The Real Niche

by NK.

Author: Nisha Kay

  • Detach

    I find detachment to be a really interesting concept, specifically as a Libra. No, this isn’t going to be about astrology (not all of it, at least). But for right now, let me just help you understand it a little better.

    There are twelve signs in the zodiac. Each is symbolized by a living creature or figure: a ram, a bull, the twins, a crab, a lion, a woman, a scorpion, a centaur, a goat, a water bearer, and two fish.

    But there’s only one whose symbol is an inanimate object. Libra. The Scales.

    Long before Libra, as well as the other signs, became simplified into the zodiac we recognize today, Libra and the scales were a symbol of balance, truth, and justice.

    In ancient Babylon, the constellation was associated with the Scales, while ancient Egyptian beliefs used the weighing of the heart against a feather to symbolize truth and moral order. Even the Greeks and Romans personified justice in their own ways.

    Today, we see this symbolism in courtrooms, legal emblems, and the very language we use when discussing justice: weighing evidence, considering both sides, and reaching a balanced judgment. The scales represent the ideal that decisions should be made through discernment rather than personal bias or unchecked emotion and attachment.

    In Sanātana Dharm, there is an ancient concept known as ṛta (Rita, for an easier pronunciation), the cosmic order that sustains the universe, governing the rhythms of nature and the relationship between truth and existence. 

    The Rigveda, dating back to approximately 1500-1200 BCE, speaks of this order long before the classical zodiac took the form we recognize today. Its related philosophical counterpart, dharm, speaks to the principles that sustain order and guide right conduct.

    Although neither concept is a direct description of Libra, both offer an interesting lens through which we can understand its symbolism. And to me, that is where the symbolism becomes particularly interesting.

    Balance isn’t necessarily about making two opposing things equal, but about seeing each for what it truly weighs.

    And perhaps this is why Libra is so interesting to me. As an air sign, Libra is associated with thought, perspective, and the ability to consider something beyond one’s immediate experience.

    Perhaps detachment begins with that same principle. Not by denying what we feel, but by learning to see beyond it.

    The scales don’t suggest that emotion doesn’t exist; they suggest that everything must be weighed before a judgment is made. There is a difference between feeling something and allowing that feeling to determine what is true.

    In that sense, detachment isn’t necessarily about being emotionless. It’s about creating enough distance to see a situation for what it is, rather than only through the lens of how it makes us feel. And that distinction is where I want to begin.

    I do want to start off by saying, this is such a profound topic that one blog post is simply not enough. 

    My girl reminded me of a situation that happened with a mutual friend of ours. The whole ordeal still stays in my memory quite vividly, but not as vividly as I thought it did.

    So, let’s start from the beginning. A few of us went out to the city for brunch, and I remember that it was dark when we left. So, we genuinely did have a lot of fun.

    But then something happened.

    I found myself in a verbal altercation that I did not volunteer to be in. The friend in front of me was upset, and I had upset them. Why? Well, let’s just say there is a difference between loving someone and being possessive of them. And at the time, when we were friends, and for the sake of my own sanity, I am going to say that this person was very possessive.

    If they didn’t get enough attention, it was a problem. 

    This altercation had nothing to do with me. I was not wrong. I did nothing wrong. I was having fun with friends, and I was having fun making friends.

    And so, when I found myself being yelled at, with this person screaming at the top of their lungs in the MIDDLE of Manhattan on a Saturday night… I apparently detached.

    And I did.

    Because when my girl reminded me about it again, she told me how I had been backed into a corner.

    I didn’t even remember that because I felt so out of body in that moment. I think the history of our ten-year friendship was something I was taking into consideration, along with the fact that this person was always angry when they were drunk and that I was not going to engage in that.

    My girl asked me how I could be so calm in that moment, especially because she wasn’t. She went off on him for me. Her question has always been a simple one:

    How do you detach from moments like this?

    And I’ll tell you. 

    I’ll tell you what my thought process was like in that moment.

    At first, I was in freeze mode. I have trauma associated with people yelling at me, so freezing is a natural reaction for me. I will instantly start shaking, and I can feel the adrenaline pumping through me, even if my mind is calm.

    It’s just that sometimes, energy can FEEL so potent, and your mind can really be your greatest weapon and savior in allowing you to remain present and centered in your body and spirit.

    After that, I honestly just looked at everyone around me who was walking by, and that was it. That’s what made me dissociate. I may have been looking at him, I may not have been. All I know is that my attention had shifted to the people looking at him and thinking:

    Wow… this guy is crazy.

    Honestly? Satisfying enough.

    Because if there is one thing I learned from my mom when I was a kid, it was this: you don’t ever want to do anything that will point the finger back at you.

    And that’s probably why I’ve learned never to stoop to anyone’s level. Nah, I’m good at my level. No matter how low I am, I am certainly never going to be THAT low.

    I began to look at him just like everyone else did, too. And, to be honest, I was really fascinated by how someone could allow their character to show up like this.

    I could never. I could never stand in front of someone, hover over them, and yell in their face. Especially as a man.

    But he was that kind of person.

    That’s really sad.

    I thought about how sad it was that this was my best friend. We had known each other since we were kids. Of course, we all do stupid things when we’re drunk, and he had done plenty of them that I had been there for. 

    But I wasn’t sad about that. Because the person I considered my best friend was not there in that moment. My best friend would NOT yell at me like this. And so, when I did not see that person, I did not reciprocate by becoming that person in return.

    I was sad because… it’s sad to see. Someone could be so out of control that they couldn’t help but show their ugliness to the world. Someone could be so possessive that they couldn’t stand to see you having fun with or around other people.

    What does that say about the person who is reacting? What does that say about their life? Their habits? Their peace? Their values? How they handle their emotions and reactions?

    None of that had anything to do with me. This way of reacting had nothing to do with me. This reaction may have been triggered by a situation involving me, but I am not the root of anyone’s reactions. I am not the root of anyone’s words. I am not responsible for the choices other people make in response to their feelings.

    So, this is not my problem.

    Yes, we did end up telling this person that if they ever did it again, it would be over and done with. They promised they wouldn’t.

    Exactly sixteen months later, it happened again. And it was done.

    Some people really think they sit at the top of some hierarchy when, in reality, their behavior puts them at the lowest level of emotional maturity in the room.

    Hm, sad to witness. 

    Detachment is hard. Again, I don’t think I can fit it all into one blog. 

    Our whole lives as human beings revolve, in part, around understanding the balance of importance: the importance of having and the importance of being without. That balance can tip at any time. Any singular moment can have us stepping out of balance and into attachment.

    But Sanātana Dharm taught me something incredible about detachment, and I always reference it back to the Bhagavad Gītā and the Kurukṣhetra War.

    Now, this war wasn’t between two separate families.

    It was a war within the same extended family…

    On the battlefield, Arjuna is overwhelmed by grief at the thought of fighting people he loves. How could he fight against the very people he considers his brothers, uncles, elders, and gurus? How could he dare to raise his bow against the very people who had taught him, guided him, and helped shape the warrior he had become?

    He wants to withdraw, unable to reconcile his emotions with the duty before him.

    But Krishna doesn’t tell him to stop loving them. He doesn’t tell him that his grief is meaningless. Instead, He teaches Arjuna to look beyond his personal attachment and understand his responsibility.

    Krishna explains that we have a right to perform our actions, but not to control their results. We must do what is right without becoming consumed by how things turn out.

    That is detachment: not the absence of love, grief, or desire, but the ability to act with discernment even when those emotions are present.

    What makes this example especially relevant is that Krishna doesn’t teach Arjuna to escape the situation or become indifferent to the people involved. He teaches him to change his relationship with his emotions and the outcome.

    This is one of the first lessons I learned and one of the first I have always tried to master. Because, to me, someone who could master that could truly live a more peaceful life in a world full of chaos.

    I learned this when I was just a little kid, actually. While Maharashtrians love Ganesh, additionally, my mom had a particular love for Krishna. She looked to Him as her best friend.

    And she was also a Libra! So maybe I just had a really good understanding of detachment.

    Think about a relationship you desperately want to work out. You love someone, you’ve invested your time and energy into them, and you’ve imagined a future together. But despite everything you give, you cannot control how they feel, what they choose, or whether they ultimately choose you.

    Attachment convinces you that if you love harder, explain yourself better, or do enough to prove your worth, you can guarantee the outcome you want.

    Detachment asks something different of you. It asks you to love without trying to control, to show up without abandoning yourself, and to accept that another person’s choices are not yours to make.

    You can fight for a relationship without believing you can single-handedly save it. You can grieve its ending without deciding that the love you gave was wasted. And you can want something deeply while understanding that wanting it does not guarantee it belongs in your life.

    You are responsible for your actions, your intentions, and the way you show up, but you cannot dictate the fruits of those actions.

    Detachment isn’t giving up on what you love. It’s giving up the illusion that loving something gives you control over it.

    You are your own universe, and the control you have belongs within it. Others are their own universes, and controlling them is not your responsibility.

    Think about the last time you were stuck in traffic, running late for something important. You start getting frustrated, checking the time every thirty seconds, imagining everything that could go wrong, and becoming increasingly angry at something you have absolutely no control over.

    The traffic isn’t moving any faster because you’re upset, but somehow, you’re making yourself suffer twice: once because of the situation, and again because of your resistance to it.

    Detachment, in this moment, doesn’t mean you stop caring about being late. You can still look for another route, notify someone, and do everything within your power to get where you need to be. But once you’ve done what you can, you have to accept that the rest is beyond your control.

    This is a small, everyday reflection that your responsibility lies in your actions, not in your ability to guarantee the outcome. You can control how you respond to the traffic, but you cannot command the cars in front of you to move.

    Detachment is learning to take responsibility for what is yours without taking ownership of everything that isn’t.

    Think about working toward something for years, convinced that once you finally achieve it, you’ll feel like you’ve made it. Maybe it’s the career, the house, the financial stability, or the version of yourself you’ve spent years trying to become.

    You sacrifice, you plan, you do everything you believe you’re supposed to do, and then life takes a turn you never anticipated.

    Someone else gets the opportunity. The plans fall apart. You’re still waiting for the life you thought you’d have by now. And suddenly, the disappointment isn’t just about what you lost or haven’t achieved; it’s about the version of yourself you thought you’d be by this point.

    You begin to measure your present against a future that existed only in your imagination, treating everything you are today as insufficient because it doesn’t resemble everything you expected to become.

    But what if detachment means learning to release not the dream itself, but your insistence that it must unfold according to your timeline?

    You can continue working toward something without making your worth dependent on achieving it by a certain age, in a certain way, or before someone else gets there first. You can grieve the life you imagined without refusing to live the one that’s unfolding.

    It is important to understand how to act without becoming enslaved to the fruits of our actions, and perhaps that lesson extends beyond the outcomes we chase and to the expectations we carry about who we should already be.

    Sometimes, the hardest thing to detach from isn’t what we have. It’s the life we convinced ourselves we were supposed to have by now.

    But how do we detach from the life we thought we would have?

    Maybe we begin by acknowledging that we are grieving something, even if it never actually existed. The version of ourselves we imagined becoming, the milestones we thought we would have reached, the timeline we were so certain our lives would follow. We can become so attached to these expectations that we mistake them for promises life made to us. And when reality doesn’t honor them, we feel as though something has been taken away.

    But an expectation is not a guarantee, and a different timeline is not necessarily a failed life.

    Krishna teaches Arjuna to focus on his actions rather than become attached to their results. Applied to our own lives, this means we can continue to work toward the things we desire without making our happiness conditional upon achieving them exactly as we imagined. We can have ambitions without turning them into deadlines for our self-worth.

    We can make plans while remaining open to the possibility that life may unfold differently, and, more often than not, in ways better than we could have imagined.

    Our human minds cannot comprehend the vastness of the universe, so why would we limit ourselves to what we can currently imagine? Why would we put a time constraint on it? Why would we impose such rigid expectations?

    Doesn’t that feel like restraint?

    And perhaps the most difficult part is learning to stop comparing our present to an imagined future. Because every time we tell ourselves we should be further ahead, we turn the person we are today into a disappointment simply for not being someone we haven’t become yet.

    How do we know that version of ourselves would have been happier or healthier? How can we definitively say that?

    We cannot.

    Detachment doesn’t mean abandoning the dream. It means allowing yourself to grow beyond the version of the dream you were once convinced you needed. It means being willing to change the timeline, reconsider the destination, or even discover that what you wanted five years ago no longer serves who you are today.

    You can honor the life you once imagined without making it the enemy of the life you have.

    Not everything deserves equal weight. Not every person deserves the same access to you. Not every disappointment deserves to become an identity. Not every desire deserves to become an obsession. And not every version of your life deserves to be mourned simply because it was the version you expected.

    Sometimes, we are so busy trying to restore the balance that we forget we are the ones holding the scales.

    We keep weighing the same situation, replaying the same conversation, revisiting the same disappointment, asking ourselves what we could have done differently. We keep placing our peace on one side and someone else’s behavior on the other, wondering why we feel so heavy.

    And sometimes, the answer is embarrassingly simple.

    You’re trying to find balance in a situation you’ve already outgrown.

    You cannot force someone to develop the self-awareness you had to learn the hard way. You cannot make another person understand the damage they’ve caused simply because you’ve explained it beautifully. You cannot convince life to honor a timeline it never promised you.

    And you certainly cannot heal by repeatedly reopening the very thing you’re trying to make peace with.

    At some point, you have to stop asking what else you can do to change the situation and start asking why you’re still giving it the power to change you.

    That, to me, is where detachment begins.

    Not in the dramatic declarations that you don’t care. Not in pretending something never hurt you. And certainly not in becoming so emotionally unavailable that nothing can reach you.

    Because let’s be honest: sometimes what we call detachment is just avoidance with better PR.

    Real detachment requires you to ACTUALLY feel the disappointment, acknowledge the grief, recognize the anger, and still make a conscious decision about what happens next. 

    It requires you to be honest about what you want without becoming a prisoner to whether you get it. 

    It requires you to understand that acceptance is not approval, forgiveness is not reconciliation, and compassion does not require you to volunteer as someone’s emotional punching bag.

    You can understand why someone behaves the way they do without making their behavior your responsibility.

    You can recognize someone’s pain without making yourself the place where they unload it.

    You can love someone and still decide that the version of them standing in front of you is not someone you can continue to make room for.

    And you can be disappointed with where you are in life without treating the person you are today like a failed version of the person you hoped to become.

    You are allowed to change your mind about what deserves your life.

    I think about that night in Manhattan sometimes. How someone who had known me for ten years could stand in front of me and behave like a stranger. How I could look at a person I once considered my best friend and recognize that, in that moment, I had nothing to defend.

    Not because I was above him. Not because I was incapable of being hurt. And not because I had somehow transcended the very human experience of wanting to be understood.

    But because I realized that I did not have to participate in every version of myself that a situation invited me to become.

    I could be angry without becoming cruel. I could be hurt without becoming vindictive. I could recognize that someone was behaving badly without feeling compelled to behave badly in return.

    And perhaps most importantly, I could stop confusing our history with an obligation to tolerate our present.

    Ten years of friendship meant we had a history. It did not mean I owed the next ten years to the same dynamic.

    History explains how someone got a place in your life. It does not guarantee them a permanent one.

    That lesson applies to people, dreams, expectations, identities, and even the versions of ourselves we have spent years trying to become.

    We are allowed to outgrow things we once prayed for. We are allowed to leave behind what once felt like everything. We are allowed to discover that the dream was beautiful, the timing was wrong, the person changed, or we did.

    And none of that has to mean we failed.

    In fact, I feel the exact opposite. I feel that you are living the human experience exactly as it is meant to be lived.

    So, no, you have not failed. Quite the opposite: you are thriving!

    Perhaps this is why Krishna’s teaching to Arjuna has stayed with me for so long. The lesson was never that he should stop caring. It was that caring could not be the only thing guiding his actions. He had to learn to distinguish attachment from duty, grief from discernment, and the things within his control from the things that were not.

    The same applies to us.

