condemned to be free

My therapist says I’m burned out.

Which is a polite way to say I’ve been running a whole civilization inside my head while my body keeps filing complaints.

Because here’s the thing no one tells you about freedom. It’s not a field. It’s a supermarket. Endless aisles, fluorescent lights, too many brands of the same cereal, and a quiet panic that whispers you’re one wrong choice away from ruining your life. And the worst part is not even the risk of choosing wrong. It’s the suspicion that whatever you choose will immediately become ordinary.

My mother had fewer choices, but she had a script. Society handed her a storyline, a role, a set of milestones. It was oppressive, yes, but it was simple. It came with rails. And rails, as much as they limit you, also carry you.

Me, I have options. Infinite options. And options don’t carry you. They stare at you. They ask you who you are. They demand a decision. They demand you build your identity from scratch, like a house with no blueprint, no architect, no permit, no certainty the ground won’t collapse underneath.

So I compensate.

I turn every possibility into a project. Every desire into a plan. Every plan into a personality. I don’t just want to move to Porto, I become the woman who lives in Porto. I don’t just want to box, I become the woman with wrapped hands and discipline and bruises she wears like jewelry. I don’t just want to write, I become the woman who writes, who publishes, who is admired, who finally looks like she deserves the space she takes.

I don’t choose. I audition.

---

And because I am me, I don’t audition for one role. I audition for all of them at once. The cool creative. The devoted athlete. The free nomad. The grounded wife. The sensual woman in long skirts. The minimalist who owns nothing. The entrepreneur who owns everything. The healer. The artist. The journalist. The girl who doesn’t need anyone. The girl who is finally chosen.

It sounds empowering until you realize it’s the same old disease wearing a feminist outfit.

Control.

I like to say I’m exploring. I like to say I’m open. I like to say I’m “aligning with my values.” But most of the time I’m just trying to outsmart uncertainty. I’m trying to design a life where regret cannot reach me. Where rejection cannot touch me. Where boredom cannot happen. Where emptiness can be avoided through sheer optimization.

I want the perfect choice. The perfect city. The perfect job. The perfect body. The perfect love. The perfect aesthetic. The perfect timeline. I want a life with no wasted scenes.

But life doesn’t work like that. Life is improvised. Life has bad lighting. Life has filler episodes. Life has plot twists you didn’t approve.

---

And somewhere in the middle of all this freedom, I started treating my own existence like an interface. Swipe. Filter. Compare. Save for later. Keep browsing.

It’s insane when you think about it. My grandmother would have laughed. She would have said, you have the world, and you still look hungry.

Because I am hungry.

Not for more options. For relief. For something to commit to without feeling like I’m dying. For a decision that doesn’t feel like a funeral for every other version of me.

That’s what choosing really is. A little death. The quiet murder of all the lives you will not live.

And I’m bad at death. I’m bad at endings. I’m bad at letting a door close without slipping my foot in at the last second.

So yes. I’m free. But I’m also exhausted.

Exhausted from being my own parent, my own manager, my own casting director, my own life coach, my own rescue team. Exhausted from trying to become a masterpiece instead of a person.

Sometimes I wonder if what I envy in my mother’s life is not the limitations, but the innocence. The ability to do one thing without narrating it. The ability to love without turning it into a psychology thesis. The ability to wake up without asking, is this the optimal version of my morning routine for my future self.

---

I’m turning 30 soon, and this is the first time I can admit something that sounds ungrateful, but is brutally true.

Freedom scares me because it exposes me.

If there’s no script, then it’s me. If it fails, it’s my taste. My judgment. My choices. My responsibility. No one to blame. No tradition to hide behind. No path to follow. Just me and my appetite and my fear.

And so I’ve been living like a woman who is terrified of choosing wrong, which is just another way of saying I’ve been living like a woman who doesn’t trust herself.

Maybe that’s what burnout is, for me. Not working too much. Not doing too much. But trying to control too much. Trying to force life into a shape that will finally prove I’m safe.

So here’s what I’m learning, slowly, painfully.

