I used to think growing older meant knowing more about myself. That with every passing year, the world would become a little more legible, my desires a little more distinguishable, my convictions a little less susceptible to the weather of other people’s opinions. I imagined adulthood as a gradual arrival: a place where, after enough wandering, I would finally recognize the shape of my own ground.

But lately, I have wondered whether growing older is, in fact, the art of becoming a stranger to yourself.

The more people you meet, the more lives you glimpse, the more possibilities you encounter, the harder it becomes to tell which desires were yours to begin with. You borrow someone’s taste in music, another person’s appetite for adventure, someone’s way of dressing, someone’s convictions about love, someone’s idea of a good life. You discover a new city through another person’s eyes and suddenly wonder whether you had ever really wanted to stay where you were. You fall in love with the things other people love, until one afternoon you find yourself standing before a simple question, what do I actually like?, and discover that the answer is not as readily available as it once was.

It is a peculiar consequence of being alive among other people: we become acquainted with so many versions of existence that our own begins to feel like a foreign country.

Perhaps this is why I have become increasingly fascinated by roots.

A tree does not grow indefinitely in every direction. At some point, it must decide where to settle, where to draw its nourishment, which soil is worth penetrating, and which ground will never be hospitable, no matter how desperately its branches reach. To take root is not simply to grow older; it is to establish a relationship with the ground beneath you. And perhaps that is the difficult part of becoming an adult: not discovering everything you could be, but learning which possibilities you are willing to cultivate, and which ones you must allow to pass.

There is a particular exhaustion in wanting to become everything. To be adventurous and domestic, ambitious and unhurried, sociable and solitary, spontaneous yet certain. To belong everywhere, to be understood by everyone, to experience every version of life before time decides otherwise. We become collectors of possibilities, gathering pieces of other people’s lives as though one day we might assemble them into a complete self.

But a life cannot be lived entirely in the conditional.

You cannot spend every season wondering whether another garden might have borne sweeter fruit. Eventually, you must tend to the one beneath your feet.

And perhaps finding yourself is less about returning to the person you once were than learning to distinguish between what has genuinely changed you and what you have merely accommodated. Not every preference needs to be permanent. Not every conviction needs to survive every encounter. You are allowed to outgrow the music you once adored, the people you once admired, the ambitions you once mistook for destiny. You are allowed to become someone your younger self would not immediately recognize.

But do not become so fluent in other people’s languages that you forget your own.

I think we sometimes mistake adaptability for selflessness. We become so good at fitting into different rooms that we forget to ask whether we feel at home in any of them. We learn how to enjoy what makes another person happy, how to accommodate their rhythms, how to understand their silences, until our own preferences become an afterthought. We become wonderfully familiar with everyone else’s geography, yet strangely unable to give directions home.

So perhaps, as another year finds me, I want to make a different kind of promise to myself.

I want to keep meeting people, but not at the expense of meeting myself. I want to visit places without feeling compelled to become someone entirely different in each of them. I want to try unfamiliar things without turning every new experience into a referendum on who I ought to be. I want to know the difference between something that expands me and something that slowly erases me.

And perhaps the most useful question is not always who am I? but rather, what makes me feel most like myself?

Notice what you return to when nobody is watching. Notice which conversations leave you feeling more alive, which silences feel like rest rather than punishment, which pursuits make you forget to measure yourself against somebody else’s progress. Notice the things you enjoy without needing an audience, the places where your shoulders loosen, the company in which you do not have to rehearse your existence.

There, perhaps, are the beginnings of your roots.

Do not be afraid of changing your mind, but be careful not to abandon it merely because someone else’s sounds more convincing. Do not be afraid of becoming different, but remember that being loved should not require becoming unrecognizable. And when the world introduces you to another beautiful way of living, let yourself be fascinated without immediately deciding that your own life must be lacking.

There will always be another garden. Another city. Another person with a more interesting story, another life that seems to have blossomed sooner or more beautifully than yours. Let them exist. Let them flourish. You need not uproot yourself every time you encounter a different kind of flower.

I suppose this is what I want to learn in the years ahead: how to remain open without becoming unanchored, how to grow without scattering, how to belong to the world without becoming a stranger to myself.

For all the people I have met and all the lives I have briefly inhabited, I hope I never lose the ability to return to my own. I hope there will always be something unmistakably mine beneath all that I have gathered along the way.

After all, perhaps growing older is not about finally becoming a finished person. Perhaps it is about becoming a more deliberate one.

And if I must spend this life taking root, let me do so consciously. Let me choose my ground, tend to what is mine, and leave enough room for the unexpected seasons. Let me grow toward the light without envying every other tree that happens to stand beneath it.

I have spent enough of my life discovering how many people I could become. Perhaps it is time I learned how to belong to the person I already am.

The geography of becoming was originally published in Journal Kita on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There was a time when if I die now meant something else.
It meant I have had enough.
It was a thought I used to hold like an exit sign. A way of imagining that I could finally put everything down — the exhaustion, the disappointment, the endless effort of trying to become someone I could bear to be.

But now, when I think if I die now, something strange happens.

I panic.

Not because I am afraid of dying.
Because I suddenly remember how much I have not done.
There are places I have not seen, languages I have not learned, mornings I have not woken into, and certain songs I have not yet heard at the right hour. There are people whose names have not yet become stories, and stories that have not yet found the courage to become mine.

I have not exhausted the world’s restaurants, nor its coastlines, nor the strange little bars where strangers become friends by midnight.
I have not even figured out what I am supposed to do with my thirties.

Which seems rather rude of death to interrupt.
And maybe that is what changed.

I used to think an unfinished life was a reason to leave it. Now it feels like a reason to stay.