    Do your part. Love sincerely. Work toward what matters. Make the plans. Chase the dream. Show up for the people who show up for you.

    But do not make a guarantee out of an outcome. Do not worship a timeline.

    Do not turn another person’s approval into your personal religion. And for the love of all things sacred, do not keep auditioning for a place in a life that requires you to abandon yourself to remain in it.

    We are responsible for our actions, not entitled to dictate every result. The world is far too vast, existence far too complex, and life far too unpredictable for us to believe that our limited perspective can account for every possibility.

    We are not meant to control the entire universe. We are meant to understand our place within it.

    And maybe that is where we misunderstand balance at times. We think it means keeping everything in equilibrium, finding the perfect proportion between holding on and letting go, making sure nothing tips too far in either direction.

    But balance is not about keeping everything. Balance is knowing what to put down. And in order to do that, you need to understand detachment.

    The scales cannot remain balanced if you insist on carrying the weight of everything you refuse to release.

    And the beautiful, uncomfortable truth is that you can spend your entire life trying to control what comes into it, what stays, what leaves, what happens, and when it happens.

    Or you can learn to meet life as it comes without surrendering your discernment along the way.

    You can care without clinging. You can act without demanding a guarantee. You can grieve without making grief your home. You can want more for yourself without resenting the life you have while you work toward it.

    You can hold something close without holding it hostage. And you can let something go without declaring that it never mattered.

    The movie Ae Dil Hai Mushkil has the perfect example of this, to me. You guessed it: it is when Shah Rukh Khan enters the story. His monologue is beautiful, truly.

    For those who know and read Hindi:

    Ek tarfa pyaar ki taaqat hi kuch aur hoti hai… aur rishton ki tarah do logon mein nahi bat’ti. Sirf mera haq hai ispe, sirf mera…

    Mujhe Saba se beinteha mohabbat karne ke liye Saba ki hi zaroorat nahi. Ho sakta hai isse behtar ishq ho, aur agar baazi ishq ki baazi hai, toh jo chaahe laga lo, darr kaisa?

    Agar jeet gaye toh kya kehna, gar haare bhi toh baazi maat nahi.

    In English, the sentiment is something like this:

    The power of one-sided love is something else entirely. Unlike other relationships, it isn’t divided between two people. It’s mine, and mine alone.

    I don’t need Saba to love me back in order to love her endlessly. Perhaps there is no love greater than this. And if love is a game worth playing, then stake whatever you want. What is there to fear?

    If you win, wonderful. And even if you lose, it isn’t necessarily a defeat.

    And I think there are two types of people: those who understand that, and those who have not allowed themselves to understand it just yet.

    That is a balance we will ALL continue to learn and understand in deeper, more profound ways.

    Not the balance of someone who has mastered detachment, but of someone who understands that the lesson will keep presenting itself in different forms. A person. A disappointment. An unanswered question. A dream that takes longer than expected. A version of myself I eventually have to leave behind.

    Life will keep giving us things to hold and things to release. The practice is learning to recognize the difference.

    So, I don’t know if the question is whether we can detach. Perhaps it is whether we can accept that something can matter deeply without needing to remain ours forever.

    And if there is one thing I want you to take away from all of this, it is this:

    Your peace is not a bargaining chip. Stop trading it for things you cannot control.

    Not for someone’s approval. Not for a relationship’s survival. Not for a deadline you invented. Not for a future that has yet to exist.

    The scales will tip. Life will happen. People will disappoint you. Plans will change. You will change.

    And when they do, you will have a choice.

    You can spend your life trying to restore the world to the way you thought it should be.

    Or you can learn to find your balance in the world as it is.

    As for me?

    I have learned that not everything that enters my life is meant to stay, not everything I lose is a punishment, and not everything I want is worth the cost of losing myself to get it.

    I am no longer interested in proving that I can carry everything.

    I’m interested in learning what I was never meant to carry in the first place.

    At the end of the day, I can weigh the world, consider every perspective, and spend an eternity trying to make sense of every little thing.

    But the scales were never mine to use to measure my worth.

    And I was never meant to carry the entire universe just because I was born under a sign that knows how to weigh it.

    – nk

  • Asking for a Friend

    When I was a kid, I was a victim of one of those little fortune-telling balls.

    You know the kind. I mean, poor Ross tried to use it to make a decision he clearly had to make for himself.

    You ask it a question, shake it around, and it gives you some ridiculous little answer that somehow feels incredibly important when you’re nine years old, or, in Ross’ case, when you’re deciding between your wife and your best friend.

    Well, one day we were asking questions to it in class, and someone asked it: “Is this person really Nisha’s friend?”

    Who am I talking about? Just a random girl who, at that time, I thought was a friend. So did this random ball thing because the answer was yes.

    But the girl who it was about inconspicuously shook her head. No.

    This wasn’t the first time I had felt rejected and dejected by someone I thought I could trust. 

    I remember that, not because it was some enormous childhood betrayal, but because it was one of those tiny moments that gets filed somewhere deep inside you.

    The kind you don’t realize you’ve carried until you’re much older and suddenly understand why it stayed.

    Because somewhere inside me, I think I had already been asking that question.

    Am I actually someone’s person? Do people really choose me?

    Do I matter to people in the way they matter to me?

    That question started much earlier than that little fortune-telling ball.

    When I was younger, I didn’t really have friends. Instead I was bullied. I was made fun of. I was the weird kid.

    And there was more going on in my life than most people around me probably understood.

    By the time I was five years old, I had already experienced the biggest change; my grandmother had passed away.

    We moved into a new home, and there was this new energy in my family. Later on in my life, probably closer to my 30s, I learned that was grief. That grief was taken out on me… a lot. 

    There were things happening inside my home that I didn’t necessarily know how to process, let alone explain to another child. And I don’t think any of that reflected particularly well on me socially.

    Because I wasn’t walking around thinking, I’m grieving, my family is changing, and I’m having trouble processing all of this.

    I was just a kid. A kid who was overwhelmed. A kid who didn’t always know how to behave. A kid who didn’t always understand why she felt the way she felt.

    And when you’re already struggling to understand yourself, being rejected by other children can make you start looking for an explanation.

    Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Maybe I’m too weird. Maybe I’m not likable. Maybe people don’t want me around. Maybe I shouldn’t be around.

    When I think about that little girl, I think about her asking something much bigger: Am I chosen?

    And I spent a lot of my life trying to answer that question…

    As I got older, my answer became: I’ll become useful enough to be chosen. 

    I became a student of other people. I watched what people thought was interesting.

    What they thought was cool. What they laughed at. What they liked. What they talked about. What kind of clothes they wore. What music they listened to. What personalities got attention.

    And then I tried to become some version of those things.

    Sometimes I genuinely liked them. Sometimes I absolutely did not. Sometimes I pretended I did. Sometimes I pretended to be something I wasn’t because I thought that version of me would be more acceptable.

    It was peak people-pleasing. And, in hindsight, it was kind of hilarious too. Because I was also a weird kid who would literally go around telling other kids they were weird.

    Millennials were something else, truly. But even that makes sense to me now.

    I was trying so desperately to figure out where I belonged that I was sometimes participating in the very social hierarchy that made me feel excluded.

    If I could identify who was weird before someone identified me as weird, maybe I could protect myself.

    If I could figure out what was cool before someone decided I wasn’t cool, maybe I could stay ahead of it.

    I wanted to be liked. Desperately. And it wasn’t limited to friendships.

    I chased attention. I wanted to feel desirable. I wanted to feel interesting. I wanted to feel chosen.

    I was so fixed on everyone paying attention to me, for a change. Fixed on finally not being overlooked. 

    And I think I was constantly looking outside myself for evidence that I was enough.

    So I became adaptable.

    I knew how to read a room. I’ve been doing it since I was a child. I learned how to become what people needed. I learned how to make people comfortable. I learned how to make people laugh. I learned how to make myself useful.

    And eventually, something interesting happened.

    It worked.

    People started liking me. People started wanting me around.

    I developed friendships. I became social. I became someone who could walk into a room and connect with people.

    And somewhere along the way, the question changed.

    I wasn’t asking anymore: How do I get people to like me?

    I had figured that part out.

    The question became: How do I make sure they don’t leave?

    And that is where everything got more complicated…

    By the time I was a young adult, I had become incredibly valuable to people.

    And I loved it. Truly.

    If there was a party? I got it.

    Makeup? I got it.

    Relationship problems? I got it.

    Need someone to go out and have fun with? I got it.

    Good food? I got it.

    Need advice? Call me.

    Need someone to talk to? I’m here.

    Need someone to help you figure out what you’re feeling? Let’s sit down.

    Need someone to show up? I’ll show up.

    Have an emergency? SOS me.

    I became the person who knew things. The person who could figure things out. The person who could make things happen.

    The person who knew what restaurant to go to, what makeup to buy, what to say to your boyfriend, how to plan the night, where to go, what to do, how to fix the problem.

    And I was genuinely excited to be that person.

    I loved being useful. I loved being the person people trusted. I loved knowing that if someone called me, I could probably help.

    And eventually, people came to me with much bigger things than where to eat or what lipstick to buy.

    They came to me with their breakups. Their family problems. Their relationship problems. Their secrets. Their darkest moments. The things they couldn’t say out loud. The things they couldn’t admit to anyone else.

    I became the person people trusted with the parts of themselves they were ashamed of. And I was good at it.

    I could sit with people in uncomfortable places. I could listen without immediately judging. I could see through things. I could tell people what they didn’t necessarily want to hear. I could give people something to believe in when they were falling apart. I could be the person who helped them get back on their feet.

    There were people who later told me I had changed their lives.

    People who said I helped them leave relationships. People who said I inspired them to change their health. People who told me things about themselves they couldn’t repeat to anyone else.

    People who came to me when they were questioning whether they wanted to marry the person they were with. People who came to me when they had secrets that would have ruined their entire life, reputation, career. People who came to me when they didn’t know how to keep going.

    I’ve held things I couldn’t repeat even if I wanted to.

    Some secrets are so deeply personal that even years later, they don’t stop becoming so simply because the friendship changes.

    I still hold them. And I always will.

    But somewhere in those years, I began confusing two very different things.

    I confused being needed with being loved. I confused being useful with being valued. I confused being someone’s safe place with having a safe place of my own.

    And I didn’t understand the difference yet.

    Because when people need you, it can feel like belonging. Especially when you’ve spent your childhood wondering whether you belong at all.

    There is something intoxicating about realizing that someone needs you. 

    You become important. You become the person they call. You become the person who knows. You become the person who can help.

    And when your childhood has taught you to question whether you’re important enough to be chosen, being needed can feel like proof.

    For a long time, it did feel like proof. And I embraced it because I really did have an incredible community around me.

    But there was a cost I wasn’t looking at. I was so busy being everything for everybody else that I wasn’t really asking what I needed.

    I didn’t even think about myself. And when you live like that long enough, people start assuming you can handle it.

    Because you have taught them that you can…

    And there was something else underneath it that took me much longer to recognize.

    Ego is wild.

    Because the same ego that once drove me to change my persona so people would like me eventually became attached to the persona I had created.

    At first, I thought: I need to become someone people want.

    Eventually, I became so good at being that person that I started thinking: This is who I am.

    The funny part is that the persona was real, it wasn’t a facade. There were parts of me that came alive just from understanding that I could do so.

    I became social. Funny. Adaptable. Interesting. Capable. Useful.

    The person who knew what to do. The person who understood people. The person who could handle things. The person who could walk into a room and figure out how to belong.

    And then I started identifying with her. I didn’t feel like I was just existing through life, I felt like I was finally given a meaning. 

    So when life eventually forced me to change, my ego had a problem. 

    Because I didn’t just have to let go of certain behaviors. I had to let go of an identity.

    The same ego that had once convinced me I wasn’t enough had eventually convinced me that I was this very specific person.

    The strong one. The self-aware one. The one who understood. The one who could handle anything. The one who helped everyone else.

    Don’t get me wrong, many times I was that person. But sometimes I wasn’t.

    There is nothing quite like life handing you a few very humbling experiences after you have become convinced you have yourself figured out.

    I had spent so much time trying to become someone worth choosing that I eventually had to confront how attached I had become to being the person everyone could choose…

    That became the people-pleasing phase of my life. I’ll give everything so nobody leaves.

    I didn’t consciously think that sentence. It was much more subtle.

    I’ll come. I’ll help. I’ll listen. I’ll make it work. I’ll understand. I’ll forgive. I’ll adjust. I’ll be there. I’ll put my needs aside. I’ll make room. I’ll figure it out. I’ll be the bigger person. I’ll be the reliable one. I’ll be the one who doesn’t make things difficult.

    And if I kept doing that, maybe nobody would have a reason to leave.

    But there is a problem with giving people things you don’t actually want to give them.

    Eventually, you become resentful.

    Someone asks you to dinner. You don’t want to go. You say yes because you don’t want them to be disappointed.

    You go. You’re miserable. You say nothing. You go home resentful that they expected you to come.

    But they didn’t actually force you. You chose to go.

    You resented them for accepting the version of yourself you voluntarily gave them. That wasn’t fair either.

    I had been so focused on making sure nobody was disappointed in me that I wasn’t allowing other people to make informed choices about their relationships with the real me.

    I was saying yes while meaning no. I was giving things I didn’t actually want to give.

    And then quietly expecting people to somehow know the difference. 

    They couldn’t. Because I didn’t know the difference.

    I didn’t have boundaries, or, more accurately, I hadn’t learned how to have them.

    And that realization became even more uncomfortable because I eventually had to confront something about people-pleasing that I didn’t particularly like admitting:

    People-pleasing can be self-centered too.

    Not cruelly self-centered. Protectively self-centered.

    If I’m constantly giving people what I think they want so that they won’t leave me, I’m also controlling the relationship.

    I’m trying to control their perception of me. I’m trying to control whether they’re disappointed. I’m trying to control whether they stay. I’m trying to make myself so valuable that leaving me becomes difficult.

    And then when they respond to the person I’m presenting to them, I can become angry that they don’t somehow see the person underneath it.

    But how could they? I wasn’t showing her.

    I realized how much of my life I had spent trying to secure love instead of simply allowing myself to be known.

    I made myself useful. I made myself available. I anticipated what people needed. I became dependable. I became necessary.

    That is fear trying to build itself a security system. 

    And the complicated part is that people really did love me. That is what makes it harder.

    I wasn’t manipulating people in some conscious, calculated way. I don’t think there is a bone in my empathic body that could ever be malicious. 

    I was just trying to protect myself with the only tools I knew.

    But I still had to take responsibility for the fact that I was participating in relationships from a place of fear. I couldn’t demand that someone freely choose me when I was constantly constructing the conditions under which they would.

    I had to learn that being loved is not the same thing as being indispensable. 

    And this is where some of the losses in my life became important.

    Because while I had become incredibly valuable to people, there were also people I couldn’t give enough to.

    And I lost people. A lot of people. 

    But not all losses look like a friendship ending.

    Sometimes you lose someone because you outgrow each other. Sometimes they outgrow you. Sometimes someone falls in love and their life changes. Sometimes you fall in love and yours does. Sometimes someone moves. Sometimes someone gets married. Sometimes someone has a child. Sometimes someone finds a new community.

    Sometimes someone changes their beliefs. Sometimes someone heals in a direction you don’t understand. Sometimes someone becomes a person you no longer recognize. Sometimes you become the person they no longer recognize. 

    Sometimes there is betrayal. Sometimes there is resentment. Sometimes there is a boundary. Sometimes there is an apology that comes too late. Sometimes there is no apology at all.

    Sometimes you fight. Sometimes you simply stop calling. Sometimes nobody does anything terrible. Life just becomes very good at creating distance.

    And then there are the strangest losses.

    The people who are technically still in your life, but no longer in your life.

    The person you used to call every day who now gets a birthday text. The friend whose house used to feel like your house. The person whose family knew you. The person whose parents asked about you. The person whose name used to come up in every story.

    And then one day you realize you have to explain who they are. That is a loss too.

