Everyone else has someone, no matter if it's a friend or a romantic partner. But she doesn't. It’s not like she was able to make friends while being a workaholic either; her colleagues would mostly throw their share of work to her and push her aside, leaving her alone to cover for them as they all go home to their someones. She has no one. Loneliness had always been her constant companion, clinging to her like a shadow.

Sometimes it felt like she was stuck inside a glass box, a silent observer in a world where connections grew out of nowhere. She would see people pass by and smoothly bond with each other while she could only witness from her secluded vantage point, imprisoned within the invisible walls of her isolation. Each time she saw a new connection form, her heart ached with bittersweet longing.

Every smile, every inside joke, gentle touch exchanged, and every laugh felt like a distant melody she would hear all day and night but was never allowed join in. It was as if she were a bird that never quite learned how to sing. She would never admit it out loud (just like everything else she feels, really), but she was so incredibly envious of people effortlessly getting what she has craved for years, making the crippling fear of being unlovable increase. Is it still a fear? It feels more right to call it a belief these days.