The more I try to fit in, the more I feel like an outsider. It’s like standing in a crowded room, listening to a conversation in a language I almost understand but not quite. Close enough to catch fragments, too distant to truly belong.
By the time I get home, I am so tired I don’t even want to think. I just want to slip under my sheets, let the world disappear, and sleep as if I’ve been walking for days without stopping.
I look at myself in the mirror and see someone I don’t fully recognize. Not a stranger, but not exactly me either. I’ve changed. More than I expected. More than I meant to.
I used to prefer being alone. Alone with books, with the quiet hum of an old TV playing reruns of an anime I’ve seen a dozen times. I didn’t care much for other people’s troubles. My parents would scold me, call me selfish. Maybe they were right. Maybe they weren’t. Either way, it didn’t bother me much back then.
But things shifted when I entered college. The world cracked open, and I had no choice but to step outside. At first, I thought it would be just one step. But life doesn’t work that way. One step turned into two, then five, then ten. Before I knew it, I had wandered far beyond where I started.
I found new circles—small ones, large ones, some barely holding together. I slipped into one, then another. But people leave. They always do. Searching for something else, something better. Eventually, I started searching too.
I kept trying to fit in, but the more I tried, the more exhausted I became. No matter how close I got, nothing felt like home. Not in the way my old solitude did.
Now, I don’t know where I stand. I only know that I want to go back.
But the thing about stepping too far is that sometimes, the way back isn’t as clear as you thought it would be.