There is too much I want.
Too many people I have not met.
Too many stupid decisions I have not made.
Too many cities where I have not yet gotten lost.
Too many sunsets I have not stood under with someone I love.
Too many versions of myself I have not yet had the chance to become.

But if I die now, I hope I will not be remembered as someone who waited too long.

I have spent enough years believing that every decision required a prophecy. I wanted to know whether I would succeed before beginning, whether I would be loved before confessing, whether a place would keep me before calling it home.
I treated uncertainty like an omen, when perhaps it was only the ordinary weather of being alive.

So lately, I have been trying to become less careful with my life.
Not careless.
There is a distinction.

I mean the kind of carelessness that lets you order something you cannot pronounce, take the unfamiliar road home, say yes before the mind has finished composing its objections.
The kind that buys the ticket before calculating every possible reason to stay.
The kind that says I want this without first asking whether wanting it will make you foolish.

If I die now, I hope I have been foolish enough.
Foolish enough to love people without keeping an inventory of what they owed me.
Foolish enough to make friends in cities where I knew no one.
Foolish enough to leave, to return, to leave again.
Foolish enough to change my mind.
Foolish enough to become someone my younger self would have found almost impossible.

I am grateful for the people who taught me that a life can be built out of small mercies.
For dinners that lasted longer than expected.
For laughter that arrived at the wrong hour.
For conversations that began with nothing and somehow ended with someone telling me the truth.
For the hands that held mine without asking me to explain why I was trembling.
For every friendship that made a foreign city feel briefly native.
For every person who looked at some difficult, unpolished part of me and did not immediately ask me to sand it down.

If I die now, I hope I remember that I was loved.
Not perfectly.
Not perpetually.
But enough.

And I hope I remember that I loved too.
Even when it made me ridiculous.
Especially then.

If I die now, someone please tell the person I am currently crushing on that I hope he is doing well.
I have no idea what the afterlife’s policy is on unfinished romantic business, but I would prefer not to spend eternity wondering whether he ever replied.

There are, of course, still things I would regret.
I would regret the people I loved too quietly.
The invitations I declined because I was tired, afraid, embarrassed, or simply too comfortable inside the familiar.
I would regret every beautiful possibility I dismissed merely because I could not guarantee its ending.

Perhaps that is the kind of regret I fear most now.
Not that something went wrong.
That I never allowed it the opportunity to go wrong at all.

There is something tragic about a life spent avoiding the wrong doors until you discover that you have also avoided every entrance.

So I have begun opening them.
Some lead nowhere.
Some lead to rooms I do not like.
Some lead directly into another mistake, which, admittedly, is not the most elegant method of personal development.
But at least I arrive somewhere.
And perhaps that is all courage has ever been:
not knowing whether the road ahead will redeem you, only deciding that standing still has become its own form of loss.

If I die now, I hope I am not mourned for the person I could have been.
I hope the people who loved me can remember the person who actually arrived.
The one who laughed too loudly sometimes.
Who cared too much.
Who changed his mind.
Who stayed up too late talking.
Who occasionally spent too much money on a good meal and called it an experience.
Who fell in love and survived it.
Who was afraid and went anyway.
Who did not always know where he was going, but became increasingly unwilling to spend his life pretending that certainty was a prerequisite for movement.

Because I think I finally understand something I spent years trying to calculate: there is no version of this life in which I get to keep everything.
Some people will leave.
Some places will disappear.
Some loves will bloom only long enough to teach me their season.
My body will age.
My friends will scatter.
The cities I know will change their faces.
Even I will become a stranger to myself eventually.

And still, I would rather have known the shape of these things than have protected myself from them so thoroughly that I never touched them.

If I die now, then let it be known that I was here.
Not finished.
Not certain.
Not without fear.
But here.

And if I wake tomorrow, then perhaps I will do something about the things I have not yet done.
Perhaps I will say yes.
Perhaps I will go somewhere I have never been.
Perhaps I will tell someone I love them while the sentence is still warm.
Perhaps I will make another mistake.
Perhaps I will fall for another person who may or may not have the good sense to fall back.
Perhaps I will simply sit beneath the afternoon sun and be grateful that I am still capable of being surprised by it.

If I die now, I think I will have regrets.
But they will be the small, human kind.
The unfinished conversations.
The unanswered invitations.
The places still waiting on the map.
Not the great regret.
Not the terrible one.
Not the regret of having stood at the threshold of my own life, afraid to enter. Because I no longer think an unfinished life is a failed one.

Some things will remain unanswered.
Some doors will close.
Some people will leave.
Some versions of me will disappear before I am ready.

That is not a reason to leave.
That is the price of having been here.
Maybe that is what it means to be alive: to know that nothing is promised, and to love the fact that something is still possible.

So if I die now, let me have my regrets.
Let them be small.
Let them be human.
Let them be proof that I wanted something from this life.

If I die now, I hope I am mourned for all the things I still wanted to do.
The cities I had not seen.
The people I had not met.
The songs I had not heard at the right hour.
The mistakes I had not made.
The love I had not yet given.
Not because I was unfinished,
but because I was still becoming.

And if I die now,
let it be said that I was finally beginning to understand what a life is for.
Not to finish it.
Not to perfect it.
Not to know where it ends.
But to keep finding reasons to be surprised that you are here.

If I die now,
I will have wanted more.
And for the first time, I think that is a beautiful thing.

If I die now was originally published in Journal Kita on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This piece was written under the influence of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. It is not an attempt to imitate his writing, but a personal response to the questions his book left me with: about childhood, family, queerness, memory, violence, and the strange ways a person becomes themselves.

There are things I remember from childhood that I did not understand were important until much later.

