BILAL

“what i really want in life is not grand gestures or dramatic love stories. it’s something quieter, softer… almost invisible to the world but everything to me. i want someone who understands me — and honestly, that feels like the bare minimum, yet somehow the rarest thing. someone who knows how to be around me after a long, exhausting day. not every silence needs to be filled, not every mood needs to be fixed. just… sit with me. exist with me. let the evening be slow, calm, and gentle after a day that felt too loud inside my head. i want someone who knows which parts of me are fragile and doesn’t press on them just to prove a point. someone who doesn’t turn every reaction into a personality flaw. because sometimes i’m not angry, i’m just overwhelmed. sometimes i’m not distant, i’m just tired of thinking too much about everything. and when i get irritated, i don’t need arguments or analysis. i need softness. i need someone who can look at me and say “it’s okay, we’re fine,” and actually mean it. someone who doesn’t take my chaos personally. i don’t want my thoughts — the messy, unfiltered, overthinking parts of me — to be labeled as arrogance or attitude. they’re not ego. they’re just me trying to make sense of everything i feel all at once. and when i finally express myself, when i actually choose words over silence, i don’t want to be made to feel like i’m disrespectful or ungrateful. i don’t want love to feel like a courtroom where i have to defend every emotion i have. i want safety. not perfection, not constant happiness — just emotional safety. someone who doesn’t make me feel like i’m “too much” on my heavy days and “too distant” on my quiet ones. someone who stays consistent, who doesn’t make me question if i should’ve just stayed silent instead. because at the end of it all, love to me is not about fixing each other. it’s about understanding each other in moments where we’re hardest to love — and choosing to be gentle anyway.” — memoirsofbilal (via Instagram)

“i spoke to you after a decade and it didn’t feel like closure, it felt like reopening a wound i had taught myself to live with. i have moved on—or at least life moved me forward, taught me how to breathe without you, how to build days that don’t begin with your memory—but some part of me clearly stayed behind. you were my first love, the kind that rewires your soul, the kind that teaches you how deeply a heart can hold someone and how violently it can break. we didn’t talk about what happened, maybe because some endings are too heavy to carry back into words, but i could feel everything we never said sitting quietly between us. you sounded familiar, like home i am no longer allowed to return to, and i realised i don’t know what meeting you again would do to me—whether i would finally let go or lose myself all over again. all i know is that even after moving on, a part of me is still standing exactly where you left me, pretending it has learned how to leave too.” — memoirsofbilal (via Instagram)

“some days i feel like i am walking through life without a map, carrying emotions i never learned how to place. people talk about home like it is a place of comfort, somewhere you go when the world becomes too heavy. but for some of us, home was never that safe place. it was silence, distance, and learning to hold your own pain because there was no emotional support waiting for you. growing up like that teaches you how to survive, but it also leaves a quiet loneliness that follows you everywhere. sometimes i tell myself maybe i just need to go home, maybe that will bring peace. but the truth is i don’t know where home is anymore. life keeps moving, people keep living, and i keep walking with storms no one can see, wondering where you go when all you want is to rest but the place that was supposed to be home never really felt like one.” — memoirsofbilal (via Instagram)

Love is blind. You say it like a warning — like maybe I don’t see you clearly, like maybe I’ve mistaken you for something softer than you are. But I see you. I see the impatience you try to hide, the overthinking, the silences, the sharp edges you’re afraid will cut me. I see the flaws you point out like disclaimers before I can sign my heart away. And still — I stay. Love isn’t blindness. It’s choosing. It’s looking at you in full light, no blur, no filter, and deciding that even your storms feel like home. I don’t love you because I can’t see your imperfections. I love you because I can — and they don’t scare me. They make you human. They make you real. They make you mine. So if this is blindness, then let me be blind forever. But if this is sight — the kind that sees every crack and still calls it beautiful — then stand here with me, exactly as you are, and let me choose you for the rest of my life. — memoirsofbilal (via Instagram)

“they say we only realise the value of something once we lose it, but that was never my story. i knew your worth while you were still beside me — in the softness of your voice, in the way your presence steadied my chaos, in the quiet comfort of simply knowing you were mine. i never loved you absentmindedly, never held you carelessly, never once treated you like something ordinary or temporary. i was aware, painfully aware, of how rare you were. and maybe that is what lingers like a bruise under the skin — that i did not lose you out of ignorance or neglect. i lost you while loving you with open eyes. i lost you while choosing you, every day, without hesitation. there is a different kind of heartbreak in that — the kind that doesn’t come from regret, but from the cruel understanding that sometimes you can cherish something deeply, protect it gently, pray for it silently… and still, it slips away." — memoirsofbilal (via Instagram)