Maybe my job is not to find the perfect option. Maybe my job is to become the kind of woman who can survive an imperfect one.

Maybe freedom isn’t about having infinite doors. Maybe it’s about closing some of them without collapsing. Maybe it’s about choosing a life and letting it be real. Messy, limited, flawed, human.

Not because it’s the best possible life.

But because it’s mine.

And because I’m tired of living in the waiting room of my own existence, clutching a ticket number, telling myself the real life will start once I make the perfect choice.

I’m turning 30 soon.

I’m a free woman.

And I think the next kind of freedom I want is quieter.

The freedom to stop performing my life.

The freedom to stop casting men, cities, and dreams as solutions.

The freedom to choose, finally, without needing it to save me.

like all of us

My friend’s ex-boyfriend has a new girlfriend, and they look happy together. She found out by stalking his Instagram. And even though she’s a pro at playing the cool, detached girl, I can tell she’s disappointed.

Which is ironic, considering she’s the one who dumped him. It’s not that she wants him back — she doesn’t. But knowing he’s moved on? That stings.

Because deep down, she held on to this comforting little belief: that somewhere in this world, there was still a man who loved her.

That’s what she secretly hoped for all along. Not a reunion, not a second chance — just the idea of it. Something to soothe her ego.

But now, this new girlfriend changes everything. If he’s capable of loving someone else, then maybe she’s not enough anymore. Not good enough. Because if she were enough, he’d still be drowning her DMs in desperate love confessions, right?

But no. My friend’s ex-boyfriend has a new girlfriend. And they look happy together. When I asked her what the big deal was, she scoffed and said, “I don’t care at all. She’s ugly.”

---

That sentence stuck with me. Because sure, it was mean. But more than that, it was dripping with resentment. What she was really saying was: “She’s not pretty. And I am.”

As if that should have been enough to keep him around. As if that’s all that mattered. As if women had nothing else to offer but their looks. As if being less attractive — a totally subjective concept, by the way — meant you didn’t deserve to be loved.

I didn’t say anything, but I couldn’t help picturing this girl — this total stranger my friend had already reduced to an unworthy opponent.

Maybe this girl is funny. Maybe she’s smart, kind, sharp, creative. Maybe she has that contagious kind of laugh that makes other people laugh, too. Maybe she’s the type of friend who knows exactly what to say to cheer you up when you’re feeling like shit.

---

Lost in thought, I was snapped back to reality when my friend shoved her phone in my face. “No, but seriously Ines, look at her. She’s really not that cute.”

As I looked at the screen, I first saw a smiling young woman with a hesitant gaze. Studying her face more closely, I couldn’t help but feed the imaginary portrait I had started painting just moments ago. Maybe she’s a little camera-shy, convinced she’s not photogenic. Like my mom.

Maybe she sent this picture to three friends first, just to get their approval before posting it on Instagram. Like me.

And maybe she felt genuinely happy, relieved even, when she saw the notifications of Instagram likes rolling in. Like all of us.

---

All of us, women, sometimes lacking confidence, often seeking validation, always hyper-aware of how men see us. And the thought that we’re all fighting the same silent battle — whether we admit it or not — moved me. So I smiled.

But my friend’s voice yanked me out of my head again. “Right? Don’t you think so?” she asked, waving her phone at me, eyes begging for confirmation.

At that moment, I could have told her everything that had just crossed my mind.

But I knew this wasn’t the time. So I took the easy way out. “Yeah, you’re right babe. She’s nothing special. And you’re way hotter than her.”

i'm scared of having a son

These past few days, I’ve been binge-watching a series of documentaries about ISIS. Don’t ask me why. My algorithm decided I was ready. And the more I watched these stories of recruitment and indoctrination, the more one thing kept slapping me in the face:

Beneath the “holy war” rhetoric, women were never far away.

One young man in one of the reports stayed with me. He couldn’t have been older than 19, still with that round, almost childlike face. And he explained, eyes shining, almost wet, that in paradise he would finally have his women.

The famous 72 virgins. He’d been waiting for that moment his whole life.