The particular sound of the front door closing. The smell of a room after everyone had gone to sleep. The way adults could speak about something serious in the afternoon and then sit down for dinner as if nothing had happened. The small ceremonies of an ordinary household that seemed insignificant when I was young, but became almost sacred once I understood that childhood is mostly made of things you do not yet know you are losing.

I think that is one of the cruelties of growing older: memory keeps turning ordinary things into relics.

When I was young, I thought adulthood meant knowing the truth about things. I thought there would eventually be an age where everything would become legible; why people stayed, why they left, why parents carried certain silences, why some families could say I love you easily while others seemed to speak it through food, money, sacrifice, or simply continuing to come home.

I am older now, and I think I understand less.

But perhaps less certainty has made me more attentive.

I grew up learning that there were things about myself that could not safely be spoken. Before I knew the language for queerness, I already knew the language of concealment. There was the calculation of what to say, what not to say, how much of myself could enter a room without changing its temperature.

A child does not need to understand shame for the body to learn it.

Sometimes the body knows first.

It learns to become quieter.

It learns which parts of itself should remain untranslated.

It learns that there are versions of you that can exist privately but not yet in daylight.

And perhaps this is why, when I eventually began leaving, I was not only leaving a place.

I was leaving the vocabulary that had once been used to describe me.

There is something strange about becoming yourself somewhere far away from where you first learned to be afraid.

You begin to discover that the self you thought was impossible was perhaps only impossible within a particular geography.

A different street gives you a different reflection.

A different language gives you another arrangement of the mouth.

A different group of people can look at the same person you have spent years apologizing for and simply say, come sit with us.

I think we underestimate how revolutionary that can be.

To be ordinary in someone else’s eyes.

To have your queerness become one fact among many rather than the central evidence against your existence.

To realize that perhaps you were never too much.

Perhaps you were simply growing inside a room that was too small.

But leaving does not make the past disappear.

The people we come from remain strangely present inside us. Sometimes in ways we resent. Sometimes in ways we only recognize much later.

I have caught myself becoming older and hearing certain sentences in my own voice that I once heard from someone else.

I have inherited gestures I never consciously chose.

Ways of worrying.

Ways of loving.

Ways of withholding love because giving too much once seemed dangerous.

Maybe this is what family really means.

Not resemblance.

Continuation.

We carry people forward even when we spend our entire lives trying to become different from them.

And this is where I have become more merciful toward the people who came before me.

Not because everything they did was right.

Not because every wound should be excused simply because it came from love.

But because adulthood has made me understand that most people are handing down what they were handed, often without ever examining the contents.

Sometimes the inheritance is tenderness.

Sometimes it is fear.

Sometimes it is both.

I think of the younger version of myself now with less embarrassment.

He did not know how to explain himself.

He did not know that the world would become larger.

He did not know that there would be people who would pronounce his name without asking him to become someone else first.

He did not know that one day he would look back and understand that surviving was not the only thing he had done.

He had also been becoming.

Perhaps that is what I love most about memory.

It does not only return us to who we were.

Sometimes it allows us to meet that person again from the safety of who we have become.

And maybe that is why I keep returning to the past, not because I want to live there, but because there are still parts of myself there that deserve to be brought home.

A child.

A family.

A country.

A language.

A version of love I had not yet learned to name.

All of them still exist somewhere inside me, imperfect and unfinished.

I used to think becoming myself meant leaving them behind.

Now I think it means carrying them differently.

Perhaps we are all brief on this earth.

Brief enough that the people we love will eventually become photographs, stories, habits of speech.

Brief enough that one day even our own bodies will become something someone else remembers.

But perhaps being brief is not the same as being insignificant.

A life does not have to last forever to leave evidence of having existed.

Sometimes it survives in another person’s vocabulary.

In the way they remember a particular afternoon.

In the courage they borrow from something you once said.

In the permission you gave them, perhaps without knowing, to become more fully themselves.

Maybe that is all any of us are doing here:

leaving small pieces of ourselves in other people,

and spending the rest of our lives

learning what to do

with everything they left in us.

what the living carry was originally published in Journal Kita on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Some children are born twice

once into a family,
and once into responsibility.

The second birth is a quieter one. It leaves no record, no celebration, no photographs to remember it by. It happens somewhere between being told, “You’re so mature for your age,” and realizing that everyone has slowly begun looking to you before looking to themselves.

There is a peculiar fate reserved for children like this.

Not always the eldest. Sometimes simply the one who appears the strongest. The one who learns, almost by instinct, that love is measured by how much weight one can carry without complaint.

No one appoints you.

One day, you simply wake to find that every dream you dare to dream must first survive the same relentless question:

What if my family needs me?

Perhaps every family has a child who quietly becomes its second spine.

The one people call before the dust has settled. The one expected to know, to decide, to remain composed while everyone else is allowed to unravel. Somewhere along the way, your achievements stop belonging entirely to you, they become reassurance that the family will be alright. Your failures, meanwhile, begin to feel inherited, as though they might fracture more than just your own future.

You begin to live two lives at once:

the one you secretly long for,
and the one you are already preparing to return to.

As my parents grow older, time begins revealing itself in subtler ways. In slower footsteps. In longer silences before standing. In hands that now ask for help carrying what they once lifted without thinking. My siblings are slowly becoming adults, yet somehow I keep counting the number of storms I might one day have to shelter them from.

Nothing has happened.

Yet I have spent years preparing for everything.

I have mourned people who are still alive.
I have answered midnight phone calls that have never rung.
I have postponed futures that have not yet arrived.
I have lived inside catastrophes that exist only in the architecture of my own mind.

Perhaps this is how sacrifice truly begins.
Not with a knife — 
but with anticipation.

I have often thought of Iphigenia.