    There are people I have lost because of my choices. People I have lost because of their choices. People I have lost because we hurt each other. People I have lost because I wasn’t ready to be who they needed me to be. People I have lost because they weren’t ready to be who I needed them to be.

    People I have lost because I disappeared. People I have lost because I stayed too long. People I have lost because I expected them to read my mind. People I have lost because I didn’t understand theirs. People I have lost simply because life kept moving.

    Some of those losses were devastating. Some were necessary. Some were both.

    And I don’t want to tell the story as though every person I lost was someone I was supposed to lose, or that I was the victim for all of it. I wasn’t. I am not a victim.  That would be another way of making myself the center of every story.

    Sometimes I was hurt. Sometimes I was wrong. Sometimes they were hurt. Sometimes they were wrong. Sometimes we were both doing the best we could with the emotional tools we had at the time. Sometimes we simply weren’t good for each other anymore. And sometimes there was nothing anyone could have done.

    People leave for all kinds of reasons. People stay for all kinds of reasons too.

    And I think adulthood is partly learning not to turn every departure into a referendum on your worth.

    Those losses hurt me. A lot. Because I wasn’t some detached person who never cared.

    I cared deeply. I had spent years building relationships. I had loved people. I had invested in people. I had memories with people. And sometimes, despite everything I gave, something still wasn’t enough.

    Sometimes I couldn’t show up in the way someone needed. Sometimes I couldn’t give what they wanted. Sometimes I was changing. Sometimes they were changing. Sometimes the friendship simply couldn’t hold both of us anymore.

    And those losses challenged something I had believed for years. I had thought that if I love people enough, give enough, show up enough, understand enough, maybe I can keep them.

    But I couldn’t.

    Because people aren’t things you can earn and keep. And eventually, I think I got tired. I had given so much. I had been asked for so much. I had become so many things for so many people. And at some point I looked around and realized I had given too much. I had been asked for too much. And I was left with nothing.

    So I found what I thought was the answer. Fine. I don’t need anybody.

    And that is where Bunny entered the story…

    I think that is why Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani has stayed with me in such a strange way.

    For a long time, I understood Bunny.

    Not because I thought I was exactly like him, but because I understood the instinct.

    The need to run. The need to experience everything. The need to protect your freedom. The refusal to let another person become the reason you don’t become who you’re supposed to become.

    Bunny loves people.

    That isn’t really his problem. His problem is that he loves people while being deeply attached to his own freedom. I find something beautiful about refusing to live a life simply because other people expect you to.

    But there is another side to it.

    You can become so determined not to lose yourself that you stop realizing how often other people are losing you.

    You can call it freedom. You can call it independence. You can call it choosing yourself. 

    And sometimes it is. But sometimes it is also detachment. Sometimes it is avoidance. Sometimes it is a way of making sure nobody can ever have enough of you to hurt you.

    And I understood that too. Because I had spent so much of my life doing the opposite.

    I had over-given. Over-accommodated. Over-explained. Over-showed-up. I had made myself available. I had made myself useful. I had made myself necessary.

    And eventually, I swung so far in the opposite direction that disappearing began to feel safer than explaining myself.

    I didn’t need anybody. That was the answer.

    If I didn’t need anybody, nobody could disappoint me. If I didn’t need anybody, nobody could take too much from me. If I didn’t need anybody, nobody could make me feel like I wasn’t enough. If I didn’t need anybody, I couldn’t be abandoned.

    It felt like freedom. And, in some ways, it was. But it wasn’t the whole truth.

    Because choosing yourself is not the same thing as choosing only yourself.

    There is a difference between: 

    “I need to live my own life” and “Because I’m living my own life, I don’t have to consider how my choices affect the people who love me.”

    There is a difference between independence and emotional avoidance. There is a difference between detachment and disregard.

    There is a difference between not wanting to be controlled and not wanting to be accountable.

    I would eventually have to learn all of that. 

    But before I could, I disappeared. And I was very comfortable saying the same as Bunny…

    Mujhse koi umeed hi nahi rakhni chahiye, translation, “You should not expect anything from me”.

    Then came 2021. And everything changed.

    After my spiritual awakening, I basically fell off the face of the Earth. I fell off social media. I fell away from people. I wanted to be alone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to explain myself. I didn’t want to be available. I didn’t want to perform the version of myself everyone was accustomed to seeing.

    I needed my energy back. Because I felt like I had exhausted it.

    I had spent years giving so much of myself away that I didn’t even know what belonged to me anymore. And because I didn’t know my own boundaries, so many people around me didn’t know them either.

    So I went MIA. Not for days. Not for weeks. Not for a few months. Years. I really went away.

    At the time, I understood what was happening through the language of spiritual awakening.

    The dark night of the soul. Healing inner wounds. Shadow work. Breaking old patterns. Going inward.

    And I experienced darkness in a way that was very real to me.

    My light has always been bright. It still is. But my darkness can be incredibly dark.

    Unbearable. Unfathomable. Almost bottomless. And it scared me.

    Sometimes it scared me because I didn’t know where it ended. Eventually, though, I stopped trying to make the darkness disappear. I started understanding it.

    And then, at some point, I embraced it. Not because I wanted to suffer. Not because darkness was inherently better. But because it was part of me.

    And if I was going to understand myself, I couldn’t only understand the parts of me that were easy to love. I had to understand all of it.

    Looking back now, I understand that period differently than I did then. What I once called a spiritual awakening or a dark night of the soul feels much more like a process of coming back to myself and my dharm.

    Understanding who I was. Understanding what shaped me. Understanding what I had been carrying. Understanding my purpose. Understanding the path I was actually meant to walk. And realizing just how far I had wandered away from myself while trying to be everything for everybody else.

    I needed to find myself. But I also needed to learn something else: I couldn’t live forever in reaction to what had happened to me.

    I couldn’t spend the rest of my life either giving everyone unlimited access to me or giving nobody access at all.

    Going MIA may not have been the answer for everyone. But for me, at that time, it was necessary. The empath in me needed the empath in me. I needed to learn what it felt like to have my own energy without immediately handing it to someone else.

    I needed to know what my own thoughts sounded like. I needed to discover what I liked when I wasn’t trying to be liked. I needed to understand who I was when nobody was asking me to be anything.

    And that changed everything.

    But eventually, I realized something. 

    The opposite of having no boundaries is not disappearing. The opposite of having no boundaries is having boundaries.

    That was the middle ground I had never learned. 

    I didn’t need to give everyone everything. But I didn’t need to give everyone nothing either. I didn’t need to be available to everyone. But I didn’t need to be unavailable to everyone.

    I could say no. I could be quiet. I could take space. I could protect my energy. And I could still love people.

    I could still show up. I could still let people in. I could be a person with boundaries instead of a person who disappeared.

    That was a completely different way of living. And it forced me to look at myself honestly. Because it would have been easy to tell the story of my friendships as though I had always been the one giving more.

    I could say:

    I sacrificed everything.

    I was always there.

    I gave people everything.

    They didn’t appreciate me.

    And sometimes, honestly, that was true.

    But it wasn’t the entire story.

    Because I had also been a person who could disappear. A person who could withdraw without fully explaining why. A person who could decide that I needed space and expect everyone else to understand what that space meant.

    A person who could become so focused on protecting my own energy that I forgot other people had emotions about losing access to me too.

    That realization mattered. Because once I had spent years feeling like people didn’t understand me, I had to ask myself whether I was always making myself understandable either.

    I wasn’t.

    Sometimes I expected people to read boundaries I had never communicated. Sometimes I expected people to understand changes I hadn’t explained.

    Sometimes I expected grace for my evolution while struggling to offer the same grace when someone else’s evolution affected me.

    That was humbling. Because the lesson wasn’t: Everyone else needs to understand me better.

    The lesson was: I need to understand myself better too.

    And this became especially clear when I thought about one of my friendships.

    We had known each other since we were sophomores in high school. By the time everything happened, we had known each other for about ten years.

    Before COVID, I was still very much in what I would describe as my interesting, vivacious era. And this friendship was deeply woven into my life.

    How could it not be? We called each other early in the morning. We picked each other up for breakfast. We scheduled things around each other. We knew each other’s friends. Our lives were intertwined.

    We fought for each other. Protected each other. Loved each other. There had been real loyalty there. Real history. Real friendship.

    And there was something else about this friendship that mattered to me.

    This was someone who had seen me be vulnerable. Really vulnerable. Someone who had heard the things I didn’t tell everybody. Someone who had seen beneath the version of me that could walk into a room and handle everything.

    That is part of why the friendship mattered so much.

    This person held me in some of my darkest moments. And I held them in theirs. The loyalty was real. The years were real.

    And then they entered a relationship. And the relationship changed the shape of ours. There were things happening behind the scenes that I knew about, but I couldn’t speak about them because they weren’t mine to reveal.

    Someone else had told me why the partner didn’t like me. But I kept my mouth shut. Because another person’s confidence is not yours to weaponize.

    Eventually, though, something happened between my friend and I that needed to be addressed. So I addressed it. And suddenly I was being described in ways that felt completely foreign to me.

    I wasn’t friendly. I wasn’t trying to get to know their partner. I wasn’t hospitable. I wasn’t making enough of an effort.

    And I remember thinking:

    Me? The person who wanted them to be happy? The person who had been genuinely excited to meet this person? The person who literally works in hospitality and has an embedded hospitable personality because of it?

    Me? Wow.

    But the part that hurt wasn’t even the accusation. It was discovering that my friend agreed. This was someone who had known me for ten years. Someone who had seen me through so many versions of myself.

    And somehow, after only a few months with this person, a version of me that I didn’t recognize had become more believable than the person they had known for years.

    That devastated me. I had believed that knowing someone for ten years meant something very specific. I thought history meant understanding. I thought history meant loyalty.

    I thought history meant that even if you didn’t understand everything about me, you would at least know enough about my heart to question a version of me that felt completely foreign.

    But I was learning something much harder:

    Knowing someone for years does not automatically mean knowing who they are. You can know someone’s history without understanding their evolution. You can know who someone was at seventeen and still have no idea who they’re becoming at thirty.

    You can know their childhood, their family, their old relationships, their old habits, their old fears, and still struggle when they become someone you didn’t expect.

    The friendship eventually ended. And because our lives had been so intertwined, it affected other friendships too.

    Relationships changed. I became more skeptical. I started watching more. I became less naïve about what friendship could mean. And although that ending hurt me for a long time, I eventually began to see something else.

    The friendship had been real. And the ending was real too.

    Maybe that is one of the hardest things to accept about relationships.

    Something doesn’t have to have been fake just because it ended. Sometimes the love was real. And the relationship still wasn’t meant to continue.

    There were dynamics I hadn’t recognized while I was inside them. There were things I had tolerated because I believed longevity automatically meant something had to be preserved. And perhaps if the friendship had continued, we would have hurt each other even more.

    Sometimes people leaving your life is a blessing. Sometimes you leaving someone’s life is a blessing. Sometimes your life isn’t meant to carry whatever their next chapter contains. And sometimes theirs isn’t meant to carry yours.

    There doesn’t always have to be a villain. Sometimes two people simply become different people.

    And maybe that is the part I understand most clearly now.

    People aren’t supporting characters in our stories. They aren’t here to remain exactly who they were when we met them so that we can feel secure in who we are.

    They are living their own lives. Their own stories. Their own transformations. And so are we.

    Sometimes two people grow in the same direction. Sometimes they grow apart. Sometimes they grow apart and find each other again.

    Sometimes a friendship gets quieter without becoming meaningless. Sometimes it changes completely. Sometimes it ends. And sometimes the friendship itself is the loop.

    I think that is what I couldn’t understand when I was younger. I thought change meant something had gone wrong. 

    Now I understand that change is often the relationship doing exactly what people do: changing.

    There are friendships that belong to childhood. Friendships that belong to becoming an adult. Friendships that belong to adulthood. Friendships that somehow carry through all three. 

    There are people who know the girl you were. There are people who know the woman you’ve become. And there are rare people who can know both without insisting that either version cancel out the other.

    Those are the friendships that evolve with you, not because they never change, but because they are willing to change with you.

    Those are the connections I desire.

    Not perfect friendships. Not friendships where nobody is ever disappointed. Not friendships where everyone agrees. Not friendships where nobody ever leaves.

    I want friendships with room. Room for change. Room for disagreement. Room for silence. Room for growth. Room for phases. 

    Room for someone to say:

    I’m not who I was when you met me.

    And for the response to be:

    I know.

    Because if I want people to let me evolve, I have to let them evolve too. If I want grace for the person I became, I have to give grace to the people who became different from me. If I don’t want someone holding my past against me, I can’t hold theirs against them.

    That is where friendship becomes more than just companionship.

    It becomes a lesson in letting people be people.

    And maybe that is also where Sanātana Dharma makes sense to me in this.

    Everything is moving. Everything changes. Attachment becomes painful when we demand permanence from something whose nature is change.

    Detachment isn’t indifference.

    It isn’t:

    I don’t care about you.

    It is:

    I care about you without believing I own you.

    I can love what we were without demanding that we remain what we were. I can appreciate what you gave me without demanding that you continue giving it. I can accept that your path may take you somewhere I cannot follow. And I can accept that mine may take me somewhere you cannot follow.

    That doesn’t erase what existed. It simply means I don’t have to possess it to honor it.

    I’ve learned that now. I’ve also learned that choosing yourself doesn’t mean choosing only yourself.

    For years I swung between extremes. First, I gave too much. Then I disappeared. Now I’m learning the middle.

    I can have boundaries without becoming unavailable. I can say no without becoming cold. I can choose myself without treating everyone else like an obstacle. I can understand that my choices affect people without making myself responsible for everyone’s feelings.

    And I can accept that someone being disappointed in me doesn’t automatically mean I’ve done something wrong. 

    That’s freedom too.

    Not being wanted by everyone and being okay. Not being understood by everyone and not scrambling to explain yourself. Not being appreciated by everyone and still knowing your own worth.

    And maybe that is the hardest freedom of all:

    Knowing that someone can misunderstand you without you having to turn yourself inside out to correct their perception.

    And maybe that’s why I don’t look at the people I’ve lost the same way anymore.

    Some friendships were built for versions of me that no longer exist. Some couldn’t survive my boundaries. Some couldn’t survive my disappearance. Some couldn’t survive my evolution. Some simply ran their course. Some ended because I was wrong. Some ended because they were wrong. Some ended because we were both wrong in different ways. Some ended because we were both right about what we needed and those needs no longer fit together.

    And some stayed. Some returned. Some arrived later. Some people who had nothing to do with my developmental years became incredibly important to my adult life. Some people from my past continued to evolve alongside me.

    Those are the people I treasure because I trust that whatever happens, we can meet honestly where we are. That is a very different kind of security from the one I was looking for as a child.

    The little girl with the fortune-telling ball wanted to know whether someone was really her friend. The teenager learned to become valuable enough to belong. The woman in her twenties became someone everyone could depend on.

    And then, in 2021, she disappeared.

    She learned that being needed wasn’t the same as being known. She learned that sometimes making yourself indispensable is another way of being afraid.

    She lost people. In all the ways people are lost.

    Through distance. Through choices. Through change. Through conflict. Through silence. Through life.

    She lost a friendship that had once felt permanent. She learned that history wasn’t ownership. She learned that people-pleasing wasn’t the same thing as love. She learned that even her own ego could turn survival strategies into identities.

    She went inward. She found parts of herself she didn’t know how to hold. She confronted her darkness. She stopped giving herself away. She learned boundaries. She lost people. She found people. She discovered who could see her when she wasn’t performing.

    And now, years later, she’s coming back. Not to become who she was. To be who she is.

    That is where I am now. And I think I finally understand the question I was asking all those years ago.

    It was never really: Who will stay?

    It was: Can I be myself and still belong?

    And I think the answer is yes. But not everywhere. And not with everyone. And that’s okay. I don’t need to be everywhere with everyone.  

    Because belonging was never supposed to mean being accepted by everyone. It means finding the people with whom you don’t have to abandon yourself in order to remain. It means finding people who can see your light without requiring you to hide your darkness.

