u/ExplanationOk2765

I am so tired of learning people.

Tired of asking what music they play in the car when they are alone.

Tired of pretending favorite colors still mean anything when everyone changes themselves every six months to survive another algorithm.

Tired of hearing, “I’ve never told anyone this before,” only to realize they probably said the same sentence to someone else last Thursday at 1:13 a.m. beneath the glow of another unread notification.

We introduce ourselves now like brands.

Condensed. Sharpened. Marketable.

Here is my trauma in two paragraphs.

Here is my humor.

Here is the version of me that photographs well.

Here is the playlist I curated so you might mistake me for someone worth staying for.

And God, we try.

We really do try.

We stay awake until three in the morning asking strangers about childhood pets and old scars and what kind of love made them afraid.

We memorize the name of the street they grew up on.

Their coffee order.

The song that destroys them.

The exact pause in their voice when they speak about someone who left.

And slowly, dangerously, they stop feeling like a stranger.

That is the terrible part.

Not the leaving.

Not even the silence.

It is the moment right before.

The moment you catch yourself smiling at your phone before opening their message.

The moment your body begins making room for them without asking permission from your mind.

The moment your loneliness finally loosens its grip just enough for hope to slip inside.

That is when it always happens.

They vanish.

No war.

No betrayal dramatic enough to make sense of it.

Just silence so ordinary it feels crueler than hatred.

A slow fading.

Replies become reactions.

Reactions become delays.

Delays become absence.

Until one day you are staring at a glowing screen holding entire conversations with yourself.

Wondering if you imagined all of it.

And the modern world keeps moving around you with this horrifying efficiency.

More profiles.

More faces.

More people saying they want something real while keeping one hand permanently on the escape hatch.

Because everyone is talking to everyone.

Nobody risks anything now.

Love has become a marketplace of almosts.

A thousand open tabs.

A thousand maybe’s.

People terrified of settling while simultaneously starving to death from never being chosen deeply.

And I cannot do it the way others do.

I cannot split myself into portions.

Cannot keep five conversations alive like little emotional houseplants beneath artificial light.

I know people say that is safer now. Smarter.

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

But how do you fall in love while keeping exits prepared?

How do you build intimacy while constantly comparing souls?

I have tried to understand it.

I cannot.

When I speak to someone, truly speak to them, the rest of the world quiets.

My mind narrows toward them completely.

I begin listening for them in songs.

I start wanting to tell them every beautiful thing I encounter before I even understand why.

And maybe that is my fatal flaw.

Because while I am slowly choosing them, they are still browsing.

Still scrolling.

Still keeping themselves emotionally available for the possibility that someone slightly prettier, slightly funnier, slightly less complicated may appear with the next refresh.

So every time someone disappears, it does not just hurt.

It humiliates.

Because they leave carrying pieces of you they do not even realize you handed them.

And after enough years of this, something inside begins to erode.

You stop asking people their favorite songs because you know one day you will hear it accidentally in a grocery store and have to stand there pretending your chest is not collapsing in public.

You stop wanting to learn new favorite colors because eventually they all become the color of abandoned conversations.

You become exhausted by beginnings.

Exhausted by explaining yourself from scratch.

Here is who I am.

Here is what hurt me.

Here is why I struggle to trust.

Here is the shape of my loneliness.

Please handle it gently this time.

And the worst part?

Underneath all this exhaustion, all this bitterness, all this grief disguised as independence…

you still want it.

You still want someone to stay.

Not halfway.

Not until they become confused.

Not until life becomes inconvenient.

Not until someone else catches their attention for fifteen seconds beneath a filtered photograph.

You want someone who looks at your soul and does not immediately begin calculating alternatives.

Someone who chooses you with the terrifying certainty people used to reserve for religion.

But the world feels colder now.

Everyone connected.

Everyone reachable.

Everyone visible.

And somehow we have never been more alone

.

Sometimes I think our generation died from a thousand tiny abandonments no one considered serious enough to mourn.

Just people disappearing quietly from each other’s lives until nobody remembers how to trust permanence anymore.

And still we wake up.

Still we download the apps again.

Still we answer messages.

Still we ask strangers what songs they love.

As if somewhere beneath all this noise and performance and endless swiping, another human being might finally say:

There you are.

I was looking for you too.