Not in the moment she was offered to the gods, but in the long walk toward Aulis. There is something unbearably human about believing you are walking toward a celebration, only to discover you have been carrying the burden of everyone else’s tomorrow.

Some days I wonder whether every dependable child walks a quieter road to Aulis.

Not because anyone asks us to.
Because we begin mistaking anxiety for devotion.

We become so fluent in imagining loss that we forget how to inhabit presence. We postpone joy before it has the chance to disappoint us. We keep parts of ourselves untouched, not because we do not wish to live fully, but because someone we love may one day need what remains of us.

Perhaps this is why children like us struggle to receive love.

We know how to provide it. We know how to become useful. We know how to anticipate grief before it arrives. But somewhere between duty and devotion, we quietly begin believing that our worth is measured by how indispensable we can become.

The cruel irony is that my family has never asked this of me.
They have never demanded my future.

They have never measured my love by my willingness to surrender it.

Yet somewhere along the way, I began believing that to love them well, I must always be ready to become the offering.

Perhaps that is the inheritance of children like me.

Not responsibility itself — 
but the quiet conviction that our happiness should always remain interruptible.

And lately, I have begun asking myself whether love truly asks for an altar.
Or whether I have simply mistaken the fear of losing them
for the duty
of losing myself.

who will they have if not me? was originally published in Journal Kita on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Kami lahir dari tanah yang sama.

Dibesarkan
oleh hujan yang sama.

Menadah matahari yang tak pernah memilih kepala siapa
yang hendak dihangatkannya.

Namun entah sejak kapan, negeri ini mulai menyusun petanya dengan penggaris yang tak pernah mengukur kami.

Barangkali kami
adalah gugusan pulau
yang sengaja dihapus agar lautan tampak lebih tenang.

Kami belajar menjadi akar.

Menyusup jauh
ke perut bumi,
menyimpan kehidupan tanpa pernah meminta
disebut hutan.

Kami belajar menjadi lumut.

Hidup pada batu-batu
yang bahkan enggan mengakui hujan.

Kami belajar menjadi benih
yang memilih diam
sebab musim terlalu gemar
mengadili bunga
sebelum sempat mekar.

Sering kali aku bertanya kepada angin,

adakah pohon yang diminta menjelaskan
mengapa ia bertumbuh?

Adakah laut yang disuruh membela
kedalaman palungnya?

Adakah burung yang diwajibkan bersaksi
mengapa ia memilih
arah pulang?

Kalau tidak,

mengapa kami?

Barangkali
kami bukan kehilangan hak untuk hidup.

Kami kehilangan bahasa
yang sanggup menjelaskan
bahwa hidup kami juga kehidupan.

Sebab setiap kali kami menyebut cinta,

negeri lebih dahulu mendengar ancaman.

Setiap kali kami menyebut rumah,

negeri lebih dahulu membangun pengasingan.

Kami tidak meminta seluruh dunia
menjadi taman.

Kami tahu,
bahkan hutan pun
menyimpan duri,
menyimpan racun,
menyimpan pohon
yang tumbang
sebelum waktunya.

Tetapi adakah
sepetak tanah yang sudi
membiarkan kami bertumbuh
tanpa lebih dahulu
mencabut akar kami?

Aku tak ingin menjadi legenda.

Tak ingin
menjadi perdebatan.

Aku hanya ingin suatu hari nanti,

ketika negeri ini
menghitung
anak-anaknya,

tak ada lagi
yang harus belajar
mengecilkan napasnya

agar diizinkan

menjadi manusia.

People often tell us that grief gets easier.

I know what they mean. They mean the crying becomes less frequent. They mean the mornings stop feeling impossible. They mean one day you’ll wake up and realize you laughed before remembering they were gone.

But I have never believed that grief gets smaller. I think we get bigger.

For the longest time, I thought healing meant moving forward in a straight line — as if grief were a road with a destination waiting at the end. I kept wondering when I would finally arrive at the version of myself who no longer reached for someone who wasn’t there, who could say their name without feeling something collapse quietly inside my chest.

Years have passed now, and somehow, I still find myself meeting grief in places I least expect.

A song. A recipe. A perfume worn by a stranger.
A family gathering where my eyes instinctively search for someone I already know I will never find.

People call these setbacks. I don’t.
Because grief has never felt like walking backward.
It feels more like walking in circles.
Not circles that trap you , but circles that grow.

Every return happens from somewhere farther away than before. The ache is different. Softer, perhaps. More familiar. I revisit the same loss, but I never revisit it as the same person.

Grief isn’t linear. It spirals.
And every time it comes back around, it asks a different question.

It’s been years since someone I loved left this world.

One of the strangest things I mourn isn’t even her absence anymore.
It’s her voice.

There used to be voice notes on my phone. Ordinary ones.
Nothing monumental. Nothing poetic.
The kind that people assume will always be there. Until they aren’t.
I don’t remember when they disappeared.
Maybe I deleted them while clearing storage. Maybe they vanished with an old phone. Maybe I simply wasn’t careful enough.
Whatever happened, they’re gone.
Sometimes I close my eyes and try to reconstruct the sound of her laugh.
The rhythm of her sentences.
The way she said my name.
And every time I try, memory betrays me a little more.
It terrifies me that love can outlive memory.
That one day I might remember everything she gave me, but no longer remember the sound of the person who gave it.

I used to think this was grief’s greatest cruelty. Now I wonder if it is grief’s greatest invitation.
Because when one doorway closes, grief quietly opens another.
When I could no longer hear her voice, I began hearing her in myself.
In the phrases I accidentally borrowed.
In the tenderness I offer other people.
In the ways I care without realizing I learned it from someone else.

Perhaps love has always been smarter than memory.
Perhaps it knows how to survive even when details don’t.