    People who can watch you change without deciding that change is betrayal. People who can tell you the truth. People who can let you tell them the truth. People who can stay when staying makes sense. And people who can leave when leaving is what life requires.

    That is the kind of friendship I understand now.

    Not possession. Not obligation. Not usefulness. Not permanence.

    Presence. Reciprocity. Room. And the willingness to keep meeting each other as we become.

    Because we are always changing. That is why friendships have seasons. That is why they have highs and lows. That is why they go quiet. That is why they loop. 

    That is why people sometimes leave and sometimes come back. That is why some friendships evolve with us and others don’t. 

    And expecting every person we love to evolve in exactly the same direction we do would be selfish.

    They have their own life. Their own timing. Their own path. Their own becoming.

    So do we.

    The point isn’t to figure out who is going to stay forever. It’s to learn how to recognize what is real while it is here. To love people without trying to own their future. To let relationships change without immediately calling the change a failure.

    To choose ourselves without choosing only ourselves. To stop measuring our worth by how much we can give. To stop confusing being needed with being known.

    And to understand that sometimes a person was meant to walk with us for a chapter, not the whole book. That doesn’t make the chapter less important. It just means the story kept going.

    And maybe that’s the most beautiful thing about the people we meet along the way.

    Some stay. Some leave. Some return. Some change us and disappear. Some change with us. And some, somehow, manage to meet us again and again at every version of ourselves.

    Not asking: Where have you been?

    Not asking: Why aren’t you who you used to be?

    Just looking at you and saying: There you are.

    To me, that is enough. To me, that has always been the point.

    – nk

  • No.

    Disclaimer & Content Warning: This article discusses sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape, coercion, victim-blaming, trauma, gender-based violence, religion, culture, and personal experiences of abuse. Some descriptions and language may be distressing or triggering for readers with related experiences. This essay reflects the author’s personal experiences, perspectives, interpretations, and opinions. It is intended as a personal and cultural commentary, not as a representation of the experiences or beliefs of all women, men, survivors, Indians, South Asians, religious communities, or members of any particular faith or culture. References to patriarchy, gender norms, religion, cultural practices, laws, statistics, and social conditions are intended to encourage discussion and examination of broader patterns. They should not be interpreted as claims that every individual within a particular group holds the same beliefs, behaves in the same way, or bears the same responsibility. Where religious traditions are discussed, the author does not intend to denigrate, attack, or speak on behalf of any faith. Religious traditions are diverse, internally complex, and interpreted differently across communities and individuals. References to Sanatana Dharm and its concepts are presented from the author’s cultural and spiritual perspective and are not intended to represent every Hindu or every interpretation of Hindu philosophy, scripture, or practice. Personal accounts are presented as the author remembers and understands them. They are not intended to identify, accuse, or make factual claims about individuals who are not named or to whom the author has not attributed specific conduct. This article is not legal, medical, psychological, or professional advice. Statistics, laws, and other factual information referenced in the article are provided for educational and contextual purposes and may change over time. Most importantly, nothing in this article is intended to place responsibility for sexual violence on survivors. Clothing, alcohol consumption, location, relationship status, previous sexual activity, flirting, silence, freezing, compliance, or any other circumstance does not by itself constitute consent. If this subject matter is personally distressing, please prioritize your wellbeing and step away from the article if necessary.

    There is a strange curriculum every girl seems to receive. Nobody formally hands it to you. There is no orientation. No textbook.

    No PowerPoint presentation called: HOW TO EXIST SAFELY AS A WOMAN.

    And yet, somehow, we learn it.

    Don’t walk alone at night. Don’t take shortcuts. Don’t wear that. Don’t drink too much. Don’t get too drunk. Don’t leave your drink unattended. Don’t get into a stranger’s car.

    Share your location. Check the back seat. Hold your keys between your fingers. Text me when you get home. Share your Uber ride with me. 

    Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t be too friendly. Don’t be too sexual. Don’t be too attractive. Don’t be too loud. Don’t go there. Don’t stay there too late. Don’t trust him. Don’t trust them. Don’t trust anybody. Every single one of us has either heard this, or said it.

    And if something happens? The questions begin.

    What were you wearing? How much did you drink? Why were you there? Why did you go home with him? Why didn’t you leave? Why didn’t you fight? Why didn’t you say no?

    And that last one makes me want to scream. Because we do say no. We have always said no. The problem is that someone decides that our no isn’t important enough to listen to.

    The curriculum is always written for women. The first time I really realized this was through school dress codes. And one particular rule always stood out to me. Spaghetti-strap tank tops.

    I remember getting in trouble once because I took my cardigan off in class after gym. I was sent to the office because what I was wearing was considered inappropriate.

    When I got there, I was let off with a warning.

    “You have to be careful with what you are doing and wearing because they can cause distractions.”

    I was eleven years old. Eleven. Think about how bizarre that is. 

    I was a child. And already the lesson was:

    Your body is something you are responsible for managing so other people don’t become distracted.

    And I was confused because up until that point, I was only told no with clothes that my mom thought was “cheap and ugly looking”. This was a whole new perspective for me. 

    We spend an enormous amount of time teaching women how to avoid being harmed. To avoid being a “distraction.”

    What a load of bullshit. You’re telling me boys can’t be taught simple values, and I have to accommodate for that? Be so fucking for real.

    Women are taught situational awareness. Women are taught self-defense. Women are taught safety apps. Women are taught to carry pepper spray. Women are taught to send their location to friends.

    Women are taught to fake having a boyfriend. Women are taught to wear wedding rings.

    Women are taught to lie about having a husband because sometimes, apparently, another man’s existence is more respected than a woman’s own boundary.

    And I find that deeply disturbing.

    Why should: “I don’t want you” not be enough?

    But: “I have a boyfriend” suddenly is?

    Why does my imaginary male representative have more authority over my body than I do? And even then, sometimes the ring doesn’t work. Because the problem was never the absence of a husband.

    The problem was the refusal to respect a woman.

    A woman’s body is not a public referendum. It does not require a male representative.

    NO is NOT a NEGOTIATION. Consent isn’t complicated.

    It isn’t a reward. It isn’t something someone earns by being persistent enough. It isn’t revoked because someone is wearing a short skirt. It isn’t invalidated because she flirted with you earlier.

    It isn’t erased because she kissed you five minutes ago. It isn’t transferred because she went home with you. 

    And it doesn’t become less meaningful because she’s your girlfriend. Your wife. Someone you’ve slept with before. Or someone you think “owes” you something.

    Consent can be given. Consent can be withdrawn. And a person doesn’t need a courtroom-quality argument to withdraw it.

    No means no.

    If you don’t understand that, stop being mad at the world and go back to grade school. You don’t need therapy, you need education. 

    And since women are apparently equipped with all the logic and sense because of our circumstances, let us enlighten you on the different phrases of the word NO:

    “I don’t want to.”

    “Stop.”

    “Move.”

    “Don’t touch me.”

    “I changed my mind.”

    “I do not want to do this anymore.”

    “I’m not interested.”

    “I’m married.”

    “I have a boyfriend.”

    “I said no.”

    And sometimes it’s simply a person physically pulling away. Being visibly uncomfortable. Freezing. Going silent.

    Recognize that another human being’s body belongs to them. 

    And when it happens, we get asked the brain-less questions..

    Why didn’t you do anything? Why didn’t you scream? Why didn’t you run? Why didn’t you fight? Why didn’t you push him away? Why didn’t you bite him? Why didn’t you call somebody? Why didn’t you leave? Why didn’t you say no?

    Why didn’t you—

    Stop. Seriously.

    Have you ever been in that situation? No?

    Then maybe don’t sit comfortably on the outside of someone else’s trauma and conduct an interrogation.

    Because there is something people seem to forget when they ask these questions. Your brain does not experience extreme danger the same way it experiences an ordinary Tuesday. 

    When the brain perceives an immediate threat, the amygdala and other parts of the threat-response system become heavily involved in rapidly mobilizing the body for survival.

    The nervous system can trigger fight-or-flight responses. But people can also freeze. Become immobile. Dissociate. Comply. Appease. Go quiet. Or behave in other ways that help them survive the immediate threat.

    And here’s the part people don’t seem to understand…

    You don’t get to choose your survival response like you’re picking an option from a menu.

    For one person, survival might look like fighting back. For another, survival might look like running. For another, it might mean freezing completely.

    For another, it might mean becoming quiet, complying, pretending everything is okay, and waiting for the danger to end.

    And NONE of those responses tells you whether the person wanted what was happening.

    Think about being held at gunpoint. Someone points a gun at you and says: “Give me your wallet.”

    You have options. You could fight. You could run. You could refuse. You could hand over everything you have.

    Most people would understand that handing over your wallet isn’t an enthusiastic endorsement of robbery. It’s a survival decision.

    You aren’t thinking: “You know what? I really wanted to lose my money today.”

    You’re thinking: “I want to live.”

    Maybe you calculate that your wallet isn’t worth your life. Maybe you freeze. Maybe you comply because you think fighting could get you killed. Maybe someone else would fight because they refuse to surrender.

    Both people are experiencing a response to danger. And nobody standing outside the situation gets to say: “Well, if you really didn’t want your wallet stolen, why didn’t you fight?”

    Because that’s fucking ridiculous.

    So why do we suddenly become philosophers of human behavior when the thing being taken is someone’s bodily autonomy?

    Survival doesn’t always look heroic. Most of the time it never does. We have this bizarre cultural expectation that a victim should behave like the protagonist in an action movie.

    She should scream. She should kick. She should scratch. She should bite. She should escape. She should fight until she physically cannot fight anymore.

    And if she doesn’t? People start asking whether she really resisted. But the nervous system doesn’t care about your expectations of what a “strong” person should look like.

    It cares about survival. Sometimes survival means fight. Sometimes it means flight. Sometimes it means freeze. Sometimes it means fawn or appease. Sometimes it means becoming completely still and waiting for the threat to end.

    Sometimes the safest thing a person believes they can do in that moment is: “Don’t make this worse.” And I need people to understand something incredibly important.

    A survival response is not consent. Compliance is not consent. Freezing is not consent. Being unable to physically fight is not consent. Trying to minimize the violence is not consent.

    Doing whatever you think will get you through the next five minutes alive is not consent.

    “But why didn’t she leave?”

    Maybe because her brain was trying to keep her alive. Maybe she was terrified. Maybe she froze. Maybe she thought resistance would escalate the danger. Maybe she was physically restrained. Maybe she was dissociating. 

    Maybe she didn’t know what would happen if she fought back. Maybe she tried before. Maybe she had already learned, through experience or observation, that fighting can make violence worse.

    You weren’t there. You don’t know. 

    And that’s precisely why the first response shouldn’t be: “Why didn’t you…?”

    The first response should be: “Are you safe now?”

    Or:  “What do you need?”

    Or:  “I believe you.”

    Or:  “How can I help?”

    There will be plenty of time for facts. There will be plenty of time for investigation. There will be plenty of time for evidence.

    But a traumatized person does not owe you a perfectly executed survival strategy before you decide they deserve compassion.

    And this is why I have very little patience for the endless who, what, where, when, why, and how questions when they’re being asked as an accusation rather than an attempt to understand.

    There is a difference between investigating what happened and interrogating the person it happened to.

    “What happened?” can be care.

    “Why didn’t you fight?” can be blame.

    “Are you safe?” can be compassion.

    “Why were you there?” can be judgment.

    Learn the difference.

    Because if you’ve never been in that situation, you don’t know what your nervous system would do either.

    You can imagine what you think you would do.

    “I’d fight.”

    “I’d scream.”

    “I’d kill him.”

    “I’d run.”

    Maybe. Maybe not.

    You don’t know until your brain believes your life is actually in danger. And by then, you’re not taking some calm personality test. You’re trying to survive.

    So before asking a survivor why they didn’t behave differently, stop and ask yourself what you would want someone to say to you if the roles were reversed. Because the goal isn’t to find the perfect victim. There is no perfect survival response.

    There is only a human being trying to make it out alive, and a jury of people ready to question the reality.

    The scale of this is not imaginary. This isn’t just something women are exaggerating on the internet.

    The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 1 in 3 women worldwide, about 840 million women and girls, have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate-partner violence or non-partner sexual violence during their lifetime.

    WHO identifies gender inequality and harmful gender norms among important drivers of violence against women.

    That number is so enormous that it almost stops sounding like individual stories.

    But that’s exactly what it is. 840 million individual stories. Different countries. Different religions. Different races. Different socioeconomic backgrounds. Different ages. Different personalities. Different clothes. Different lives.

    And somehow the common denominator keeps being the same thing. Someone else’s decision to violate another person’s autonomy.

    So when women talk about safety, we’re not inventing a hypothetical problem.

    We’re talking about something that happens at a scale large enough to constitute a global human-rights crisis.

    AND YES, MEN EXPERIENCE THIS TOO.

    This is important. Because I am not interested in turning this into women versus men.

    Men have been sexually assaulted. Men have been be raped. Men can be victims of coercion. Men can be afraid to report what happened to them because of shame, masculinity, disbelief, or humiliation.

    And rigid gender expectations hurt men, too.

    The idea that a man must always want sex. That a man can’t be vulnerable. That a man must fight. That a man can’t say no. That a man should “take it as a compliment.” That a man must be dominant. This a topic that needs to be discussed because it is wrong.

    We have movies that depict assault with a woman as a painful experience, yet assault against men is sometimes played for laughs.

    That is disgusting on both ends. Those ideas are destructive.

    So let me make my position extremely clear. The battle is not between men and women. Men are human. Women are human.

    The battle is between patriarchy and human rights.

    I don’t use the word patriarchy to mean that every man has an easy life. I don’t believe every man is powerful. I don’t believe every woman is powerless. And I certainly don’t believe every man is a predator.

    That’s not what the word means.

    Patriarchy describes systems and social arrangements in which men, as a group, have historically held greater authority and control over areas such as political power, property, family structures, inheritance, sexuality, and economic life.

    And systems don’t require every individual person to consciously agree with them. Sometimes they’re maintained simply because people keep saying: “That’s just how things are.”

    That’s the part I want to challenge. The person who commits the assault is responsible for the assault. But the culture around that person can either make that behavior harder to excuse, or easier.

    It can teach boys that persistence is romantic. It can teach girls that accommodating men is feminine. It can teach women to tolerate discomfort. It can teach witnesses to mind their business. It can teach victims to stay quiet.

    And it can teach everyone to accept the system as normal. That’s where the battle is. This is the part I wish we talked about more.

    We tell girls: “Don’t get raped.”

    But do we tell boys: “Don’t rape someone.”

    We tell girls: “Don’t walk home alone.”

    But do we tell boys: “If you see a woman being followed, check whether she’s safe.”

    We tell girls: “Don’t get too drunk.”

    But do we tell boys: “Someone being intoxicated does not make them available to you.”

    We teach girls how to identify dangerous men. We should also teach boys how to make sure they are never that man. And we should teach boys what it means to intervene when another man crosses a line.

    Not necessarily by starting a physical fight. I don’t want that either. Women shouldn’t have to fight men. Men shouldn’t have to fight men. Society should be better at stopping the behavior before violence becomes the only imagined intervention.

    Sometimes intervention is: “Hey. She said no.”

    Sometimes it’s: “Leave her alone.”

    Sometimes it’s getting security.

    Sometimes it’s checking on someone afterward.

    Sometimes it’s refusing to laugh at the joke.

    Sometimes it’s simply refusing to normalize the behavior.

    Silence doesn’t always make someone equally responsible for another person’s actions, but silence can absolutely help create environments where harmful behavior feels normal.

    I remember being young and walking around in New York. I was walking with three girls and three guys. Random men started approaching us. Hitting on us. And at one point, one of them ran his hands through my hair.

    Nobody did anything. That moment stayed with me. Not because I expected them to start a fight. I didn’t. I don’t want every uncomfortable interaction to become a physical confrontation. It’s unfair to be expected to be ready for battle against bad values every single time.

    But I remember thinking: Why didn’t anybody say anything?