He kept repeating: “Down here, there’s nothing for me.”

At 19, he already had no horizon.

Rejected by the army. No job. No future. Alone with his father. Invisible. A failure in a world where manhood is measured like a performance.

And then ISIS walked into his life like a savior. Sex, glory, revenge, eternal reward. A shortcut out of humiliation. A promise that he wouldn’t just become a man, he’d become more than a man. A superhero. One who gets to take.

How do you say no to that, when everything else has been telling you you’re less than?

---

In the territories they controlled, women became currency. Fighters were “assigned” wives. Captives were distributed. Forced marriages. Sexual “rewards.” Girls married off barely out of childhood. Yazidi and Christian women reduced to property. In that monstrous utopia, the insecure boy becomes all-powerful, and the woman becomes an object to consume.

But again, I feel like I’m seeing the same engine everywhere.

Men society didn’t see. Didn’t value. Didn’t welcome. Young men: isolated, unfulfilled, unhappy. Searching for identity, recognition, power, meaning, belonging, love. Deeply wounded men.

Incels. Tate disciples. Harassers. Stalkers. Online abusers. Misogynists with podcasts and manifestos. Men who turn resentment into a lifestyle, and women into a target.

When a man can’t name the pain, he looks for someone to carry it.

Men are overrepresented in prisons, addiction, suicide. Many boys disengage early. From school, from friendship, from help. They’re taught to be “fine” until they explode, and to call it strength. They withdraw, or they act out. They’re lonely.

And when loneliness curdles into entitlement, it doesn’t stay quiet.

---

Anti-feminists use this to scream: “Men suffer too.”

Yes. We know.

Men suffer.

And far too often, women pay.

Because in this whole male story, the woman is almost always there. She absorbs it.

She’s the mother heartbroken by his choices. The partner disfigured by his fists. The girlfriend traumatized by his violence. The sister terrified of his anger.

She tries to educate him, heal him, love him, soothe him, fix him.

Because women are trained to treat male pain like a job.

And in return she gets insulted, hit, humiliated, used, raped, assaulted, cheated on, abandoned, exhausted.

---

So yes. Faced with this widespread crisis of masculine identity, I’m afraid of having a son.

Because I’m afraid of getting it wrong. Afraid he’ll become one of them. Afraid he’ll fall into that crack. Afraid he’ll become a Jamie, like in Adolescence. Afraid I won’t know how to guide him, how to save him from himself.

Because yes, I’m already taking responsibility. All of it. There was a time when we outsourced the making of men: to fathers, to school, to church, to the army, to “society.” And we can see what that model produces when it goes unchecked.

So if one day God gives me a son, I’m making myself a promise:

I will do everything in my power to destroy, in his mind, the model currently being taught to men. The model that ties a man’s worth to domination, performance, power. The model that keeps him from being vulnerable, tender, human.

I will teach him to love instead of dominate. To cry without shame. To ask for help. To never confuse strength with cruelty.

Because if I don’t, violence might become his only language. The world, his battlefield. And women, his victims.

ending up alone

While she was in the middle of telling me the latest office gossip, my friend suddenly stopped mid-sentence and, staring over my shoulder, dropped:

“Girl, I don’t believe in love anymore. I think I’m gonna end up alone.”

It came so out of nowhere that I followed her gaze. She was looking at a couple sitting behind me, making out slowly, completely absorbed in the saliva they were swapping.

Yeah, they looked mad in love. The kind of insane passion that makes you forget basic manners.

“How can you not believe in it?” I said, still staring at the love scene happening two meters away.

“I don’t know… I just can’t believe anymore that I’m gonna meet a good guy, someone who actually wants to settle down. I’m honestly starting to accept that I might just end up alone.”

I get it. Her last ex was so long ago I’ve literally forgotten his last name.

And since that completely extinct era, she’s been collecting half-conversations on Bumble and half-relationships in her tiny Parisian apartment.

A whole collection of beginnings that never turn into anything.

And even if she says it smiling, pretending she’s totally fine with the idea, I know it hits her for real. And I know there are nights when she cries alone at home, imagining herself finishing her life by herself.