Then, not long ago, another goodbye arrived. My grandfather.

And this grief taught me something entirely different.
While he was alive, I loved him. I know I did.
But love has a dangerous habit of disguising itself as permanence.
We begin believing there will always be another visit.
Another conversation. Another holiday. Another chance to ask the questions we’ve been postponing.

Death has an unforgiving way of exposing every ordinary moment we failed to recognize as extraordinary.

Only after he was gone did I begin remembering. The smallest gestures. The quiet ones. The way he loved without announcing it.
The things he did so consistently that they became invisible while he was alive, only to become radiant once he was gone.

It felt unfair.

As though grief had handed me the instruction manual after the house had already burned down. And maybe that is one of love’s cruelest ironies.
Sometimes we don’t fully understand the language of someone’s love until it becomes a language we can no longer answer.

People often say we should move on. I’ve never liked those words.
Move on.
As if love were a city we’re supposed to leave behind.
As if healing required abandonment.
As if forgetting were the highest form of acceptance.
I don’t want to move on.

I want to carry on.

There is a difference.
To move on asks me to leave them behind.
To carry on asks me to make room for them.
One erases.
The other continues.

So I carry her laughter, even if I can no longer hear it.
I carry my grandfather’s quiet acts of love, now finally translated by absence.
I carry everyone I have ever lost.
Not as anchors. Not as ghosts. But as roots.

I’ve begun to think that wedding vows were never only about life.
“For better or for worse. Until death do us part.”
We often hear the second half louder than the first. As though death were the conclusion of love. But grief has convinced me otherwise.

Love keeps making promises long after death has stopped speaking.
To remember. To tell their stories. To cook their recipes.
To laugh at jokes they would have laughed at. To become gentler because they once existed.

Perhaps forever was never about living forever.
Perhaps forever was about continuing to love after living ends.

To learn grief is to learn love.
Not because they are opposites.
But because they are the same language spoken in different tenses.

Grief is simply love that has nowhere left to arrive.
It wanders instead. Returning in circles. Touching the same places. Finding new meanings.

Teaching us, again and again, that the people we love never truly disappear.
They become the way we hold others.
The patience we suddenly have.
The phone call we decide not to postpone.
The hug that lasts a little longer.
The “I love you” we finally say before leaving the room.

If grief has given me anything, it is this: I no longer wait for absence to teach me the value of presence. And maybe that is how love keeps its promise.

Not by asking us to let go.

But by teaching us that some people remain with us, not in voice notes, not in photographs, not even in memory alone .
But in the quiet, everyday ways we continue loving the world because they once loved us first.

grief never learns to leave was originally published in Journal Kita on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I used to think bullying was just a phase.
Something childish. Something that ended when the bell rang, when the school gate opened, when I went home and shut the door behind me.

But bullying is not a phase when it happens every day.
When it happens often enough that your body begins to anticipate it the way the sky anticipates rain; quietly, instinctively, without needing proof.

I was bullied in elementary school, in junior high, in senior high. Long enough that cruelty started to feel like routine. Long enough that I stopped being surprised. Long enough that my mornings weren’t about learning, but about surviving the hours between.

Sometimes it was physical.
The kind that leaves bruises you can hide under sleeves, the kind that teaches your skin to flinch before it is even touched. The kind that makes your body learn the geography of pain: the back of your head, the side of your ribs, the places people hit when they know you won’t fight back.

Sometimes it was mental.
Names thrown like stones. Laughter sharpened into weapons. Whispers that followed me like shadows. The kind of humiliation that doesn’t end when you walk away, because it lives inside you afterward, replaying itself like a curse you can’t stop hearing.

It was the constant reminder that I was different, and therefore deserved to be punished for it.
The constant feeling of being watched; not admired, but hunted.
The feeling of walking into a room and knowing, before anything even happened, that I might leave it smaller.

There are memories I don’t even remember clearly anymore.
Not because they weren’t painful, but because the mind is merciful. It blurs what the body refuses to forget. It locks certain moments away like evidence sealed in a file. But even if I can’t recall every detail, I still remember the sensation: the heat in my face when the laughter started, the cold dread in my stomach when footsteps came too close, the way my heart would sprint for no reason other than a voice calling my name.

And the worst part of being bullied is not the moment itself.
It’s what it teaches you to believe afterward.

That you are always one wrong move away from being humiliated.
That safety is temporary.
That your existence must be justified.

That being seen is dangerous.

I used to think healing was a matter of time.
That once the bruises disappeared, once the names stopped being thrown at me like stones, once I grew older and walked away from those hallways, the story would end neatly; like a chapter closed, like a door finally locked.

And in my head, it did.

In my memory, I am already far away.
I am older now. I know better. I understand that children can be cruel, that cruelty is often inherited, that hurt people learn to hurt people. I have forgiven, or at least I have stopped waiting for apologies that will never come.

But the problem is
my body never received the memo.

Because even when the mind learns to move on, the muscles keep an archive.
Even when the brain says it’s over, the spine still flinches like it expects a shove.
Even when the heart says you’re safe now, the throat still tightens as if safety is something that must be earned.

Being bullied didn’t only make me sad.
It rewired the way I exist.

It changed the way I speak.

I didn’t notice it at first. It happened gradually, like erosion. Like a river carving a canyon over years, slowly, patiently, until the land forgets it was ever flat. I started lowering my voice without realizing it; softening my syllables, shrinking my presence, as if volume was a crime and confidence was something punishable.

I speak with a carefulness I never consciously chose.
I pronounce my words like I am asking permission to be understood.
Sometimes I catch myself starting a sentence with an apology I didn’t mean to say.

And when I’m in a group, I become a smaller version of myself.