    And then there’s the bizarre economy we’ve built around women’s fear.

    We have created an entire ecosystem of products, services, apps, features, alarms, rides, tracking systems, self-defense classes, locks, cameras, and personal safety devices designed around the reality that women have to think about being harmed.

    Let’s take transportation as an example. Companies build safety features specifically because women have legitimate concerns about traveling alone. That’s useful. But there’s something deeply revealing about it.

    We have become so accustomed to women needing protection that the existence of the fear itself has become a business model. And I’m not saying safety tools shouldn’t exist. Of course they should. I use safety precautions too.

    But precaution is not consent.

    We have normalized the precautions so thoroughly that sometimes we forget to question the reason they exist.

    So when I’m asked: “Did you book a female driver?”

    I’m met with a lot of thought, and left with a lot of sadness that cannot be explained away in simple terms.

    Think about what women are asked to monitor.

    Our clothing. Our alcohol intake. Our location. Our transportation. Our friendships. Our dating history. Our sexuality. Our body language. Our tone. Our friendliness. Our rejection. Our timing. Our reputation.

    We are expected to anticipate someone else’s potential lack of self-control. That is an enormous psychological burden.

    And the cruelest part? If something does happen, those same precautions can be turned against us.

    “Why didn’t you follow the rules?”

    Because apparently women are expected to become experts at preventing other people’s decisions.

    Are you fucking kidding me?

    In the land that is supposed to be about freedom, we are sitting here talking about Ivy League schools protecting predators so that their reputation does not tank. We have rich families covering for them so that all they have to do is write an essay. Because THAT is torture for the new generation, apparently. How pathetic.

    We actively are fighting for our rights, again, because an orange and it’s orange party decided it doesn’t like women. But I’m not surprised. I don’t have a lot of high hopes and values for a country when its people who can justify voting for an aged and molded orange.

    But then… there is India.

    India. The sacred land. The holy land. A civilization with an extraordinary spiritual vocabulary for Dharm, consciousness, divinity, creation, and the nature of existence.

    This is where my anger becomes complicated. Because I come from a culture with an extraordinary spiritual vocabulary for the feminine. And I love that part of it.

    I don’t want to reject India. I want India to live up to itself. I want Indians to live up to themselves. Sanātana Dharm contains traditions in which the feminine isn’t merely tolerated. She is divine.

    Shakti. Durga. Kali. Lakshmi. Saraswati. Parvati.

    The Mother.

    The feminine principle can represent power, knowledge, prosperity, creativity, protection, destruction, transformation, and the force that animates existence.

    Ardhanārīśvara is an image in which Shiva is represented as half male and half female, expressing the unity of Shiva and Shakti.

    Think about how profound that is. The feminine isn’t presented merely as something decorative beside the masculine.

    She is Shakti. Power. Energy. Force.

    And then we have Ardhanārīśvara: one divine form containing both masculine and feminine.

    Not enemies. Not competing for dominance.

    One whole.

    So I have to ask:

    How can a civilization possess a spiritual philosophy in which masculine and feminine are imagined as interconnected, and still struggle so profoundly with the treatment of actual women?

    I remember once sitting in a room with five women and one man. The elder in that group got up, grabbed a glass of water, and brought it to the one man because he was thirsty.

    But something caught my attention. I noticed how the elder behaved toward the man versus the women. There was something about the way she instantly jumped off her chair, filled a glass of water, covered it with a plate on top, and hurried to the man with it. This was someone who had vast knowledge of “Hinduism”.

    And that man? He said, very simply: “Learn something.”

    I know it is something small to them. I also know this is just fun and tease. There is nothing but genuine love and kindness for everyone. But does that bother you the way it bothers me? Because it bothered me. A lot.

    Not because bringing someone a glass of water is inherently wrong. But because of the expectation underneath it. The automatic assumption. The cultural programming. The idea that the man should be served while the women simply continue.

    There is nothing wrong with loving and caring for your significant other. My mom always took care of my dad, not because she had to, but because she loved him. I take care of my partner, not because I have to, but because I love him. These are not values that were brought to from “Hinduism” and that the husband is God. No.

    This comes from Sanātana Dharm. Yes, there is a difference. Because our significant others did not expect it, did not ever joke to “learn something”, and they did not believe this is the way things are. They received the love, they cherished it, and they gave it right back times a hundred. Because we are ALL divine. We are ALL beings.

    There is another part of this tradition that I want to reclaim. The feminine has long been associated with auspiciousness, beauty, prosperity, and abundance.

    Lakshmi isn’t simply a symbol of money. She represents abundance and auspiciousness.

    And traditions that ritually honor young girls as manifestations of the Divine Feminine. That symbolism matters.

    Because when we talk about honoring women, I don’t mean: “Spend all your money on her.”

    I don’t mean: “Spoil her until she never has to do anything.”

    I don’t mean: “Put her on a pedestal.” A pedestal can be another kind of cage.

    I mean something much simpler.

    Cherish her. Feed her. Protect her. Listen to her. Respect her choices. Give her room to become herself.

    Give her abundance – not necessarily through possessions, but through the abundance of being loved, supported, respected, and allowed to exist without fear.

    Sometimes abundance is simply:

    “You are safe here.”

    “You are wanted here.”

    “Your voice matters here.”

    “You don’t have to earn your right to exist.”

    That is the kind of abundance I mean.

    And this is where history gets complicated.

    I don’t want to romanticize prehistoric humanity and claim that women everywhere once lived in some universal paradise before patriarchy appeared. That’s not historically defensible. Human societies have always been diverse.

    Women have held power in some societies and periods. Women have been oppressed in others. Some traditions preserved female authority alongside male authority. Others became intensely patriarchal. There wasn’t one single day when someone woke up and invented patriarchy.

    But throughout history, many societies developed systems that increasingly regulated women’s sexuality, reproduction, labor, inheritance, property, marriage, mobility, and family roles.

    And once those systems become deeply embedded in law, religion, economics, and family structure, they can begin to look like nature.

    People stop saying: “This is the system we created.”

    And start saying: “This is simply what women are supposed to do.”

    That distinction matters. Because something can be traditional without being inevitable. Something can be old without being sacred. And something can be culturally normal without being morally right.

    Maybe one of the strangest contradictions in human history is this: People have called women sacred while simultaneously trying to control them.

    We call Nature Mother.

    Mother Earth. Mother Nature. The source of creation. Nourishment. Life. Death. Regeneration.

    And then we tell women:

    Don’t be too loud. Don’t be too sexual. Don’t be too ambitious. Don’t go there. Don’t stay out late. Don’t challenge him. Don’t embarrass the family. Don’t make him angry. Don’t make yourself “unmarriageable.” Don’t talk back. Don’t have too many partners. Don’t have too few.

    Don’t be too independent. Don’t be too dependent. Don’t age too visibly. Don’t show too much. Don’t hide too much. Be beautiful. But not too beautiful. Be desirable. But don’t invite desire.

    Be strong. But don’t intimidate men. Be successful. But don’t make your husband feel small. Be nurturing. Be agreeable.

    Be everything. Just don’t be inconvenient.

    We worship the feminine. Then we police the woman.

    How did we get here?

    The first thing I do want to look at is religion. And I want to be especially careful here. I don’t want to cherry-pick religious texts from different faiths simply to prove that religion is sexist.

    That would be intellectually lazy.

    Religious traditions are enormous, internally diverse bodies of thought. They contain texts that have been interpreted in patriarchal ways. They contain texts that elevate women. Texts that emphasize mutual obligations.

    Stories of female authority. Female wisdom. Female devotion. Female divinity. And traditions of reinterpretation.

    So rather than weaponizing religion, I would rather ask: What happens when human beings take a spiritual ideal and turn it into a hierarchy?

    Sometimes the problem is that people take something sacred and use it to justify control. And that distinction matters too.

    If you tell me that a woman is sacred, I want to know: How do you treat her?

    Not how beautifully you speak about her. Not how many goddesses you worship. Not how many rituals you perform. How do you treat the actual woman in front of you?

    You can worship Durga and still tell your daughter to sit down and be quiet. You can pray to Lakshmi and still treat your wife like property. You can celebrate motherhood while expecting mothers to sacrifice themselves indefinitely.

    You can invoke Saraswati while discouraging your daughter from becoming educated. You can admire Kali’s power while telling women that anger makes them unattractive.

    You can call Parvati the embodiment of devotion while confusing devotion with submission. And you can celebrate Ardhanārīśvara while believing the man should always have the final word.

    That’s the contradiction I care about. I don’t want to weaponize spirituality against people. I want spirituality to hold us accountable to its highest ideals.

    If you believe in Shakti, respect women’s power. If you honor Lakshmi, don’t treat daughters like burdens. If you revere Saraswati, educate girls.

    If you admire Durga, stop teaching women that strength is unfeminine. If you celebrate the Mother, don’t dehumanize mothers.

    And if Shiva and Shakti can exist as one divine whole, maybe we should stop pretending that human beings need a hierarchy between masculine and feminine in order to function.

    I want to be so clear with you.

    THIS IS NOT A WAR BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN.

    I need to say this again. Because I know someone will read this and hear: “She hates men.”

    I’ll admit it.

    I do say I hate men. There are countless moments when I have felt deeply disgusted and unsafe by men as a group. That’s an emotional response to many lived experience, and to witnessing the behavior of other people.

    Because every single woman has a story. Your mom, your sister, your cousin, your daughter, your girlfriend, your wife, your best friend, the ex that broke your heart, the ex whose heart you broke. Every single woman. This is why they would rather pick the bear.

    But it is not a scientific conclusion about every individual man. Because I know men who are kind. Men who protect without controlling. Men who listen. Men who respect boundaries. Men who call their friends out. Men who believe women.

    Men who don’t need to dominate a room. Men who don’t need to prove their masculinity by humiliating someone else. Men who understand that consent isn’t an obstacle.

    Men who understand that strength doesn’t mean intimidation. Men who understand that protecting women doesn’t mean owning them.

    Some of the greatest men in my life are the ones I grew up with, and my parents never instilled fear or duty regarding men. I wasn’t taught I had to serve them. I was not taught that I have to wear certain things because of them. I was not taught that there was something wrong with being friends with them. I didn’t start seeing the distinction until I was out around society a lot more.

    My feelings don’t come from nowhere.

    I am a survivor of sexual assault and rape. I was 15, 16, 23, and 24. These specific ages include the men who have succeeded in taking away my autonomy, not the men that forced themselves upon me in trying to succeed. I was too young to even know what to identify it as. I lost my virginity to it. I was in a relationship with someone who didn’t believe my no. I believed someone to be my mentor.

    These aren’t theoretical conversations for me. I know what it means to have your body become a place where someone else believes they have authority. I know what it feels like to know that something wrong was done to you, but the accused ends up being you. I was blamed for it. I was shamed for it.vI was told I shouldn’t be so hurt because it happened to me before.

    So, yes, I speak from a lot of experience. It was this very experience that brought me to PCOS/PMOS. Trauma changes your body. I still live with it. Every. Single. Day.

    So no, this isn’t a war against men. It is a war against the idea that one human being is entitled to dominate another. And that is a human-rights issue.

    Women are tired.

    Tired of being told to be careful. Tired of being told to dress differently. Tired of being told to carry something for protection. Tired of being told to send our location. Tired of being told not to drink. Tired of being told to smile. Tired of being told we’re overreacting.

    Tired of being told we’re too emotional. Tired of being told we’re too aggressive. Tired of being told we’re too independent. Tired of being told we’re not independent enough. Tired of being told to make ourselves smaller. Tired of being told to make ourselves more desirable.

    Tired of having to calculate whether being friendly will be misinterpreted. Tired of having to calculate whether being rude will make someone angry. Tired of wondering whether saying no will trigger retaliation. Tired of being asked what we did before anyone asks what happened to us.

    And most of all, tired of being told that the solution is for us to become better at surviving the problem.

    And then there is the law. Because culture, values, and spirituality aren’t the only things that matter. Law matters. Institutions matter. Enforcement matters. Access to justice matters.

    The way a society defines sexual violence matters. And laws themselves can reveal what a society considers a person’s rights to be.

    THIS IS WHY “NOT ALL MEN” ISN’T THE END OF THE CONVERSATION.

    It’s not even the conversation at all.

    When a woman talks about violence against women, responding with: “Not all men” misses the point.

    I know it’s not all men, but it’s always the ones who feel offended by it that feel the need to defend it. Because the ones who are secure? The ones who truly value human life? They are not offended.

    Give credit to the intellect. Every woman had to learn to be an adult when she was just a little girl. We are aware. We know. We know not all men are rapists. We know not all men harass women. We know not all men are violent.

    But “not all men” doesn’t answer the question.

    The question is: What are we doing about the men who are? What are we doing about the culture that teaches people to excuse them? What are we doing when we witness it? What are we teaching the next generation?

    That’s the conversation. So stop saying “Not all men” as though you’ve contributed something profound to the conversation.

    We do not need more women who know how to survive. We need fewer reasons for women to need survival skills.

    I don’t want the ultimate achievement to be: “Congratulations! You have learned how to detect danger in every room.”

    And yet… I am almost certain my discernment has been praised the most.

    I don’t want anyone’s daughter to need a mental checklist every time she leaves the house. I don’t want her to know how to hold her keys between her fingers. I don’t want her to have to pretend to be married.

    I don’t want her to text: “Home safe.” because she knows that someone might hurt her. I want her to text: “I had fun.”

    I want her to walk. I want her to laugh. I want her to dance. I want her to travel. I want her to wear whatever she wants. I want her to be alone without being afraid. I want her to reject someone without calculating the consequences.

    I want her to know that her no is enough. And I want boys to grow up knowing that this isn’t some extraordinary request. It’s basic human decency.

    And it isn’t about teaching women to live their life instead of fearing it. No.

    And here is what bothers me most.

    Women are constantly asked to build a legal case for their own boundaries.

    I said no. I was wearing this. I wasn’t drinking. I was drinking. I had a boyfriend. I didn’t have a boyfriend. I told him three times. I moved away. I froze. I fought. I didn’t fight. I screamed. I couldn’t scream.

    Why are we constantly being asked to prove that we deserved autonomy?

    Why isn’t the starting point simply: She is a HUMAN BEING. That’s enough.

    And this brings me back to where I started.

    To Shakti. To Lakshmi. To the feminine. To women. To men. To humanity.

    I don’t want women placed on pedestals. Because a pedestal is still a cage. I don’t need to be worshipped. I need to be respected. I don’t need a man to protect my honor. I need to be recognized as someone who owns her own life.

    And perhaps that is the lesson we have missed.

    The feminine does not need to be worshipped instead of respected. She needs to be respected because she is human. And if your spirituality teaches you to see the feminine as sacred, beautiful. Let that spirituality begin with the woman standing directly in front of you.

    Your daughter. Your wife. Your mother. Your sister. Your coworker.

    The woman walking alone down the street. The woman who said no. The woman who changed her mind. The woman who doesn’t want you. The woman who wants you. The woman who owes you absolutely nothing.

    Because if we can worship Shakti but cannot respect a woman’s autonomy, perhaps we have misunderstood what Shakti was trying to teach us.

    The offering was never supposed to be her freedom. The offering was supposed to be our reverence. And reverence without respect isn’t reverence at all. You cannot have a profound awe for something and then actively disrespect it.

    This is not a war. It is a correction.

    A correction of the idea that women are naturally submissive. A correction of the idea that men are naturally dominant. A correction of the idea that girls must be taught how not to be harmed instead of boys being taught not to harm.

    A correction of the idea that a relationship gives someone ownership of another person’s body. A correction of the idea that a woman’s clothing is an invitation.

    A correction of the idea that silence means consent. A correction of the idea that persistence is romance. A correction of the idea that protecting women means controlling them. A correction of the idea that spirituality means nothing more than rituals.

    A correction of the idea that tradition is automatically morality. A correction of the idea that women must become smaller so men can feel bigger.

    And perhaps most importantly, a correction of the idea that this is a battle between men and women.

    It isn’t.

