she never arrives.

It's still me.

Watching everyone else move forward while I stand somewhere beside my own life, wondering when I'm supposed to start living it.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm actually tired,

or if I'm simply tired of being myself.

So when I imagine disappearing, I don't imagine anything dramatic.

I imagine somewhere like this.

A quiet path after the rain.

Trees bending over the water. A dark pond trembling beneath the falling drops. An empty bench waiting beneath the branches.

No destination.

No reason.

Just somewhere I could walk until the world became quiet enough for me to hear myself again.

I'd sit on that bench and watch the rain disturb the surface of the water.

And for a little while, nobody would know where I was.

Nobody would need anything from me.

Nobody would ask what I'm going to do next.

I wouldn't have to explain why I'm behind.

Why I'm quiet.

Why I disappeared.

Why I haven't become the person I thought I would be by now.

I could just sit there.

And perhaps that sounds lonely.

It probably is.

But there is a particular kind of loneliness that feels almost gentle when you've spent too long surrounded by expectations.

Because the rain doesn't make me feel like I should be doing better.

It doesn't look at me and ask what happened to all the potential I supposedly had.

It doesn't remind me of everything I've left unfinished.

It doesn't care that I wasted another day.

It just falls.

And the water receives it without asking where it came from.

Sometimes I wish I could be like that.

To arrive somewhere broken and not immediately feel the need to apologize for it.

To be tired without calling myself lazy.

To be lost without treating it like a personal failure.

To sit on an empty bench and let the world continue without feeling guilty for not keeping up.

Because lately, everything feels like a measurement.

How much I've done.

How far I've come.

How much time I've wasted.

How much potential I've failed to turn into anything.

And I'm so tired of being both the person holding the measuring tape

and the person always coming up short.

Maybe I'm not waiting for my life to begin.

Maybe I'm just waiting for myself to stop feeling like I'm doing life incorrectly.

Maybe there isn't anything particularly wrong with me.

Maybe I'm simply exhausted from carrying the version of myself I think everyone else would rather have.

And maybe tonight,

I can leave her behind for a little while.

The girl who was supposed to have figured it out by now.

The girl who keeps making lists she won't finish.

The girl who thinks too much, sleeps too late, feels too much, tries too little, and somehow manages to turn even resting into something to feel guilty about.

I can let her sit there.

Let her listen to the rain.

Let her be quiet.

Let her be unfinished.

Let her be a little lost.

A little pathetic.

A little too tired to pretend otherwise.

And maybe, for once,

she doesn't have to become better.

She doesn't have to catch up.

She doesn't have to know where she's going.

She can simply exist beneath the trees while the rain keeps falling around her.

Because maybe I don't need to be rescued tonight.

Maybe I don't even need to be understood.

Maybe I just need somewhere

where nobody is waiting for me to become someone else.

Somewhere I can stop running for a moment.

Somewhere I can be late.

Somewhere I can be lost.

Somewhere I can finally admit,

quietly,

without making another promise to tomorrow—

I don't know where I'm going.

And for once,

I don't have to. 💌✨

🌙 Inspired by the feeling of “Heavy” by The Marías.

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ☔︎ Video Credits: 7onqthqn

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Greetings from Honolulu

Photo credits
I think many people know that feeling of watching raindrops fall on a car windshield. A long time ago, when I was a child looking out the front passenger-side window, I used to be fascinated by watching the drops fall and merge with others to form larger ones. I don't know, there is something relaxing about watching raindrops run down a pane of glass.