Not because I have nothing to say.
But because somewhere in me, there is still that child who learned the hard way that being noticed is a risk.

I wait for openings.
I wait for someone to look at me directly, like a signal.
I wait to be invited.

Even when I want to laugh, I measure it.
Even when I want to interrupt, I hesitate.
Even when I have something brilliant in my mouth, I swallow it, because my instincts still believe that if I speak too loudly, someone will turn around and remind me that I am not welcome.

And it’s humiliating
to know you have grown, but still move like you are being hunted.

My body has habits that look like politeness, but are actually survival.

The way I sit in a room, always aware of where the exits are.
The way my shoulders naturally curl inward, as if my bones are trying to protect my chest from impact.
The way I laugh too softly at jokes that don’t deserve my laughter, just to prove I am harmless.
The way my hands stay busy ; holding a cup, holding a phone, holding anything — because empty hands feel vulnerable.

I avoid taking up space the way victims learn to.
I stand at the edge of groups.
I choose the corner of the room.
I make myself easy to ignore before someone else decides to do it for me.

And there are moments, small, ridiculous moments , where the past leaks into the present.

When someone raises their voice, even casually, my stomach tightens.
When someone says my name sharply, my heartbeat changes tempo.
When laughter erupts behind me, I still sometimes wonder if I am the punchline.

I can be in the safest room with the kindest people, and still feel my body preparing for impact.

Because bullying was never just an experience.
It was training.

It trained me to speak as if my voice is something that must be earned.
It trained me to believe that silence is safer than honesty.
It trained me to calculate every word before it leaves my mouth, like I am always one sentence away from being humiliated.

It trained me to shrink.

And the cruelest part is how invisible it looks.
People don’t see it as trauma because there are no scars they can point to.
They just think I’m shy. They think I’m quiet. They think I’m reserved.

They don’t know that quietness can be a wound.

They don’t know that some of us are not naturally soft-spoken
we were simply taught that loudness has consequences.

That if you speak too much, you’ll be mocked.
That if you speak too confidently, you’ll be punished.
That if you speak at all, someone will make sure you regret it.

I am healed in my brain.
But in muscle memory, the past still breathes.

It lives in the way I tense my jaw.
In the way I hold my breath when I walk into a room full of strangers.
In the way my voice sometimes cracks, not because I am emotional, but because my throat is still carrying the weight of years where speaking was never safe.

It lives in the way I overthink after conversations, replaying my sentences like evidence in a courtroom.
Did I talk too much? Did I sound stupid? Did I interrupt? Did they hate me?
It lives in the way I can’t fully relax until I am alone again.

And yet
I am still here.

Which means they did not win.

Because despite everything, I have been trying to reclaim my volume.

That is why I write.

Because writing is the one place where my voice does not tremble.
Writing is where I do not have to wait for permission.
Writing is where I do not have to raise my hand, or pause politely, or soften myself into something digestible.

On paper, my voice is not a visitor.
It is a resident.

And lately, I’ve been learning something my younger self never got to learn:
that my existence does not require an invitation.

So I speak, even when my voice feels too small.
I take space, even when my shoulders instinctively fold inward.
I join the conversation, even when my body begs me to stay silent.

Because every time I do, I am rewriting the rules they forced into my bones.

I keep speaking out.
I keep being loud.
I keep stating who I am, and where I came from.

Even if some part of me still believes I won’t be heard,
I will keep talking.

Not because I am fearless
but because silence is what they wanted, and I refuse to give them that victory.

the body that still remembers was originally published in Journal Kita on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I keep asking myself what love is supposed to be when it isn’t returned. Not in a bitter way, not entirely, but in the quiet, restless way that lingers after everything has already unfolded. Because I thought I understood it, or at least I thought I was beginning to. I thought love was something that grew between two people, something mutual, something carefully built like a garden you both agreed to tend. I thought every conversation was a seed, every act of effort a kind of watering, every moment of vulnerability a soft assurance that something real was taking root beneath us. And maybe that’s where I was wrong; not in loving, but in assuming that love requires two people to exist in the first place.

Because what do we call it, then, when only one person is doing the tending?

I stepped out of myself for him in ways I don’t usually do. I spoke more openly, softened parts of me that I usually keep guarded, allowed myself to be seen without the usual layers of distance I carefully maintain. I gave more than I was used to; time, energy, even money, not because he asked for it, but because something in me wanted to. It felt natural in the way growing toward sunlight feels natural, like I was becoming more of myself by offering more of myself. But somewhere along the way, what I thought we were building together turned into something I was building alone. And the realization didn’t come gently. It came all at once, in the form of him choosing someone else, as if everything I had been nurturing was never meant to be mine to begin with.

It’s a strange kind of grief, mourning something that was never fully real, yet felt entirely alive while it lasted. And what unsettles me the most is not even what he did, but how deeply I reacted to it. I hated myself for that. For caring this much, for feeling this affected, for grieving something that, from the outside, could be dismissed as insignificant. But it didn’t feel insignificant to me. It felt like I had poured parts of my soul into something, only to watch it bloom for someone else’s hands.

And so I started questioning everything. Not just him, not just the situation, but love itself. Is love only valid when it is reciprocated? Does it only count when it lasts? Have we reduced something so vast, so complex, into a simple equation of return and permanence?

Because if that’s the case, then what do we make of all the love that doesn’t stay?

What do we make of the people we loved briefly, intensely, imperfectly? The almosts, the almost-loves, the ones that shaped us but never chose us? Are they any less real simply because they didn’t endure?

I came across an Instagram reels the other day that unsettled me in a different way. A simple question: why buy flowers if they’re just going to die? At first, it sounded like a quiet kind of cynicism, the kind that tries to protect itself by dismissing beauty before it has the chance to disappear. But the answer was softer than that. You buy them to experience them while they’re alive. To witness their bloom. To learn how to be present with something you already know won’t last.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about that.