    The battle is between domination and dignity. Between entitlement and autonomy. Between silence and accountability. Between patriarchy and human rights.

    Because women are humans. Men are humans. And no human being should have to earn the right to feel safe inside their own body.

    I don’t want a world where women become better at surviving men. I want a world where women don’t have to.I don’t want to teach women how to live at their own risk. I want the risk to stop being theirs alone.

    That’s the real offering we owe each other. Not control. Not ownership. Not fear. Not silence. Just the simple, radical recognition that another human being is a human being.

    That should have been enough all along.

    – nk

  • ETA: TBD

    When I was a kid, I don’t think I ever really imagined myself becoming anything. Not because I had no imagination, I was a child, of course I had dreams. 

    But there is a difference between imagining something and believing you will actually get to live long enough to become it.

    By the time I was five, I had already experienced loss, change, and grief before I had the language, or the space, to understand it.

    Five is small. Five is supposed to be scraped knees, cartoons, birthday cakes, school pictures.

    It isn’t supposed to be a crash course in real life situations like death, loss, and grief. It isn’t supposed to be learning to navigate the emotions of adults around you, and learning how to regulate your nervous system. And it most definitely isn’t supposed to be swallowing your childhood whole because of it.

    But life doesn’t always ask what age you’re supposed to be.

    Sometimes it just happens. And when you’re that young, you don’t necessarily process what happens.

    You absorb it. You adapt. You keep going.

    And somewhere along the way, I became someone who stopped expecting very much from life. 

    I didn’t have some elaborate vision of who I would be when I grow up, and when we had to write letters to our future self I’d often wonder what the point was.

    I wasn’t sitting around at ten years old thinking about my career, my apartment, my finances, or where I’d eventually live.

    I wasn’t a kid putting a pillow case over my head, nor have I even planned what my wedding would look like. 

    Honestly, I don’t even think I expected to make it that far ahead. 

    And you know what? There was something strangely simple about that. If you don’t expect much from the future, the future can’t disappoint you.

    At some point, it became less about: “What do I want to be?”

    It was more about: “Will I even make it there?”

    That is a very different way to grow up.

    And looking back now, it’s almost wild to realize how young I was when I stopped wanting to exist. 

    I didn’t want to get up in the morning. I didn’t want to do things. I didn’t want to commit to anything.

    I was the girl who would start something and then immediately give it up.

    Put me in an extracurricular activity? I’d leave.

    Give me something to try? I didn’t want to do it.

    Ask me what I wanted to be? I didn’t know.

    Ask me what I wanted to do? I didn’t know.

    Ask me who I wanted to become? I hadn’t even thought about it.

    And I don’t think I understood why. I just knew that I didn’t want anything. Or at least, I thought I didn’t.

    Then I found something I could want.

    Eventually, there was something I became passionate about. And the feeling was unlike anything I had experienced before. Because for the first time, I wasn’t forcing myself to care.

    I cared. I wanted it. I could see myself in it.

    And I think part of the reason I wanted it so badly was because it was familiar.

    It was what I knew. It was what I had been surrounded by. It was the world I understood.

    But if I’m being completely honest with myself now, I think there was something underneath that desire that I didn’t have the maturity to recognize yet.

    I think I believed it would finally make me important.

    Important enough to be seen.

    Important enough to be heard.

    Important enough that people couldn’t talk over me.

    Important enough that I couldn’t be overlooked.

    Important enough that I wouldn’t be overshadowed.

    Important enough that maybe the world would finally have to acknowledge that I existed.

    Because when you’ve spent a significant part of your childhood feeling invisible, recognition can start to look a lot like love.

    Achievement can start to look like worth. Success can start to look like proof.

    Proof that you mattered. Proof that you had become someone. Proof that everything you went through had somehow produced something extraordinary.

    So I built a dream. And I chased it with everything I had.

    And for a long time, I thought: This is it. This is what I’m supposed to do. This is who I’m supposed to become. This is the thing that will finally make all of it mean something.

    I wanted to be in rooms where I couldn’t be ignored. I wanted to be around people who couldn’t talk over me. I wanted to be looked at. I wanted to be respected. I wanted to be someone people remembered. Someone people admired.

    Someone people could point to and say,

    “Look what she became.”

    Maybe some of that was ambition. But some of it was a little girl asking the world to finally notice her.

    And I didn’t know the difference.

    The problem with getting exactly what you thought you wanted is the part nobody really prepares you for.

    What happens when you get there? What happens when the dream you spent years chasing actually starts happening? What happens when you’re finally in the rooms?

    Around the people. Around the opportunities. Around the things you once thought would make you feel like you’d finally arrived.

    And instead of feeling fulfilled, you realize: I don’t want this anymore.

    That realization can knock the wind out of you. Because it may be one thing to fail at a dream, but it’s another thing to realize you don’t want it.

    Failure gives you a direction, but doubt can leave you staring at the map wondering where the hell you’re supposed to go next.

    And when everyone around you thinks that thing is your identity, walking away from it can feel like walking away from yourself.

    People ask:

    “Why didn’t you do it?”

    “Why didn’t you continue?”

    “You were so good at that.”

    “You always said this was what you wanted.”

    And the truth is difficult to explain.

    Because how do you tell someone: I finally got close enough to my dream to realize it was everything I didn’t actually want?

    How do you explain that the dream was real? The passion was real. The work was real. The ambition was real. But the reason underneath it was something you didn’t understand yet.

    I wasn’t necessarily chasing my soul’s path. I was chasing significance.

    I was trying to become someone who could never again be ignored.

    And eventually, I had to admit that no amount of recognition could heal the part of me that believed I needed recognition to have value.

    Then came the spiritual awakening.

    After COVID, something in me shifted. I started looking at my life through a completely different lens.

    My awakening gave me language for things I had been feeling without knowing how to articulate them.

    I started learning about dharma. About attachment. About karma. About the difference between action and attachment to the fruits of action.

    About how desire itself isn’t necessarily the problem. It’s what we believe that desire will give us.

    And slowly, I started looking back at my dreams differently.

    I realized that maybe the dreams weren’t wrong. The lens was wrong.

    The things I wanted weren’t necessarily bad. The ambition wasn’t bad.

    The desire to create wasn’t bad. The desire to achieve wasn’t bad.

    The desire to be seen wasn’t even something I needed to be ashamed of.

    But I had attached my worth to the outcome.

    I thought:

    If I accomplish this, then I’ll matter.

    If people know me, then I’ll matter.

    If I’m successful enough, then I’ll matter.

    If I become extraordinary enough, then maybe everything I’ve experienced will have been worth something.

    And spirituality forced me to confront something much harder:

    What if I already mattered before I accomplished any of it?

    That question changed everything. Because if I already have inherent value, then achievement can no longer be responsible for proving it.

    And if achievement isn’t responsible for proving my worth, then I am finally free to ask:

    What do I actually want to do?

    Not what will make me impressive. Not what will make people remember me. Not what will make people finally understand what I’m capable of.

    What actually serves me? What serves other people? What feels aligned? 

    What am I here to give?

    That is a much harder question. And I still don’t completely know the answer.

    But I think I’m finally beginning to understand my purpose.

    Maybe my purpose isn’t to become someone everyone knows. Maybe it’s to become someone who makes people feel known.

    There is a difference.

    I spent so much of my life wanting to be understood. Now I think I want to understand people.

    I know what it feels like to feel alone in a room. To say something and feel like nobody heard you. To have something happening inside you and have nowhere safe to put it. To wonder whether anyone actually sees you.

    And maybe that’s why my purpose doesn’t feel as complicated anymore.

    I don’t necessarily know what title belongs on it. I don’t know exactly what career it becomes. I don’t know what form it takes.

    But I know what I want the impact to feel like.

    I don’t want people to feel as alone as I did. I don’t want people to feel like there is something fundamentally wrong with them because nobody understood them.

    I want people to know that their stories matter. That their pain doesn’t make them unworthy. That they don’t have to become extraordinary to deserve love. That being seen isn’t something you have to earn.

    Maybe I spent years trying to become a light because I knew exactly what darkness felt like.

    And maybe that is the part of my story that finally makes sense.

    … And then life changed again.

    Because just when I thought I was beginning to understand what meaning meant to me…

    I experienced the greatest loss of my life.

    And suddenly all of those philosophical questions became personal again.

    What does meaning mean when the person who was such a huge part of your world isn’t here to experience the life you’re still trying to build?

    What does it mean to achieve something when the person you desperately want to tell isn’t sitting beside you?

    How do you keep pursuing your dreams when one of the people who made the dream feel meaningful is no longer here?

    I don’t have beautiful answers for all of that. I’m still figuring it out. I think that’s important to say. Because sometimes spirituality gets presented like enlightenment means you’ve stopped hurting.

    It doesn’t.

    Sometimes knowing better doesn’t mean hurting less. Sometimes understanding impermanence doesn’t make loss painless. Sometimes knowing that life is temporary makes you feel the temporary nature of everything even more deeply.

    I’m still figuring out what my life means now. I’m still figuring out what my dreams look like without the person I imagined beside me.

    I keep reminding myself that I don’t need to have that answer yet.

    One thing that has changed in the last year is… I have stopped caring about milestones entirely. 

    Or at least, I stopped letting them define me. I still catch myself sometimes. Of course I do. I’m human.

    Sometimes I still look around. Sometimes I still wonder if I’m where I thought I’d be. Sometimes I still feel that little sting when I realize I’m not following the timeline I once imagined.

    But I don’t worship the timeline anymore.

    Because I’ve learned something the hard way: You can manifest something and still not be the person who can sustain it.

    You can get the house. The relationship. The career. The recognition. The money. The opportunity. The room you’ve always dreamed of entering.

    And still lose yourself inside it.

    I’ve lived enough experiences to understand that getting something and being ready to hold something are two completely different things.

    Sometimes life doesn’t give you the thing because it’s denying you. 

    Sometimes you aren’t ready to sustain what you’re asking for.

    And sometimes the lesson isn’t: “How do I get this?”

    It’s: “Who do I need to become so that when I get this, I don’t lose myself?”

    That changed the way I think about timing.

    Maybe I’m not behind. Maybe I’m becoming.

    Maybe there are parts of me that needed to develop before the life I want could actually feel like mine. And maybe that’s why starting over feels so exhausting.

    But when you start over again, you’re not starting from zero. NO!

    You’re starting with everything you’ve already learned.

    You’re starting with the knowledge of what you don’t want.

    You’re starting with a deeper understanding of yourself.

    You’re starting with scars.

    You’re starting with wisdom you didn’t ask for.

    You’re starting with a version of yourself who knows what it feels like to get what she thought she wanted and realize it wasn’t enough.

    That isn’t nothing. That’s actually a lot.

    The person I thought I’d be by now probably had more answers. She probably knew exactly what she wanted. She probably had a very clean timeline. She probably thought success would feel like arriving somewhere.

    But she wouldn’t have known what I would experience. She wouldn’t have known what would change me. She wouldn’t have known who I would lose. Who I would meet. What I would survive. What I would learn. What I would eventually stop wanting.

    She wouldn’t have known that some dreams would expire. Or that other dreams would take their place. She wouldn’t have known that sometimes you have to build an entire life before you understand what kind of life you actually want.

    And maybe that’s okay. We grieve lives we thought we would have, and then we move forward.

    Because I don’t think I’m supposed to become the woman I imagined when I was younger. She was created from the information she had. She wanted recognition because she knew what it felt like to be overlooked. 

    She wanted achievement because she knew what it felt like to feel insignificant. She wanted importance because she spent so much of her life feeling invisible. She wanted to rise from the ashes because she needed the ashes to mean something.

    And I don’t judge her for that anymore. I understand her.

    But I also don’t need to keep living for her. Because now I know something she didn’t.

    Being seen is not the same as being known. Being admired is not the same as being loved.

    Achievement is not the same as purpose. And becoming important is not the same as becoming fulfilled.

    I don’t need the world to look at me and say, “Look what she became.”

    I just want to know that when I leave this world, I will have made a difference in lives. Hopefully the world.

    But, I want to look at myself and say, “Look who I became.”

    That is enough.

    I’m not behind. I’m finally on my own timeline.

    There are people who know what they want at eighteen. There are people who figure it out at twenty-five.

    There are people who completely reinvent themselves at thirty. There are people who do it at fifty.

    There are people who spend their entire lives becoming. There is no universal sequence. And yet we act like there is.

    Graduate. Career. Relationship. House. Marriage. Kids. Success. Happiness.

    Check. Check. Check.

    As if life is a checklist and we’re all taking the same exam at different speeds.

    But life isn’t a standardized test. There isn’t one correct answer sheet. And I don’t think success can mean the same thing at every age.

    At twenty-two, success might mean proving you can do something.

    At twenty-seven, it might mean realizing you don’t have to prove anything.

    At thirty-something, maybe it means having the courage to admit that the dream you worked so hard for isn’t actually your dream anymore.

    Maybe success is waking up and liking the person you’re waking up as. 

    Maybe it’s having relationships that feel safe.

    Maybe it’s creating something that didn’t exist before you made it.

    Maybe it’s becoming the kind of person who can hold the things you once prayed for without allowing them to become your identity.

    Maybe it’s being a light for someone who is still standing in the darkness you once knew.

    I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do with my life. And strangely, I don’t think that scares me the way it used to.

    Because once upon a time, I didn’t even know if I wanted a life.

    Now?

    I want one. I want to live it. I want to create. I want to love. I want to help. I want to understand. I want to build something meaningful. I want to leave something behind that makes someone else feel less alone.

    Maybe that’s the first thing I’ve ever wanted that doesn’t require an audience. And perhaps that’s how I know it’s different.

    The person I thought I’d be by now isn’t a failure. She’s a version of me I imagined before I had lived enough life to know what I actually wanted.

    She was a prediction. Not a promise.

    And I don’t have to spend the rest of my life trying to catch up to a person who never existed.

    I can thank her. I can grieve her. I can understand why she wanted what she wanted. I can honor how badly she needed to be seen.

    And then I can let her go.

    Because I don’t think my life is late. I think it’s still becoming.

    And maybe the greatest plot twist of all is realizing that the life I was chasing was never really the point. The point was becoming someone who could finally see herself clearly enough to choose a different one.

    Maybe I don’t need to become extraordinary. I just need to stay honest.

    Maybe I don’t need everyone to know my name. I just need the people I encounter to feel a little less alone.

    Maybe I don’t need to rise from the ashes so everyone can see how high I flew. Maybe I can simply take what survived the fire and use it to keep someone else warm.

    And maybe that’s the timeline I was looking for all along.

    – nk

  • Terms and Conditions

    I don’t really want to write about what led to that breakup, especially after coming so far past it all.

    And I mean, I can.

    I can talk about how I chose to be in a relationship with someone who was fundamentally wrong for me. I can talk about how I chose to ignore the red flags, even though they were waving right in front of my face. I can talk about how much of myself I lost in a relationship that I was sacrificing and losing so much of myself for.

    I can talk about how many times I blamed myself for things that were never mine to hold. I can tell you how many times I was gaslit into feeling like I was crazy. I can tell you how many times I was told I was “too much” for the things I asked for. I can tell you so much. 

    So, I will. Because it matters. Because the breakup is NOT the point. It was the catalyst.

    I’ll keep the beginning short and simple.

    An anxiously avoidant guy meets an anxiously attached girl, and they fall in love. They decide to build a future and move in together. They live together for two years, and, in that time, they find out things about each other.

    Some good. Some bad. Some ugly. Some beautiful.

    The beautiful is really beautiful. But the ugly is really ugly.

    The anxiously avoidant knows how to escape, and the anxiously attached doesn’t know how to let go or give space.

    The anxiously attached wants to talk. To communicate. To figure things out. But the avoidant walks out. 

    For a few moments? For a couple hours? No.

    For days.

    One day, the avoidant decides to pull away. Again. And the attached can feel it. The attached communicates it. But the avoidant denies it.

    And a month later, the avoidant finally leaves.

    Except I didn’t actually find out he was leaving from him. I found out from a text conversation with his cousin, discussing how he needs to escape from a “serious alcohol problem” I have. 

