Stop Overthinking

Stop Overthinking

8 mins
656


Stop breaking yourself into pieces for some other person. Stop making yourself feel so small everyday. Stop being a food for their ego in the name of love. The first time when they hurt you, you might have believed their reasons. But if people hurt you again and again and give you only excuses and reasons for it, stop thinking that they will grow up someday. When a person wants to grow, they try at the very least. It doesn't happen overnight, it doesn't happen later. It doesn't happen when they are old. It happens when they want it to happen. You might have so many flaws too, but if those flaws do not cause wounds to other people, then you should know that you cannot keep belittling yourself and thinking that they accept you for who you are and so should you. It is not your duty, darling, to fix the things that want to remain broken.


Stop settling for the hopes that have been hopes for as long as you can remember, dear darling. You are worthy of all the things in the world. You are worthy of something wild and pure. You deserve to be taken care of, and talked nicely to. Stop giving up all of that for people who haven't earned a place in your life. Your love isn't free, you give and take. Unconditional doesn't mean that they are allowed to hurt you and empty you while you sit there and write poetry for them. Stop staying because it will hurt when you leave. It will hurt for a while, and then there will be so beautiful days that you will almost forget what you left behind. Do not settle for all those half-loves. Do not do this to yourself. When you accept yourself, you hug the parts of you that you have never appreciated much. Realize that nothing in this world should make you feel like you don't deserve all the happiness, like you don't belong to a better place.


Know that you deserve all the things raw and fierce, darling, know that you are enough.


I rode the train underneath the afternoon haze.

And I thought this was the reason 

why you wanted to ride the bus instead.


And I couldn't agree more. 

The aimless travelers, on a seat for two.

Sharing the sunsets and the music 

buzzing on their headphones.

And I thought, if this is love, I want to make it last.


The hot sticky afternoon passing the city streets,

hand-picking through the fast-food chains 

along our way.

My hands on your hands,

your head on my shoulder 

as we go on and on—

"Let's go coffee and burger."

And you would say;

"I want fries and have the coffee extra iced." 


Back then movie dates were to expensive 

for the two poor kids that we were.

So instead we would stay on the coast,

watching the sunbeams, on the waves.

And think of the future—

Two lost kids talking amidst a sea of people.

Oh we were so sure, how could we?

Two lost kids, caught at the moment

of a love that promised a sunrise.


They say that sunset is a proof

that endings are beautiful too.

And my love, even after we ended, 

I never blamed the sunset for losing you. 

I never blamed the afternoon haze,

for not being the best sunshine there is out there.

I never blamed the hot sticky afternoon

for not being sticky enough to make you stay.


And I never blamed you for wanting a future

with out me in it. 


Of course, I never hated the sunrise and its promise—

The sunrise doesn't care.

And the sunset? The sunset will stay beautiful—

even if no one bothers to look at it— 

even if it just makes me remember you everyday.


I have wanted you in ways the sunset shouldn't witness.

So instead I cry myself to sleep during the night 

And think—

Do you look at it and wonder about me too?


I rode the train underneath the afternoon haze,

And i remembered why I didn't prefer riding the bus.


It was funny how I decorated pain with a string of words, and it was funny how you still didn't understand the meaning behind them. I sat there, on the same place where we used to sit and share a spliff, and I remember how you said that letting go is the easiest thing to do once you leave, and I looked at you and your beautiful face and asked myself how a person lets go of the only thing that he cares about. What about fighting for it? You told me that you never cared for a little heartbreak, you forgot to tell me that you didn't care for it only until it wasn't yours. You stood by the door and told me how the world broke you a thousand times, and so I felt like it was my duty to fix you. I felt that if I could undo all your wounds, if I could cleanse your soul of all the darker parts, if I could save you from your own chaos then maybe, maybe it would be enough for you. Maybe, you would love me back the way I love you.


And I sat there and did all the things that I could, but you decided to break me only to feel whole. You criticized me for all the things that I couldn't do, and you sat there on the throne. You slowly cut me open and left me drained. You couldn't heal yourself so you only inflicted pain. My mother asked me how I felt, but it was easier to bleed than to talk about it. It was easy to bite my lips than to open them and tell the tales of the parts that have been consuming every single thing that's inside of me. And so, I kept cleaning your mess when you denied to change and slowly, one day, I realized that there was nothing left in me anymore. And you sat there and blamed me for all the things that weren't going right in your life. And I wanted to tell you how it was not okay to destroy me like that, how it was not okay to underestimate my ability to leave when it was too much, how it was not okay to expect me to love you when all you did was hurt. And I left, I left with all the things thinking it would be better for me. And it was in a lot of ways, but I still have some grief.


There are cracks in my soul where love still

resides in the form of that grief,

the love that shouldn't be

for you, but it is. 

I’m 24 years old and I have no idea what it is that I’m doing with my life. I’m three quarters through a degree I’m not sure I fully like but will go through anyway and lastly, I’m waiting for a miracle.

Sound familiar?

……………………


“I give up. I don’t care about this anymore. I’m going to get a bad boy haircut tomorrow and go back to reading the Twilight series”, said the smartest person I knew and also the most level headed if I may. There’s a point in your life where you’d say I’m going through an existential crisis but when your everyday seems like a crisis, existential stops being a special word.

I wished I had a better answer for him. I wish I could say you’ll know when you know, but time was slipping away like sand, and we were being sucked into a fiscal vacuum, where we only lost money on an education we weren’t sure we wanted anymore. I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I’ve known. I never said those words out loud till I was 12 only to be told, these are not things that people who were intellectually gifted enough to do advanced math and write code say. I went with it and to this day I wonder if it was the right choice.


A year into a cliched engineering degree, I travelled abroad for the first time. I rebelled, yelled and stayed stubborn till I had a visa in my hand to an unknown land that I believed would set me free. That was my favorite summer with a lifetime of love, laughter and tears rolled into 42 exquisite days. I loved that bubble, the high that fantasy gave me until I lost what it means to be grounded. I was never the same.


Another year in, I discover what it means to be a leader and despite not being a people person, people are what I do best and this had nothing to do with my degree and I was inevitably falling in love with just that. The little glimpses into alternate futures that my experience in working in a social sector was preparing me for life but also making me question every move, every career counselling session that I would eventually go through, but I still had no idea, what is the one thing that I truly wanted.


So here I am, still waiting for the miracle, the epiphany that would make me change the trajectory of my life entirely or to see if I was practical enough to stick to what I had started because there was nothing I hated more than being a quitter. But where do you draw the line between what makes your heart skip a beat and what will allow you to survive? When does ambition start being a dirty word until compromise be what we belittle instead?


People in this country do not have the luxury to just stay at home for six months after a degree to take the time to just analyze and reflect on what it is that they will do for the rest of their life. What they’d commit to, and let it consume them every morning.

I honestly stopped looking at the little things while the standard interview question ran through my head, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” and while there is no definitive answer, here’s what I do know I want, my little evergrowing list:


Live a life of honesty.

Treat everyone right.

Learn to accept happiness and hold it


Notice tiny quirks in the people you love

Get healthier, not skinnier

Learn, stop trying to word vomit through examinations


Read every day if you still love writing

Don’t give up

Take risks


Be more accepting.

Success means nothing if you have no one to share it with

Someday, remember who you were before the world told you who you should be

Your miracle has always existed, it’s you.



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