Like sometimes I’ll notice the slightest change in someone’s texting pattern and suddenly my brain turns into a Netflix crime documentary.

“Oh, she used three less emojis.”
Interesting.
Very interesting.
The audience should prepare for betrayal in the third act.

And the worst part is?
Sometimes I’ve been right.

That’s what nobody tells you about having your trust broken repeatedly. Your anxiety stops sounding irrational after a while. It starts sounding experienced. Seasoned. Like a senior employee training new fears.

I think that’s why I struggle so much with decisions now.

Every choice in my life feels like one of those personality quizzes where all the answers sound psychologically concerning.

Am I staying at my current job because stability is important in this economy… or because I’m terrified of rebuilding my worth somewhere new?

Am I avoiding difficult conversations in relationships because I’m emotionally mature enough to “pick the right timing”… or because I’m scared of what might happen once the conversation becomes real?

Am I selective about people…
or have I just romanticised isolation so much that loneliness started sounding wise?

I genuinely don’t know anymore.

My brain behaves like an overworked security guard that got employee of the month once and now refuses to retire.

Because unfortunately, my instincts have had receipts before.

I knew my ex was cheating before I had proof. I knew certain friendships were emotionally parasitic long before they collapsed publicly. Even when my parents kept trying to fix their marriage, something in me already knew the ending. Like my nervous system had quietly read the spoilers before the episode aired.

Which sounds poetic until you realise it’s actually exhausting.

There’s a very specific loneliness that comes with constantly trying to predict pain before it arrives. You stop experiencing life normally. Everything becomes foreshadowing.

A delayed reply becomes a behavioural pattern.
A change in tone becomes evidence.
Silence becomes narrative.

Meanwhile the other person is literally just at work eating a sandwich.

And yet my body reacts first every single time.

The nausea.
The spiralling.
The sudden urge to investigate absolutely nothing until it transforms into something.

I have created entire emotional disaster films in my head from one slightly confusing interaction. Full scripts. Dialogue. Alternate endings. Sometimes my anxiety deserves screenplay credits.

And the terrifying part is how physically convincing it feels.

My chest tightens.
My stomach drops.
I become so certain something is wrong that reassurance almost starts sounding suspicious too.

Like why are you reassuring me so calmly?
What do you know.

Sometimes calm feels less believable than disaster.

I know how insane that sounds.

But I also think people who’ve been blindsided enough eventually stop trusting peace fully. When you spend enough time anticipating hurt, happiness starts feeling like poor foreshadowing.

Which is probably why I struggle with vulnerability too.

Not because I don’t want closeness.
I do.

I want deep love.
Honest conversations.
Emotional safety.
Softness.

But there’s still a part of me constantly trying to read between lines that may not even exist yet. A part that keeps asking:
“Are we safe?”
“Do they mean it?”
“How long until this changes?”
“What did that tone mean?”
“Should we emotionally prepare now or later?”

It’s honestly fascinating how fear can disguise itself as intelligence.

Because sometimes what people call “gut feelings” are actually just old wounds wearing fake glasses and holding clipboards.

And still…
I can’t fully dismiss my instincts either.

That’s the mindfuck.

Because what do you do when your fear was right before?

What do you call a nervous system that correctly predicted betrayal multiple times?

Hypervigilant?
Wise?
Traumatised?
Perceptive?

At what point does pattern recognition stop being anxiety and start becoming survival instinct?

I don’t know.

I just know I’m tired.

Tired of mentally rehearsing disasters during beautiful moments.
Tired of distrusting happiness while it’s happening.
Tired of treating peace like suspicious behaviour.
Tired of constantly trying to leak emotional spoilers to myself before life reveals them naturally.

Sometimes I wonder how many good things I’ve partially ruined just by trying to emotionally prepare for losing them.

And sometimes I wonder if my anxiety and intuition are no longer separate entities at all.

Maybe they’ve been sharing clothes for years.

And maybe that’s why my inner voice sounds both protective and exhausting at the exact same time.

Before men.
Before relationships.
Before the internet could start selling you insecurities in sponsored ads.

Sometimes it starts at the dining table.

Mine did.

The first people who made me feel aware of my body were not boys.

It was women.

Women who loved me.
Women who raised me.
Women who would oil my hair with one hand and damage my self-esteem with the other so seamlessly that neither of us fully noticed it happening in real time.

The thing about family teasing is that it never sounds serious enough for you to call it cruelty.

Cruelty would honestly be easier.

At least then you could point at it directly.

Family teasing arrives wearing humour. It sits comfortably at the dining table. Everybody laughs. The conversation moves on. And you sit there wondering why your chest suddenly feels hot over something that technically “wasn’t that serious.”

I was thirteen when a comment about my body hair changed something in me permanently.

Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
It simply introduced me to the idea that my body was something people could inspect.

After that, I started noticing myself the way people monitor suspicious activity.

I became hyperaware of sweat. Smell. Hair. Skin. Texture. Visibility. I became the kind of girl who avoided lifting her arms in public like I was hiding state secrets under them. Because I was terrified of people noticing my underarm hair or body odour. I researched natural remedies for sweating with the dedication of a Victorian scientist trying to cure tuberculosis.

Alum.
Home remedies.
Obsessive grooming rituals.

There are girls out there building personalities during their teenage years and meanwhile I was conducting forensic investigations on my own armpits.

And the strange part is that outside my house, the world reacted to me completely differently.

Girls complimented me constantly.
Boys liked me.
People called me beautiful.
Confident.
Striking.
Dusky in the beautiful way.

At home, “dusky” sounded more like an unfortunate weather condition.