    The irony was almost cruel. This was something I had already been made to question about myself. I had been convinced that maybe I really did have a problem. Maybe I was the problem. Maybe this was why things were falling apart. 

    It was something that consumed me. One drink? Fine. Two? You’re absolutely wild. Three? You’re a damn alcoholic, you have a problem, and I’m not dealing with it.

    I think my first mistake was allowing someone with a “lightening” tattoo the size of a pea who could only handle Bud Lights in can form too much power and authority.

    But I digress…

    I remember crying in shame of myself while pouring every bottle I had down the drain, from my beautifully curated bar where I enjoyed making Tiffany Mimosas, just to prove to him that I am not something he drove me into identifying as. 

    But there was more… 

    He was going to pack up and leave, and he was NEVER going to tell me. I was just going to walk home one day and find his things gone from our home. 

    Again. 

    He denied it, then admitted it, then started insulting me.

    The problems were my fault. The differences were my fault. The relationship falling apart was my fault.

    Somehow, I was left standing there trying to defend myself against a case I didn’t even know I was on trial for.

    Ugh. I want to preface that this all started because of a couch.

    No, I’m not kidding.

    He really thought it wouldn’t fit. I really knew it would.

    He said I was stubborn, I never listen to anybody, and I act like I am better than everyone.

    I told him I have been decorating our home, alone, for two years.

    Maybe it stung. I meant it to.

    Do not be the kind of person to tell me something isn’t going to work out without finding me a solution. Your intention, at that point, is not to help – it is to criticize.

    But, I think what stung the most, was that the couch fit and it was perfect. 

    Because he stopped talking to me after that…

    Sigh. 

    That relationship made me question everything about myself – in a time where I was going through healing my inner child and wounds, navigating healthier relationships with my parents, trying to understand how to emotionally navigate watching my mom’s health deteriorate, going through difficult internal social/emotional changes whilst dealing with external judgment, ongoing grief from losing one of my closest family member – my mom’s brother, learning I have PCOS (renamed to PMOS), being unemployed and having an 8 month legal battle with unemployment only to not favor me because I “voluntarily left to take care of a family member with a disease”, and FINALLY, came to the final realization that I am repulsed by the entertainment industry and I cannot pretend anymore.

    And that’s a lot in just two years. My mental, emotional, physical, financial, psychological, and spiritual realms/health were all turbulent at the same time.

    He made life difficult when there was already so much pain. There was no possibility of mutual growth because anything against him was met with avoidance and abandonment. When I was with my friends and we were having a great time, he often got mad at me for acting so “out of character”.

    Fine. I stopped. It’s okay, I can practice my spirituality on my free time. But what is free time when you have a full time job and a home/life you’re supposed to co-exist with? Well, with the wrong person, it’s calling them up and asking if there’s chicken in the fridge and they don’t know because they have not opened in a week. They don’t know where the spices are, they don’t know what certain things are called, they use the rice cooker spoon to cook scrambled eggs and then burn both the pot and utensils…

    Fine. I’ll handle it. It’s okay. I can handle the house… but I won’t be in the country for the move to the next apartment. However, I have everything laid out here with instructions on what to pack and how to pack. Can you make sure it’s good? If you need anything call me, or call these people who will come at a drop of a hat to help.

    No. Just going to pack everything in a box, and hope it makes its way. By the way I broke your TV, and I have no idea where half of your clothes and shoes are.

    Eventually, he did leave. We talked the next day and he told me things about myself that I knew were not true, but I agreed with him anyway and asked him to please stay with me while I work on it.

    “I don’t want to watch you try to get better”

    He stayed for two days because he didn’t have anywhere to go, and I was still too nice and still hoping we can work it out. Yes, even after all that.

    My final straw, if it was even possible for me to have one, was when I was given evidence of possible infidelity. That’s a non-negotiable. I had two hours before I had to go to work and, in those two hours, I gathered all his things and threw it out for him to pick up.

    And I did not look back.

    Every single time I think about the incompetence, the blatant disregard, the lies… I just get so upset at the betrayal.

    Betrayal is hard. When someone betrays you, it’s like a knife in your back – as we all know. That pain is deafening because it crushes a reality you had set in your mind about this person, this connection, your relationship. The whirlpool of clouds wither away and you’re left with seeing the ruins behind it. 

    But when you betray yourself? It’s worse. It’s a knife in the front, and the one who put it there may not have been you. But you’re holding it down with your hands. And I felt that too. I felt his knife in my chest, I felt his hands around it. But I felt mine right on top, digging it more and more. That knife may have hurt, but it was the thing that was keeping us together. 

    There’s no coming back from betraying yourself, and you do not want to. Sitting with yourself and understanding where you could have stopped it brings shame to a whole new level.

    I truly believe that the universe will do everything needed to ensure what is not meant for you does not stay. It will make your life so unbearable that you have no choice but to choose yourself.  

    Looking back, I can see how much that relationship taught me about what happens when you spend so much time trying to prove that you are worthy of being chosen, that you forget to ask yourself whether you even want to be chosen by the person standing in front of you.

    Because, at the time, I was screaming to be chosen.

    I was screaming to be chosen by someone/something outside of me. I literally did not choose myself.

    Maybe that is what the journey is really about. Bringing those darker parts of ourselves to the surface. The parts we may have known were there. The parts we may not have even realized were there.

    The journey makes you aware. It forces you to see yourself.

    Because you cannot heal what you cannot see. You cannot work through something you don’t understand, or even know how deeply it is impacting your life.

    And for me, what I had to see was this:

    I was self-sacrificing for a man who kept dimming my light. A man who told me I was the problem whenever I disagreed with him. A man who never wanted to communicate. A man who blamed me for our differences. A man who would leave and not come home for days. No text. No call. Nothing.

    The first time something like that happened, I reached a point where I self-harmed.

    He saw the scar. He didn’t even care. I still chose him.

    I still ignored myself. I still chose him.

    That is the part that is difficult to admit.

    Because there are certain experiences in life that don’t simply break your heart, they introduce you to yourself.

    And sometimes, unfortunately, you have to lose something you desperately wanted before you realize what you were willing to lose in order to keep it.

    For a long time, I thought self-love meant loving yourself completely.

    Having yourself figured out.

    Knowing your worth every single day.

    Being confident. Being healed.

    Having boundaries. Having the perfect routines.

    Making all the right decisions.

    I don’t believe that anymore.

    I think self-love is much less glamorous than that.

    Sometimes self-love is simply deciding that you are not going to abandon yourself today.

    Even when you’re confused. Even when you’re messy. Even when you’re not proud of the way you’ve been coping. Even when you don’t understand yourself.

    Because the truth is, you don’t have to completely understand yourself to love yourself. You don’t have to be completely healed to be worthy of love. You don’t have to have your entire life together. You don’t even have to like every part of yourself.

    You just have to stop treating yourself like someone you are willing to sacrifice.

    Those have to be your Terms and Conditions.

    Non-negotiable.

    And that was something I had to learn the hard way.

    After the breakup, there were periods of my life where I was barely surviving. I was still coming up for air after being drowned so many times, I couldn’t believe I was being pushed back into the water.

    I was financially struggling to bring home a two-person salary in order to afford a roof over my head, and I would just barely make it.

    I was sleeping at odd times and working double shifts, sometimes six days with a side hustle, in order to pay rent. It was insane how I still had nothing left. It felt like a cycle of poverty that was never-ending, despite me having a roof over my head.

    The thought of food was a luxury that I did not always have. The only time I was guaranteed food was on the days I worked. Sometimes, if I could afford a meal on my days off, it would have to be a big quantity – something that would last me two meals. When I need to be hungry, I will get myself hungry. When I cannot eat, I will make myself lose my appetite.

    My routines weren’t okay. My habits weren’t okay. Some of the ways I coped weren’t okay. But at the time, they were what I had. They got me through. I think we are sometimes far too quick to judge the versions of ourselves who had to survive in ways our present selves wouldn’t choose.

    I don’t romanticize those versions of me. But I don’t hate them either. It’s quite the opposite, actually. I thank her.

    I stopped having to fight to keep a relationship together, but I had to start fighting to another battle of survival. 

    I think the hardest takeaway from this phase of life is something I am only now learning to heal. I developed an unhealthy relationship with food that, itself, brought a domino effect of darkness. It worsened my health, suffering with PCOS/PMOS.

    But.. what could I do? This was what my surviving looked like.

    Sigh…

    Let’s take a quick break & a deep breath together, I needed it.

    …

    …

    …

    Great, now let’s move forward.

    Survival doesn’t look like healing. Sometimes it looks like getting through the day. Sometimes it looks like distracting yourself. Sometimes it looks like people-pleasing because keeping everyone happy feels safer than asking yourself what you actually want. And sometimes it looks like choosing someone you already know isn’t right for you.

    That’s the part I had to confront.

    Because there is a very specific kind of pain that comes from choosing something you already know better than.

    It’s different from being blindsided. It’s different from not knowing.

    It’s the pain of your intuition whispering: You know.

    And you answering: I know. But I want this anyway.

    Because you chose it. You have to follow through. You can’t be a quitter. Even when some part of you already knows you should leave.

    That is where karma became very real to me. Not karma as some cosmic punishment system, no. Let’s not take this out of context the same way modern-day spirituality does. 

    Not, “I did something bad, so the universe is going to get me.”

    But karma as consequence. As cause and effect. As the reality that every choice creates an imprint.

    When we repeatedly act against what we know is right for us, against our conscience, against our dharma, we don’t escape the consequence simply because we wanted the outcome badly enough.

    The universe doesn’t necessarily have to punish you. Sometimes you punish yourself by continuing to live in contradiction with what you already know.

    And eventually, reality catches up. That’s what karma can feel like.

    Not revenge.

    Revelation.

    The lesson wasn’t that I should never love the wrong person. The lesson was that once I know someone is wrong for me, continuing to choose them comes at a price.

    And that price isn’t necessarily losing them, the price is losing pieces of yourself.  Your peace. Your confidence. Your voice. Your boundaries. Your ability to recognize yourself.

    And that is a price I am no longer willing to pay. 

    It wasn’t about learning how to leave a relationship. I learned how to stop leaving myself. And in doing that, I learned how to leave when I needed to.

    For years, I thought I was an independent woman. And in many ways, I was. I could handle things myself. I could make decisions myself. I could survive on my own.

    But emotionally? I was something else entirely. I was independently dependent. 

    To be honest, that phrase sounds like a contradiction because it is. If you’ve read The Walking Contradiction, available on the homepage, then you know.

    I had learned how to function independently while still making my emotional existence dependent on other people.

    Their approval. Their presence. Their happiness. Their perception of me. Their love. Their choosing me.

    I could stand on my own two feet while simultaneously needing someone else to tell me that I was worth standing on.

    That’s not independence. That’s independence with an invisible attachment cord.

    And I didn’t recognize it because I had confused self-sufficiency with self-love.

    I knew how to take care of myself. I didn’t necessarily know how to choose myself.

    There is a difference.

    I had to learn how to move from people-pleasing to self-honoring. 

    From codependency to interdependence.

    Because I don’t believe the answer is becoming so independent that you need nobody. That’s not love either.

    We are human beings. We need one another. We are meant to connect. To depend on people sometimes. To be held. To give. To receive.

    The goal isn’t to become someone who needs nothing.

    The goal is to become someone who can need another person without needing to disappear inside them.

    That, to me, is love. And this is where I think I misunderstood self-love.

    Self-love isn’t saying: “I don’t need you.”

    Self-love is saying: “I love you. I need you. I choose you. And I will still remain myself.”

    Because I didn’t want a love that required me to become less of me. I didn’t want a love that required me to shrink. I didn’t want a love that required me to abandon my intuition, my values, my dreams, my voice, my spirituality, my weirdness, my contradictions, or the parts of me I’m still trying to understand.

    I would rather lose everyone else than lose myself again.

    It’s easy to come back from losing someone, no matter how hard that may seem. It’s impossible to come back once you lose yourself, trust me, I am doing the work.

    One thing I knew definitvely though, was that the love of my life could never require me to become a stranger to myself. And if it does? Then it isn’t the love of my life. It’s the lesson of my life.

    There is something deeply spiritual about realizing that.

    In Sanātana Dharma, there is this understanding that beneath all of the identities we create: the partner, the daughter, the friend, the employee, the successful woman, the wounded woman, the woman who has it together, the woman who absolutely does not – we are something deeper.

    The ātman. The soul. The self beneath the roles.

    And perhaps my biggest lesson was realizing how often I had been willing to betray that deeper self in order to preserve an external relationship.

    I was so busy trying to be loved correctly by someone else that I wasn’t loving myself correctly. And that’s the real meaning of loving yourself before you can truly love another person.

    It doesn’t mean you need to become perfectly healed before you are allowed to be loved.

    It doesn’t mean you need to spend five years meditating, journaling, drinking green juice, and becoming some enlightened version of yourself before you’re relationship material.

    Seriously? Thank God.

    It simply means you need enough of a relationship with yourself to know when you’re abandoning yourself.

    Because you can enter love unfinished. You can enter love confused. You can enter love with wounds. You can enter love while still figuring yourself out. You can even enter love without fully understanding who you are. But you cannot sustainably love someone while continuously betraying yourself for them.

    Eventually, the bill comes due. And mine did.

    The breakup was actually my greatest release.

    And that release brought me to a love I could have never experienced from the version of me who was willing to abandon herself just to keep someone else.

    I don’t think the lesson was that I had to lose one person to eventually find another. The lesson was that I had to lose the version of myself who believed love required self-abandonment.

    I went through the pain. I did the work. I came back to self-love. And somewhere along that journey, I became capable of recognizing a love that didn’t require me to leave myself behind.

    The simplest way I can say it is this:

    The path to love is through devotion to self. I don’t believe love is simply an emotion. I believe it is a vibration. Something we live in. Something we become aligned with.

    And when we do the work to become aligned with the kind of love we are seeking, we become capable of recognizing, receiving, and sustaining it when it arrives.

    Because if you want love but you are living from fear, abandonment, self-betrayal, and attachment, you can easily mistake the wrong things for love.

    You can mistake anxiety for passion. You can mistake being needed for being loved. You can mistake someone choosing you temporarily for someone choosing you completely.

    You can mistake surviving a relationship for being fulfilled by one. 

    Until you learn the difference.

    So, how do you find love?

    Simple. You don’t. You find yourself.

    You don’t abandon yourself for love anymore. You don’t betray your knowing for attachment. You don’t confuse being needed with being loved. You don’t confuse surviving with living. And you certainly don’t confuse losing someone with losing yourself.

    Because people can leave. Relationships can end. People can disappoint you. People can misunderstand you. People can choose someone else.

    Life can take things from you that you thought you would have forever.

    But there is one person you are guaranteed to live with for the rest of your life.

    You.

    And that person deserves your devotion, too.

    So, in the greatest search for your soulmate, don’t forget to come home to your soul first. Because your soul was never something you had to find. It was always there.

    Beneath the heartbreak. Beneath the attachment. Beneath the fear.

    Beneath every version of yourself you thought you had to become to be loved.

    You just have to come home to it.

    – nk.

  • 404: Identity Not Found

    One of the strangest things about the human experience, in my opinion, is that we spend so much of our lives trying to figure out who we are.

    Sometimes the hardest thing to grasp in life is that we change. All of us. Our circumstances, our beliefs, our habits, our environment, what we want from life, what we want for ourselves, etc.

    Sometimes slowly. Sometimes dramatically. Sometimes so quietly that we don’t even realize we’ve changed – until we look in the mirror and wonder where the person we used to know went.

    That is what an identity crisis feels like to me. 

    It isn’t necessarily not knowing who you are. Sometimes it’s knowing exactly who you used to be, and not understanding why you can’t seem to become her again.

    Who am I without the things that made me feel like me?

    Identity is interesting because so much of it is built around what we do, what we have, how much we make, who we know, how people perceive us, and what we believe about ourselves.

