I was watching an Instagram reel.

A man sat in a train with his little daughter while the child's mother did everything she could to make the baby laugh. The little girl giggled without restraint, and the father looked at the woman with a softness that needed no words. It was one of those ordinary moments that somehow held an extraordinary kind of love.

I found myself smiling at complete strangers.

The hopeless romantic in me, however, felt something else too.

Jealousy.

Not the bitter kind. The quiet kind. The kind that whispers, "I hope someone looks at me like that someday."

Then came a notification.

A message.

From someone I used to know. Someone I once considered the center of my world.

My ex-boyfriend.

He wrote something along the lines of, "You'll always be a loser. What gives me peace is that I'm not with you anymore. By the way, I'm getting married."

Not those exact words—they were in our mother tongue. Forgive my translation.

But the meaning remained.

That was enough.

I thought I had moved on.

I thought I had become brave.

Instead, my eyes betrayed me.

My throat tightened.

And somewhere beneath all the healing I believed I had done was a simple, painful revelation:

I am still a girl who wants to be loved.

The girl who wants to be held without losing herself.

The girl who pretends to be strong but still cries alone at night.

The girl who keeps wondering whether she is ever enough.

Some days my heart swells with tears so loud that I can barely hear my own thoughts. Some days the banging inside my head begs me to stop running and simply sit with the pain.

To sit with the knowledge that, in the same breath, I have been told I am nothing.

Not someone to be wanted.

Not someone to be needed.

What a beautiful thing it must be, then, to find people who can see your soul. People who can look beyond the cloud of self-doubt and fear that settles over you.

And yet...

What a foolish thing hope can be.

To hope.

And hope.

And hope again.

Only to find yourself standing at the beginning of the same cycle.

The cycle of doom.

I've always wished I could see inside people's minds. I've always wanted to know how they perceive me.

Perhaps it's because I've never understood the subtle signs.

Perhaps it's because I've been misled too many times.

Or perhaps it's because, even when someone tells me they care, a part of me simply cannot believe them.

I think i want certainty.

 I want to know that when someone says, "I care about you," they're not secretly planning to leave. That when someone smiles, they're not pretending. That when someone chooses me, they won't wake up one day and decide i was a mistake.

What a glorious stupidity!

So here I am.

Still wanting to feel close to someone.

Still wanting to understand them.

Still wanting to be seen .

How pathetic. . 

Anyway, I have more books to read. 

And, that my friend...

 is the only thing that keeps me going.

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