Afterthought
Why is it that I keep pouring cups of water into other people’s gardens, only to find my own soil cracking beneath a merciless sun?
It’s a question that follows me everywhere. It hides in the steam above my morning breakfast, my morning tea. It lingers in the silence after conversations end. It sits beside me in crowded rooms and whispers into my ear with a voice that sounds suspiciously like my own.
Perhaps it is my fault.
No, not perhaps.
Surely.
The evidence seems to stack itself neatly against me like books on a shelf. Whenever someone speaks, I listen as though their words are fragile Chinese glass ornaments. I memorize details they themselves have forgotten. Their favorite color. Their favorite songs. Their fears. The stories they tell only once. The birthdays they mention in passing. The little wounds hidden beneath their laughter. I carry these things carefully, as though I have been entrusted with treasures.
Yet when I speak, my words feel like letters addressed to an empty house.
Maybe I make myself too easy to overlook.
A lighthouse is useful, after all, but nobody falls in love with the light. They only need it long enough to avoid crashing into the rocks. Then they sail away toward brighter destinations, leaving the lighthouse alone with its endless duty and its endless sea.
Perhaps I’ve spent so much time learning how to care for others that I’ve accidentally taught them not to care for me.
The thought scratches at the inside of my skull.
I imagine myself as a street performer standing in the rain, juggling pieces of my heart for an audience. I keep throwing them higher, hoping someone will finally notice the effort. Hoping someone will say, You must be tired. Let me hold one of those for you.
Instead, they clap.
Then they leave.
And somehow I convince myself that I should have juggled better. I should have smiled more. Spoken better. Been funnier. Been calmer. Been smarter. Been less needy. Been less quiet. Been less loud.
I stand before the mirror like a lawyer presenting evidence against a guilty person. Every flaw becomes a witness. Every mistake becomes a confession. Every awkward sentence becomes another nail in the coffin of my worth.
Maybe people would stay if I were easier to love.
The thought blooms like poison ivy.
Because what other explanation could there be?
If someone forgets to ask how I am, I tell myself I mustn’t have been memorable enough.
If someone leaves me on read, I convince myself I must have said something wrong.
If someone chooses another person over me, I become both the judge and the executioner of my own character.
The verdict is always the same.
Guilty.
Guilty of not being enough. Guilty of wanting too much. Guilty of expecting reciprocity in a world that never promised it.
And yet the cruelest part is that I never stop trying.
I continue handing out pieces of myself like flyers nobody reads. I continue remembering names, dates, preferences, dreams. I continue showing up. I continue asking, Are you okay?
I continue worrying. I continue caring.
Like a fool.
Like a moth repeatedly introducing itself to the same flame.
There are nights when I replay entire years in my head. Conversations become crime scenes. Memories become autopsies. I dissect every moment with trembling hands, searching for the exact second I ruined everything.
Maybe it was that joke. Maybe it was that message. Maybe it was the way I hesitated. Maybe it was the way I cared too much. Or maybe it was the way I cared at all.
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The irony is almost laughable.
People often tell me that I am kind. The word lands in my lap like a medal awarded after a war I never even wanted to fight.
Kind.
What a beautiful word.
What a terrible burden.
Because kindness, at least the version I practice, feels less like generosity and more like erosion.
A cliff doesn’t notice it’s disappearing while the ocean takes it grain by grain.
One day it simply realizes there is less of itself left.
That is how I feel sometimes. Like a coastline shrinking beneath relentless waves. Like a candle applauded for its light while nobody notices the wax disappearing.
And maybe. Maybe that’s why this question haunts me.
“Why do I keep giving people so much attention?”
“Why do I study their constellations while remaining a stranger to my own sky?”
“Why do I remember every chapter of their stories while mine gathers dust on an unread shelf?”
Most importantly —
“Why does it hurt so much when the care I give returns to me as silence?”
The silence is the worst part. Not cruelty. Not rejection.
Silence.
Because silence is a room with no walls. It stretches forever. It gives my insecurities endless space to run wild. Inside that silence, every unanswered message becomes proof. Every forgotten detail becomes proof. Every absence becomes proof.
Proof that I’m forgettable. Proof that I am optional. Proof that I’v somehow failed at being human.
And so I keep circling back to the same conclusion.
It must be me.
The common denominator in every equation. The cracked foundation beneath every collapsing house. The thread that unravels every sweater. The rain cloud following every picnic.
It must be me. Who else could it be?
Yet even as I accuse myself, another voice stirs somewhere beneath the wreckage. Small. Weak. Almost inaudible.
A voice buried beneath mountains of self-inflicted blame.
It asks a dangerous question.
“What if I have mistaken my value for my usefulness?”
“What if I have spent so long being everyone’s audience that I forgot I deserved an audience too?”
The thought frightens me.
Because if it’s true, then all these years I’ve been standing outside my own house, knocking on doors that were never mine.
Still, the old habit remains.
Tomorrow I will probably listen again. Remember again. Care again. Give again.
And when night falls, I will likely sit beside the same question that has become my shadow. The question will look at me with tired eyes. I will look back. And somewhere between heartbreak and habit, between bitterness and hope, I will whisper into the darkness:
“Why do I keep giving people so much attention… when I can barely convince anyone — including myself — that I deserve some too?”