Because maybe that’s what I was doing all along. Maybe I wasn’t building something permanent, I was simply experiencing something alive. Something that grew, that blossomed, that existed fully in its moment, even if that moment was brief. And like flowers, it didn’t need to last forever to be real. It didn’t need to stay to have mattered.

We don’t question the value of flowers because they wilt.

We don’t call them meaningless because they eventually die. We admire them, we care for them, we bring them into our lives knowing fully how they will end. And still, we choose them.

So why is love any different?

Maybe love has never been about permanence in the first place. Maybe that’s something we projected onto it because we are afraid of endings, afraid of loss, afraid of the idea that something so meaningful can exist without belonging to us forever. But nature has never promised permanence. Gardens are not built to remain unchanged, they require constant care, constant pruning, constant letting go. Leaves rot, roots decay, and if we don’t cut away what is no longer serving growth, the entire plant suffers.

And maybe that’s what this is. Not a failure, not a humiliation, not proof that I am unworthy… but a necessary pruning.

Because I did grow. Even if the initial intention was him, the outcome is still mine. I became more open, more expressive, more willing to try. I showed up for something with sincerity, even without guarantees. I nurtured something outside of myself, yes, but in doing so, I also nurtured parts of me that had been dormant for far too long.

And isn’t that what love does?

It stretches us. It demands that we expand beyond who we were before it. It invites us into deeper versions of ourselves, even if it doesn’t stay long enough for us to fully understand why. Love is not passive. It is not something that simply happens to us. It is something we choose, something we enact, something we become through our willingness to extend ourselves beyond comfort.

The will to nurture growth, our own, or someone else’s. That’s what love is, isn’t it? Not just a feeling, but a decision. An action. A choice we make again and again, even when it would be easier not to.

And maybe that’s why experiencing love feels so intertwined with experiencing life itself. Because to love is to risk. To love is to invest in something uncertain. To love is to accept, consciously or not, that loss is always a possibility. But isn’t that true for everything that makes life meaningful? We pursue dreams that might fail, we build connections that might fade, we step into moments knowing they will eventually pass. And yet we don’t call those things meaningless….

We call them living.

So why do we hesitate to do the same with love?

Why do we only validate it when it succeeds, when it lasts, when it is returned exactly the way we hoped it would be? Why do we dismiss the love that shaped us simply because it didn’t stay?

If anything, the love that doesn’t last often teaches us the most. It reveals the depth of our capacity, the extent of our willingness, the quiet strength it takes to care deeply in a world that does not always care back in the same way. It shows us who we are when we are giving, not just when we are receiving.

And maybe that’s the part I am learning to hold onto.

That what I felt was real, even if it wasn’t mutual.
That what I gave was meaningful, even if it wasn’t appreciated.

That love, in its truest form, is not defined by outcome, but by intention and action.

I didn’t fail at love.
I chose it.

And maybe that’s enough.
Or maybe, maybe it’s more than enough.

Because if love is something we choose, something we practice, something we embody regardless of whether it is returned… then perhaps the question isn’t why we should love when it can fail.

Perhaps the real question is…

if loving, even briefly, even imperfectly, is what makes us feel most alive…
then why are we so afraid to call it worth it?

what do we call it, then? was originally published in Journal Kita on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I do not regret the sweetness I once offered.
Love, when it was given, was never a transaction, it was a devotion. It was made slowly, with care, with hands that believed tenderness was a language worth speaking.

What was given was real.
Not extravagant, not loud, but deliberate.
A love that arrived without armor, without conditions, without the safety of withholding.
It was given the way one gives chocolate; not to impress, not to win, not to bargain for affection, but simply to share warmth. To say I thought of you. To say I remembered you when no one asked me to. To say this is mine, and I choose to offer it.

And perhaps that is the most vulnerable thing a person can do: to give love without first demanding proof that it will be returned.

Because love like that is not careless.
It is not foolish in the shallow way people like to mock.
It is brave. It is sacred.
It is the kind of love that believes softness is not a weakness, and that sincerity is not something to be embarrassed of.

I do not mourn what was spent.
Love that is genuine does not diminish the giver.
If anything, it reveals the truth of the heart: that it was capable of giving without keeping score, capable of showing up without being asked, capable of staying gentle in a world that often rewards coldness.

The love I gave was not an accident.
It was a choice.
It was effort wrapped in patience.
It was consistency when it would’ve been easier to disappear.
It was the kind of devotion that remembers small details, that holds space, that forgives too quickly, not because it forgets the pain, but because it still hopes the person will become better.

It tasted like chocolate. Sweet, yes, but also carefully made, melted down and reshaped by hands that wanted to offer something warm to another soul.

But there are offerings that must end.

Not because love has turned rotten.
Not because the heart has become incapable of giving.
But because love, too, has dignity.

Because what is given freely should be received with care, not assumed.
Not treated like it will always be there, endlessly available, no matter how often it is neglected. There is a particular kind of disrespect that doesn’t come as cruelty. It comes quietly; through inconsistency, through half-effort, through the way someone accepts your love as if it is an entitlement.

They take what you offer, but never truly honor the hands that carried it.
They receive your warmth, yet speak to you as if you are replaceable.
They let you pour and pour, then act surprised when your cup is finally empty.

And maybe that is the ugliest part of it, not that love was unreturned, but that it was unrespected.
That something sincere was handled carelessly. That something soft was met with indifference. That what you gave with a whole heart was treated like it was just another sweet thing to consume, enjoy for a moment, and forget when the taste fades.

Love cannot survive in places where it is repeatedly made small.
It cannot keep blooming in hands that never learned gentleness.