“I’m okay if you love me more. Truly. There’s something beautiful about being held in someone’s heart so fully, so gently, without fear. This was never a battle I wanted to win, because love was never about being louder or proving whose feelings run deeper. If you say you love me more, I’ll smile and let you have that, not out of surrender, but out of gratitude. Because to be loved by you so openly, so surely, makes me feel like the luckiest soul in the room. And that, to me, is more than enough.” — memoirsofbilal (via Instagram)

“I take photos of you because every time you exist in front of me, something feels rare, like a moment that shouldn’t be wasted. You’ll be doing the simplest things — laughing, looking away, lost in your own thoughts — and suddenly I feel this quiet urge to hold on a little longer. So I capture you. Not to own the moment, but to honor how it feels to be this close to you. I don’t photograph you because you’re perfect — I photograph you because you’re real, and in your realness, you make everything around me feel softer. The way your eyes change when you’re comfortable. The way your smile arrives before your laughter. The way you make ordinary time feel like something worth keeping. Every photo is my way of saying: this matters. I take pictures of you because I love seeing you the way I see you — unguarded, warm, quietly beautiful in moments you don’t even realize are special. And maybe someday these photos will remind us of how easy it was to be here together, how gently we held each other in small, everyday moments. So I keep clicking — not out of fear, but out of love, because some moments deserve to be kept, especially when they feel like you.” — memoirsofbilal (via Instagram)

“I’ve been thinking about us—about the way you loved me long before I ever knew what to do with a love like yours. You stood by me with a kind of certainty I could never match, offering pieces of your heart in moments I didn’t even realise were meant to mean something. And I tried to understand it, truly. I tried to meet you somewhere in the space between friendship and something more, but my heart kept stopping at the border, unable to cross no matter how much I wished it would. You stayed, even when I couldn’t give you anything back. You stayed until the moment I didn’t choose you—until I chose someone else. And then you left, taking not just your love, but every memory, every conversation, every small, gentle thing that made us us. As if friendship had never been enough for you. As if loving me was only worth it if it came with ownership, not presence. I want you to know I never meant to hurt you. But I also want you to know that losing you this way taught me something: some people don’t leave because the love ends—they leave because the dream of being chosen does. And once that dream breaks, they take the whole story with them, even the chapters that were never about love at all.” — memoirsofbilal (via Instagram)

“When we met, you were certain of what you wanted, and I pretended I was too. But somewhere along the line, my heart began to spill—slow at first, then all at once—until love pooled at your feet, more than you ever asked for, more than I ever meant to give. I kept pouring, even when I felt myself running empty, hoping you might offer something back — a promise, a word, a place to rest my heart. A commitment, perhaps, to know my love hadn’t been wasted on passing days and almost moments. But you didn’t want forever, not with me. So I stepped away, quietly, carefully — like leaving a room where my own breath had become too loud. And now you return, again and again, as though love is a door you can slip through whenever it suits you. But I’ve closed the book, not out of bitterness, but because some stories end long before we’re brave enough to say so. And this one, this one needed to end for me to begin again.” — memoirsofbilal (via Instagram)

“The cruelest thing in life is that you don’t get to choose the people who fall in love with you, yet somehow you still end up paying the price for it by falling for someone who can’t love you back. It feels like the universe has a dark sense of balance—letting your heart be held by people you can’t feel anything for, while the one person you want with every piece of you can’t meet you even halfway. And it hits you in the quiet moments, how unfair it all is; how love always seems to arrive in mismatched timings and uneven depths. Maybe this is what karma looks like in love—not dramatic or loud, but quietly devastating. A soft reminder that sometimes you end up longing for someone in the exact way someone once longed for you. And somehow, that’s what hurts the most.” — memoirsofbilal (via Instagram)