    “I’m a social person. I’m disciplined. I’m athletic. I’m successful. I’m a go-getter. I’m fun. I’m energetic. I’m interesting. I’m the girl who has it together.”

    I wish I could say “and then life happens”

    … I wish I could say that.

    You stop doing those things. Your circumstances change. Your relationships change. Your body changes. Your mental state changes. Your priorities change.

    And suddenly, the things you used to use as evidence of who you were… aren’t there anymore.

    So you start asking yourself: If I’m not that person anymore, then who am I?

    Maybe that’s where the ego gets involved. 

    Because the ego isn’t necessarily this evil thing we’re supposed to destroy. I think the ego is simply the part of us that needs a definition. The ego is necessary because it keeps us safe in situations that require it, however, I truly believe that it is the very thing that holds everyone back in some part of their life. 

    The ego is just like that. It wants labels. It wants continuity. It wants to say: This is me. This is who I am. This is who I’ve always been.

    And when life forces that definition to change, the ego doesn’t always know what to do. It panics. It searches backward. It starts looking for the last version of you that felt familiar.

    And that is exactly what I’ve been doing. Before COVID, I knew who I was. Or at least, I thought I did.

    I was always doing something, going somewhere, seeing someone, moving my body, transforming through situations. There was a certain momentum to my life and it flowed with such ease.

    I didn’t question it. Why would I? When you’re living inside an identity that feels natural, you don’t stop to analyze it. You just live it.

    I didn’t wake up thinking: Wow, I am a person who has discipline and energy and a really active social life.

    I simply was. Until I wasn’t. And I don’t think I understood how much that would affect me. Because between that version of me and the person I am now, there wasn’t just time.

    There was trauma. A lot of it. I’ve experienced trauma before. I’ve been through difficult things before. But this was different.

    It was compound trauma.

    One thing after another.

    And then another.

    And another.

    And another.

    And even when one thing hadn’t been resolved, something else would happen. There was never really enough space to process one thing before I had to survive the next thing.

    Eventually, I couldn’t keep pretending I was functioning the way I used to. I didn’t want to go out. I didn’t want to socialize. I was sad. I was exhausted. 

    I was dealing with things internally that nobody could necessarily see. And when I looked around, it seemed like everyone else had something that I didn’t.

    Healthy parents. Healthy bodies. Supportive relationships. Financial stability. A sense of direction. 

    Something going for them. Some type of clarity in their life existed, and it was during a time that there was absolutely none in mine. And I felt like I had nothing.

    “So how are you? How is life?”

    Ha. What do you want me to talk about? How I am barely holding on?

    And it is a very lonely feeling to look at the people around you and feel like everyone else received a map to life that somehow never made it to you.

    I wasn’t me anymore. I wasn’t fun. I wasn’t interesting. I didn’t have energy. There was no spark. There was nothing in me. I was hollow.

    That’s when social anxiety hit. I lost my ability to socialize and I couldn’t stand the thought of being perceived by anyone. So I withdrew. And the more I withdrew, the further I felt from the person I used to be. And the further I felt from her, the more desperately I wanted her back. 

    Trying to become her again is the part I’ve struggled with the most. And I’ve spent so much time trying to reverse-engineer myself.

    What happened? Where did I go wrong? When did I stop being disciplined? When did I stop having energy? Why did I stop being social? When did I become so anxious? When did life become so exhausting? Why can’t I just get back to who I was?

    I’ve tried. I’ve tried to work out. I’ve tried to create routines. I’ve tried to become more social. I’ve tried to motivate myself. I’ve tried to force myself back into the shape of a person I remember being.

    And sometimes I get angry with myself: Why can’t you just be her again?

    But I’m starting to realize something.

    Maybe I can’t be her again because I’m not supposed to be. And that doesn’t mean she wasn’t real. She was. She was me.

    But she was me then. And I am me now.

    The part I didn’t understand, and I’ll be honest with you. Sometimes it’s STILL hard to understand because when I look back at that version of myself, I see so many things I admire.

    Her discipline. Her energy. Her confidence. And so much more. There are pieces of her that I genuinely want back.

    But there are things she had that have magnified in my life now.

    She had love and loyalty, and she did understand herself to a certain extent. She knew how to rise from her ashes, and she did it without hesitation.

    But she didn’t fully comprehend that she was a spiritual, divine being having a human experience. She didn’t understand the weight of creating her own reality.

    Ironically, I have a tattoo, a viking symbol on my left wrist, that means exactly that. Create your own reality. I felt like I’ve always been a mystical being, but, at the time, I didn’t know the power it would hold on my life. Not then.  

    Now I fully do understand. And that realization changes everything.

    Because creating your own reality isn’t just about manifesting the life you want. It’s also about understanding the person who is creating it.

    Understanding your patterns. Understanding your wounds. Understanding your fears. Understanding your ego. Understanding what you actually want versus what you were conditioned to want. Understanding what you’re willing to release. Understanding what you no longer need.

    That kind of work isn’t always visible. You can’t put emotional clarity on a fitness tracker. You can’t measure spiritual growth by how many followers you have. You can’t look at someone’s life and see how much internal work they’ve done.

    And I think I forgot that.

    And I’m tired. 

    I’m tired of trying to figure out why I’m so anxious. I’m tired of trying to understand why I feel functionally depressed. I’m tired of feeling exhausted by life.

    And I want to be careful when I say that, because I don’t want to romanticize the person I was before all of this as if she had an easy life. She didn’t.

    I’ve been through a lot. That girl knew how to survive, but something was different after COVID.

    It wasn’t that the pain was necessarily more legitimate than everything that came before it. It was that there was so much of it, for so long, and it kept coming from every direction.

    My relationships changed. My sense of security changed. My relationship with my body changed. My relationship with myself changed.

    And before I could really process one thing, there was another thing.

    And then another.

    And then another.

    It felt like life kept moving the finish line before I ever had the chance to catch my breath.

    I wasn’t necessarily giving up. I was functioning. But I was functioning on autopilot.

    There is a difference between surviving something and having the capacity to process what you’re surviving.

    I could keep going.

    I could go to work.

    I could answer people.

    I could show up.

    I could make decisions.

    I could get through the day.

    But internally, I was carrying so much that eventually there wasn’t much room left for me. And I think that’s what changed.

    The girl I was before COVID knew how to get back up because she had gotten back up before.

    She wasn’t naïve. She wasn’t untouched by life. She wasn’t some perfectly disciplined, emotionally uncomplicated version of me who had never experienced pain. She had already survived things I never thought I would.

    But after COVID, I wasn’t just getting back up from one thing.

    I was trying to stand while everything around me kept changing.

    Before? I wasn’t even aware of how exhausted I was because there wasn’t enough time to stop and feel it. After? I felt it in every part of me.

    It felt like I was drowning, and every time I tried coming up for air I was being pushed deeper down. 

    So when I look back now and wonder, Where did I go?

    I don’t think the answer is that I stopped being strong. Because I haven’t. I became exhausted from having to be strong in too many directions at once.

    And maybe that is why getting myself back has taken so long.

    But I am. I’m still here.

    And maybe that counts for more than I have allowed myself to acknowledge. There were so many points where I could have gone deeper into the rock bottom. And I didn’t. 

    I never let myself completely disappear – even when I felt like I had, and I never will. 

    So who would I rather be?

    If you ask me now, after all that I have understood about myself and my journey? 

    I choose me now. I will a hundred times over. 

    Because I love myself now in a way I don’t think I knew how to love myself then. I respect myself now. I understand myself more.

    I’ve seen myself come back from things I genuinely didn’t think I would come back from. I’ve watched myself lose things. I’ve watched myself grieve. I’ve watched myself break. And I’ve watched myself rebuild.

    I have wisdom now. I have clarity now.

    There are things I used to care desperately about that I don’t care about anymore. And honestly? That feels peaceful.

    I’m not chasing anymore. I’m not trying to force everything. I’m learning that what is meant for me does not require me to abandon myself to obtain it.

    And somewhere along the way, I became a better person.

    Not necessarily a more impressive person (honestly, I may be a bit boring now).

    I am a better person. For myself. And for the people around me.

    Maybe I didn’t lose myself. Maybe this is the part I’ve been getting wrong.

    Maybe. I. Did. Not. Lose. Myself.

    Maybe I lost some things that were no longer meant to come with me. And maybe some of the things I lost were actually necessary losses. 

    In order for the new to come in, the old must be released. Otherwise resistance is created by the old taking up space. 

    I am still trying to bring certain parts of that old identity back. I want the discipline. I want the energy. I want the movement. I want to feel excited about life again.

    But I don’t want to become the old me. I want to become a version of me that has everything she had and everything I learned afterward.

    Maybe that person doesn’t exist yet. Maybe that’s why I’ve been so confused. I’ve been looking backward for someone who is supposed to be built forward.

    And maybe that’s what an identity crisis actually is. Maybe it’s not always the loss of identity. Maybe sometimes it’s the space between identities.

    The awkward, uncomfortable, lonely space where the old version of you no longer fits, but the new version of you hasn’t fully developed yet.

    And perhaps that’s why it can feel like nothing is happening. Because sometimes you’re not supposed to be perceived yet. You’re supposed to be developed. You’re supposed to be formed. You’re supposed to become.

    Maybe self-identity isn’t something we are meant to understand at every stage of our lives. Maybe there are stages where we’re simply building it. And while we’re building it, it doesn’t have the space to be perceived just yet. It just needs to exist.

    And maybe, after everything I’ve been through, that’s where I am now. Not lost. Not finished. Not who I used to be. Not yet entirely who I’m becoming.

    Just somewhere in between. And for the first time, I’m okay with that.

    Because I didn’t lose myself. I finally made space for myself.

    A niche, if you will. The real niche.

    – nk.

     

  • The Walking Contradiction

    I think one of the strangest things about getting older is realizing that you can know yourself incredibly well and still not completely understand yourself at all. 

    I know who I am. And I don’t.

    I can tell you what I believe in, what I value, what I will tolerate, what I won’t, what makes me feel alive, what makes me shut down, what kind of life I want, and what kind of person I am trying to become.

    And yet, somehow, I am still constantly surprising myself.

    For the longest time, I thought this meant I was confused. Maybe I was indecisive. Maybe I was inconsistent. Maybe I hadn’t figured myself out yet. Maybe I needed to pick a version of myself and commit to it.

    But the older I get, the more I wonder if the problem was never that I didn’t know myself. Maybe the problem was that I was trying to force myself into being only one thing.

    Because I am a walking contradiction.

    I am incredibly independent, but I crave deep connection. 

    I want freedom, but I also want security.

    I am soft-hearted, but I have boundaries that are made of steel.

    I believe in letting things unfold naturally, but I also want to know exactly where everything is going.

    I can be deeply spiritual and incredibly logical at the same time.

    I believe in signs, synchronicities, intuition, astrology, tarot, and the strange little things that make life feel like it’s speaking directly to us. And yet, I question everything.

    I can believe that something is meant for me while simultaneously asking myself whether I’m projecting meaning onto it.

    I am optimistic, but I am not naive.

    I have hope, but I have also seen enough of life to know that sometimes things don’t work out simply because you wanted them badly enough.

    I romanticize life. I also see life exactly as it is.

    I can look at a sunset and genuinely believe the universe is reminding me to slow down. And then five minutes later, I can overanalyze a text message for absolutely no reason.

    I want a beautiful life, but I don’t want a life that only looks beautiful. I want the kind of life that feels beautiful when nobody is looking.

    I want success, but I don’t want to become so obsessed with achieving that I forget to actually live.

    I want money, but I don’t believe money is the point.

    I want a career that makes me proud, but I don’t want my job to become my identity.

    I want a home that is beautiful, comfortable, and mine, but what I really want is the feeling that comes with closing the front door and knowing I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.

    I want love. A lot of love. The kind of love that feels safe enough to be completely yourself inside of. But I also don’t want to lose myself in another person.

    And maybe that is something adulthood teaches you slowly:

    You can love someone deeply without abandoning yourself. You can want someone without needing them. You can build a life with someone without making them responsible for giving your life meaning.

    You can be independent and still let someone take care of you sometimes. You can be strong and still need comfort. You can be capable of doing everything yourself and still wish someone would simply say, “I’ve got this.”

    Those things aren’t mutually exclusive. For a long time, I thought they were.

    I thought strength meant not needing anyone. I thought independence meant never asking. I thought vulnerability meant giving someone the ability to hurt me. I thought having boundaries meant being difficult. I thought softness was something I had to protect from the world.

    Now I’m starting to think strength is something different.

    Maybe strength is knowing you could survive without someone and still choosing to love them.

    Maybe independence is knowing you can carry yourself but allowing someone else to help carry you anyway.

    Maybe vulnerability isn’t weakness, and instead, it is what happens when you decide that protecting yourself from every possible pain is no longer worth missing out on every possible joy.

    And this is where I find myself again:

    Contradicting myself.

    Because I am cautious, but I am also a dreamer.

    I analyze everything, but I trust my intuition.

    I have been hurt, but I still believe in love.

    I have lost things I thought I would keep forever, but I still get excited about what’s next.

    I can look at everything I’ve been through and say, “That changed me.”

    And I can look at myself now and say, “But it didn’t get to define me.”

    I think we underestimate how complicated it is to become yourself.

    Especially when you’ve spent years becoming who you needed to be. Who your family needed you to be. Who your friends needed you to be. Who a relationship needed you to be. Who your career needed you to be. Who you thought you should be.

    At some point, you have to ask a much harder question:

    Who am I when I don’t have to be anything for anyone?

    I’m still figuring that out. And strangely enough, I think that’s okay. Maybe self-discovery isn’t a finish line. Maybe there isn’t going to be some magical morning where I wake up and suddenly everything makes sense.

    Maybe knowing yourself isn’t about reaching a final answer. Maybe it’s about becoming comfortable enough with yourself that you don’t panic every time the answer changes.

    Because people change.

    I change. My dreams change. My boundaries change. My beliefs evolve.

    The things I once thought were essential sometimes become things I can live without. The things I once dismissed sometimes become the things I value most.

    And I don’t want to spend my life apologizing for that.

    I don’t want to be predictable simply for the sake of being consistent. I don’t want to have to explain why I can believe two things at once. 

    I don’t want to choose between being practical and being spiritual. Between being ambitious and wanting a quiet life. Between being independent and wanting partnership. Between being strong and being soft. Between wanting more and being grateful for what I already have.

    Maybe there is no contradiction.

    Maybe there is just complexity. Maybe humans were never meant to fit neatly into categories.

    We are allowed to want two things. We are allowed to change our minds. We are allowed to outgrow versions of ourselves. We are allowed to be certain about one part of our lives and completely lost about another.

    We are allowed to be healing and still hurt. We are allowed to be happy and still have bad days. We are allowed to be grateful and still want more. We are allowed to know better and still make mistakes. We are allowed to be a work in progress without treating ourselves like a failed final product.

    And maybe that’s what I want this space to be.

    Not a place where I pretend I’ve figured life out. Not a place where I tell you how to live. Not a perfectly curated collection of lessons from someone sitting at the top of the mountain looking down.

    I’m still climbing.

    Sometimes I’m not even sure I’m climbing the right mountain. Sometimes I stop. Sometimes I go backwards. Sometimes I change direction entirely.

    But I’m paying attention now.

    I’m paying attention to the patterns. To the lessons. To the things that feel like coincidence and the things that don’t. To the parts of myself I’ve ignored. To the dreams I’ve buried. To the person I am becoming.

    And maybe that’s the real niche of this little corner of the internet.

    Not having one niche. But making room for all of it.

    The spirituality. The philosophy. The messy parts. The beautiful parts. The questions. The contradictions. The lessons. The things I know. And all the things I don’t.

    Because maybe becoming yourself isn’t about finally choosing who you’re going to be. Maybe it’s about realizing that you’ve been many versions of yourself all along.

    And learning to let them coexist.

    So, yes.

    I AM a walking contradiction. And for the first time in my life, I don’t think that’s something I need to fix. I think it’s something I need to understand.

    And maybe that’s where we’ll start.

    – nk.