So this is not regret.
It is self-respect finally learning how to speak.

It is the moment the heart stops running toward people who only know how to receive, but never how to hold. It is the moment love realizes that it does not need to beg to be valued, that devotion is not proven by endurance, and that tenderness is not meant to be punished for existing.

So no, there is no chocolate for you anymore.

Not because I ran out of sweetness, but because I finally learned that love must come with dignity. That affection is not meant to be offered to those who do not know how to treat it with reverence. That my softness is not a public resource. That what I gave was sacred, and if it is not treated as sacred, then it will no longer be given at all.

What I gave before, I gave sincerely.
I gave fully.
I gave with care.
And that truth remains untouched.

But now, love learns to pause.
To choose.
To wait.

Because love does not disappear when it stops being offered recklessly.
It deepens.
It matures.
It remembers itself.

And when it is given again, it will not be because it is desperate to be chosen.
It will not be because it is afraid of loneliness.
It will not be because it is trying to prove its worth.

It will be because it is finally met.

Because love, real love, should not feel like pleading.
It should not feel like constantly having to prove that you deserve gentleness.

The chocolate I won’t give anymore is not bitterness.
It is boundaries.
It is dignity wrapped in silence.
It is the quiet decision to keep my sweetness for someone who understands its value.

And if Valentine’s comes again,
if the world once again asks me to offer love like it is tradition, like it is routine,

I will still have chocolate in my hands.

But this time, I will only give it
to someone who knows how to hold it without breaking it.
To someone who doesn’t just taste it,

but treasures it.

the chocolate I won’t give anymore was originally published in Journal Kita on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Laut tidak pernah hanya air. Ia adalah arsip. Ia menyimpan suara-suara yang gagal diwariskan lewat bahasa, nama-nama yang tenggelam sebelum sempat disebut utuh, pelukan yang tak jadi, doa yang terlambat, dan cinta yang memilih diam agar tetap hidup.

Aku tahu itu karena sejak kecil, tubuhku selalu bereaksi pada pasang surut bahkan sebelum aku tahu apa itu rindu. Ada ketegangan di dada yang tidak berasal dari hari ini. Seolah ada generasi sebelumku yang juga belajar mencintai sambil menahan napas.

Malam, bagiku, selalu menyerupai laut.
Tidak datang sebagai kejadian,
melainkan sebagai kondisi.
Ia mengubah cara suara jatuh,
cara ingatan bergerak,
cara tubuh mencari orientasi tanpa kompas.

Lalu kau datang,
bukan sebagai mercusuar,
melainkan sebagai arus.
Tidak menunjuk ke mana,
hanya membuatku berhenti melawan.

Sejak itu, malam tidak lagi terasa seperti wilayah asing. Ia menjadi perairan yang kukenal lewat tubuh, bukan lewat peta. Ada kebiasaan baru yang tumbuh pelan-pelan, seperti terumbu yang terbentuk dari sisa-sisa patah:
makan tanpa tergesa,
menonton tanpa ambisi selesai,
suara yang sumbang tapi dibiarkan hidup,
diam yang tidak perlu diisi.

Aku mulai mengerti bahwa menemani tidak selalu berarti mendekatkan jarak. Kadang ia hanya kesediaan untuk tinggal di kedalaman yang sama tanpa mencoba menyelamatkan apa pun.

Ada malam-malam ketika aku tidak memelukmu, namun tubuhku tetap mengingat bentuk kehadiran. Seperti laut yang masih menyimpan suhu kapal lama setelah kapal itu pergi.
Di situ aku paham:
cinta tidak selalu tinggal sebagai peristiwa, ia sering menetap sebagai tekanan.

Pelukanmu tidak menghapus ketakutanku. Ia memberinya konteks. Di dadamu, aku menyadari betapa banyak ketakutan dalam diriku yang bukan milikku sepenuhnya — ketakutan yang diwariskan, yang berenang dari satu generasi ke generasi lain tanpa pernah belajar bernama.

Dan anehnya, justru karena itu, aku ingin menjadi lebih baik. Bukan agar layak kau cintai, melainkan agar rantai ini berhenti padaku.
Agar laut di dalam diriku tidak lagi hanya menjadi tempat tenggelam, tetapi ruang bernapas.

Aku mencintaimu secara tidak heroik. Tidak dengan janji, tidak dengan rencana besar.
Aku mencintaimu lewat keberanian kecil:
menghadapi bagian diriku
yang selama ini kusembunyikan di palung terdalam,
menyentuh luka tanpa menuntutnya sembuh segera,
belajar tinggal
tanpa ingin kabur dari diri sendiri.

Malam-malam bersamamu mengajarkanku bahwa damai tidak selalu datang sebagai terang. Kadang ia datang sebagai laut yang tenang, yang tetap dalam, tetap menyimpan bangkai dan sejarah, namun tidak lagi mengamuk.

Jika aku memilih malam,
itu bukan karena aku membenci siang.
Aku hanya tahu,
di gelap yang kutinggali bersamamu,
aku tidak perlu menyangkal arus
yang membawaku sejauh ini.

Aku tidak tahu ke mana semua ini akan bermuara.
Laut tidak pernah memberi kepastian.
Ia hanya menawarkan keberlanjutan.
Dan untuk pertama kalinya,
aku tidak keberatan jika cinta
tidak menjanjikan pantai.

Cukup biarkan aku tinggal sebentar lagi,
di malam yang tidak meminta apa-apa,
di perairan yang tidak menghakimi kedalaman,
di sampingmu — 
bukan sebagai penyelamat,
bukan sebagai korban,
melainkan sebagai seseorang
yang akhirnya belajar
berenang tanpa rasa bersalah.