“I met you like people meet in passing — a name, a face, a brief distraction in a long day. You were never meant to stay. But days folded into weeks, and you quietly became everything that held me together. Somewhere between random conversations and late-night silences, you turned into something I couldn’t unfeel. You told me you don’t have the capacity to love someone. And I smiled, pretending that didn’t pierce through me. But every time I looked at you, I kept falling — not the cinematic kind, but the kind that leaves bruises where no one can see. I began to hate the way I loved you — the way my heart kept choosing you even when it knew better. You were everything I wanted, and still, nothing that was mine to hold. So I stepped back. Not because you were cruel, but because you were too kind. The kind of kind that breaks you gently, without ever realizing it. You asked me why I don’t look into your eyes anymore. I wish I could tell you — because your eyes are home, and I don’t belong there. Because one more look, and I’ll fall again — and this time, I won’t just fall, I’ll shatter. Quietly. Completely. In all the places you’ll never see.” — memoirsofbilal (via Instagram)

“I love you — but I don’t know if I’m in love with you, or if I’m just standing too close to the edge, mistaking the wind for a feeling. You make me feel things I can’t name — something between comfort and chaos. And maybe that’s what scares me. Because I know how this story goes: I’ll keep falling, quietly, hoping you’ll fall too. But you won’t. You never do. And I’ll be left holding all the words I never said, trying to convince myself it wasn’t love, not really. Just something that almost was. Something that could’ve been, if you had only felt it too. Maybe that’s why it already hurts — because deep down, I know I’ll have to let you go before you even notice I was here.” — memoirsofbilal (via Instagram)

“i wanted it to end—clean, quiet, without ache. i wanted to walk away and feel nothing. but just when i was ready to close that door, you texted i love you. and then, like it meant nothing, you deleted it. erased it like it never happened. but it did. because i remember. it wasn’t the first time you said it. i know what it felt like when you traced those words on my back, your fingers spelling what your mouth wouldn’t dare to. and maybe that’s what hurts the most— you keep saying it in ways that don’t count, and loving me in ways that never last.” — memoirsofbilal (via Instagram)

“I met you, and it felt like my heart exhaled for the first time in years. You warned me—nothing serious. And still, I found myself tracing futures in the pauses between your words. You never promised me love, yet somehow I keep catching myself waiting for it, like a fool waiting for rain in a season that’s already gone dry. When we talk, something inside me softens. When we meet, it almost feels real. But when you leave, there’s this quiet wreckage in my chest—like I’m standing in the ruins of something that never even existed. It’s the cruelest kind of emptiness, the kind that comes from feeling too much for someone who feels just enough to stay, but never enough to stay long. You’ll never know how heavy it feels—to be touched by someone who will never hold you the way you ache to be held. Maybe this is what unrequited love really is—not the absence of love, but the abundance of it, trapped inside one heart with nowhere to go.” — memoirsofbilal (via Instagram)

“I once read that the cruelest thing you can do is make someone believe in the beginning of love when you never meant for it to grow — and maybe that’s what you did. It’s not love yet, but it’s something that feels dangerously close. The kind that sits quietly between late-night conversations and the way your name sounds softer every time I say it. You told me not to feel too much, but how do I stop when every small thing about you feels like the start of something beautiful — and I don’t even know if it’s real or just something I built out of hope?” — memoirsofbilal (via Instagram)

“We haven’t even met yet, but it already feels like I’m standing at the edge of something I shouldn’t want. You’ve been clear — this isn’t love, it isn’t anything serious. Just something casual, something easy. And still, I can’t stop thinking about it. About you. About what it might feel like when all the waiting finally ends. It’s strange — the way I crave something I know will break me. The way my heart races when your name appears on my screen, even though I know this isn’t the beginning of a love story. It’s just a moment we’re both walking into for different reasons. You want the thrill, the touch, the fleeting comfort. I want to feel something real, even if it only lasts for a night. I keep trying to remind myself not to read too much into this. Not to imagine the way you’ll look at me, or how your voice will sound when the distance between us disappears. But I do. I imagine it all. And I know when it happens — when you reach for me, when your hands find me — it’ll feel like too much and not enough at the same time. I’ll tell myself I can handle it. That I can walk away untouched. But I already know the truth. I’ll carry that night with me — the way you looked at me like you almost meant it, the silence after, the emptiness that follows something that was never meant to stay. Maybe it’s foolish, wanting to be close to someone who’s already told me there’s no future here. But maybe that’s just how it is sometimes — you meet someone who makes you forget the rules you swore you’d keep. Someone who makes you risk your heart for a moment that was never meant to last. And I’ll go anyway. Not because I don’t know better, but because I do — and I still want to feel what it’s like to be wanted by you, even if it’s only for a night.” — memoirsofbilal (via Instagram)