Which is such a mind-altering experience as a teenage girl, when the world keeps telling you you’re attractive but your own home teaches you to experience yourself like a list of maintenance issues.

Too hairy.
Too sweaty.
Too loud.
Too tomboyish.

But if I tried dressing more femininely or embracing attention even slightly, suddenly that was “too much” too.

Girlhood started feeling like one of those impossible job descriptions where they ask for five years of experience for an entry-level role.

Be desirable, but don’t know it.
Be feminine, but not attention-seeking.
Be confident, but not loud.
Exist, but quietly.

And the worst part is, I don’t even think all of them realised the impact of what they were saying.

That’s what makes these things survive so long.
Nobody sat me down and taught me to hate my body directly.
They just kept joking until self-consciousness started sounding like my inner voice.

Even now, intimacy still carries tiny ghosts from those years sometimes. I could be deeply wanted by someone and still panic over whether I had shaved enough to deserve being touched. Whether I look “clean enough.” Which feels absurd to admit out loud because logically I know bodies are human and normal and imperfect.

But shame is rarely logical.

Especially shame introduced to you before your brain fully developed.

And honestly, I think that’s why so many women exhaust themselves trying to become “effortless.” Because from such a young age, we learn that our bodies are projects. Things to manage. Correct. Reduce. Hide. Improve. Monitor constantly.

As if existing inside a female body wasn’t already hard enough.

Periods.
Hormones.
Pain.
Fear.
Safety.
PCOD.
Pregnancy.
Childbirth.
Postpartum.

And somehow, on top of all that, little girls are also expected to survive becoming spectators of themselves.

Still, adulthood has changed something too.

Now when comments come, I answer back.

If someone jokes about my body hair, I remind them genetics didn’t arrive from Amazon delivery. If someone comments on my tan skin, I tell them it came from spending my childhood outside playing instead of indoors criticising teenage girls for having melanin.

It doesn’t erase the younger version of me.

But sometimes I think healing is simply becoming the kind of woman who would’ve defended you at thirteen.

And every now and then, I’ll look at myself in the mirror for a second too long and feel those old insecurities trying to crawl back into the room.

It’s terrifying how quickly the body remembers humiliation.

Especially when the first people who taught it to you also taught you what love looked like.

Not completely. Just enough to dance badly at parties without wondering how your body looks while doing it. Enough to speak before mentally editing every sentence like a PR team handling a celebrity scandal. Enough to exist without watching yourself exist.

I used to be that person.

I was loud in the most unapologetic way possible. The kind of loud that wasn’t trying to perform confidence, it genuinely never occurred to me that I should be embarrassed. At parties I would dance like uncles during Ganpati visarjan. Full commitment. Weird expressions. Same absurd breakdance move I repeated every single time because people found it hilarious and honestly, so did I.

People knew me for that.

They also knew they couldn’t fuck around with me.

I was outspoken. Honest in the slightly dangerous way teenagers can be when they haven’t yet learned that the world rewards silence much more politely than truth. I confronted people. I said things directly. I walked into rooms like my body belonged there.

And this may sound dramatic, but even my walk changed.

I used to walk in this carefree, slightly tomboyish way. Like I took up space naturally. Now sometimes I become conscious of where my hands are while walking. That level of self-awareness feels like a disease. Like being trapped inside a CCTV camera pointed at yourself 24/7.

I don’t know exactly when it started happening.

Actually, maybe I do.

School was easy because I knew who I was there. I had already built myself in that environment. People knew me as the funny one, the social one, the confident one. Then college happened and suddenly I became hyperaware of myself in the way people become hyperaware of their accent after moving cities.

I started questioning everything.

Will these people understand my personality?
Am I too loud?
Too much?
Too weird?

And somehow, very quietly, I surrendered.

Nobody notices when a person slowly starts shrinking themselves. It happens in microscopic ways. You laugh a little softer one day. You stop posting as much on your socials. You stop speaking first in groups. You become “the sensible quiet one” because someone louder entered the room and you unconsciously handed them your personality like a jacket you no longer felt confident wearing.

Now I rehearse food orders for takeouts. Sometimes ten times.

I used to make friends with strangers. Talk to shopkeepers. Start conversations randomly. Now when people say, “Oh, you really talk just this much?” it genuinely hurts because they accidentally point at the exact thing I mourn in myself too.

And the worst part is, I can still see traces of the old me sometimes.

Like muscle memory.

Sometimes I’ll crack a joke too loudly and surprise myself. Sometimes I’ll dance for ten seconds before suddenly becoming aware I have a body again. Sometimes I’ll give an honest opinion and feel that old sharpness return for a moment, like finding an old song on a dead iPod that somehow still works.

My first heartbreak changed me too, though I didn’t realise it immediately. After that, something about my confidence cracked permanently.

Not loudly. More like those tiny fractures on phone screens that spread slowly over months until one day you realise the whole display is ruined.

And the strange thing is… I don’t even fully hate who I became.

This quieter version of me is kinder. More emotionally intelligent. More patient. I understand people deeply now. Maybe too deeply. I forgive more because I’ve realised it’s everyone’s first time on this planet.

The girl I used to be would probably look at me today with a bitch tone and say,

“Bitch… you let THESE people fold you?”

And honestly?

She’d be right.

But I think she’d also understand that constantly surviving people softens you eventually. Makes you careful. Makes you aware.

Too aware.

Because somewhere along the way, I started treating hyper-awareness like maturity. Like overthinking myself was proof I had evolved. But maybe constantly observing yourself is exhausting because humans were never meant to be both the person living life and the person analysing it at the exact same time.

It’s like trying to dance while staring into a mirror the entire time.

You stop feeling the music eventually.