In that moment, two parts of me are in a serious showdown, fighting over which one is going to make me say what it wants.

Logical, rational Inès, confident by nature, so obviously the first one to open her mouth, leans in and whispers: “Yeah, maybe she will end up alone. What else do you want to tell her?”

So I ask another part of me to take over, because right now I need softness and love to reassure my friend. I call on soft Inès. She whispers: “Tell her love comes when you least expect it.”

I physically felt a cringe shiver.

How am I supposed to say some LinkedIn-guru line like that?

So… I don’t know what to answer.

I choose silence for a moment, hoping she’ll throw me another rope to grab.

I just watch that couple keep kissing like nobody has ever suffered over love.

It’s almost insulting, that carelessness.

---

A little uncomfortable with the silence settling in, she asks: “You believe in it, you?”

And now I know even less what to say.

Because honestly, yeah, I do. A lot. Not in “the one,” but in my romantic potential. Over the past few years, I’ve really learned what I’m worth.

I’m not perfect, but let’s be real: I’m pretty great. And statistically, there has to be someone, somewhere, who’s eventually going to realize it.

But I can’t say that. Even though we’re super close, I’m too afraid to trigger her.

She’s not into the whole new-age “positive affirmations in the mirror” thing.

So instead, I take a detour.

I look at her and I go: “Be honest, what do YOU think of me?”

She frowns, a little surprised. “What do you mean? I don’t know… You’re smart, funny, you’ve got personality. And you’re hot, that helps.”

I nod like it’s nothing, then I look her straight in the eyes:

“But do you think a guy, one day, is going to notice all that about me?”

She laughs. “Obviously.”

I smile. “Same for you.”

She doesn’t say anything. But I see her shoulders loosen a little.

And deep down, I’m glad I didn’t pull out some shaky speech about divine timing or cosmic patience.

Just a simple reminder: If I can see how incredible she is, someone else will too.

And this time, I hope she doesn’t beg them to notice.

a mother at birth

I am a woman. And as far back as I can remember, I have always been one. Probably because I have no memory of my life between birth and the age of six, back when I was still just a baby.

Because yes, Simone was right: you’re not born a woman, you become one. You’re born male or female, and for a few years it doesn’t matter. We’re all weak, all dependent, all equal. Tiny humans with infinite potential. I just don’t remember that blessed time when everything was still possible.

What I remember is the moment it stopped being possible.

Around the age of seven, I understood that I was a woman. Or rather, I was made to understand it. Overnight, everything changed. Spreading my legs. Walking around shirtless. Staying outside with the boys. Climbing trees. All of that was no longer for me, but for my brother and my cousins. For the boys.

So I learned what a girl was through restrictions. Don’t spread your legs. Don’t walk around topless. Don’t stay outside with the boys. Don’t climb trees.

I kept growing up with this hollow definition, this idea that “being a girl” was mostly a list of forbidden things, a collection of gestures you’re supposed to erase. Not because they’re wrong, but because they don’t belong to you anymore.

---

And then one day, we ended up face to face.

Me, armed with my overdeveloped empathy, trained to understand, anticipate, fix. Him, wrapped in silence, unable to express what he feels, terrified of being “too much.”

Nothing insurmountable, because we grew up with Disney selling us the idea that with enough love and sacrifice, even the worst Beast could become a prince. We heard our aunts tell us men don’t know how to express their feelings, you just have to give them time. We watched our mothers disappear for men who never even learned how to say thank you.

So of course, when some loser shows up with his wounds and his cardboard emotional baggage, we don’t run. We roll up our sleeves.

Challenge accepted. I’m going to love him so hard he’ll heal.

And it doesn’t matter if he gives nothing back. We don’t count. We give. Because we were taught that this is what love is: taking care of a man, even when he never asked.

So we end up excusing the inexcusable.

He doesn’t reply to texts, he’s independent. He makes no effort, he didn’t have good role models. He treats us badly, he’s suffered, we have to be patient.

---

But one day, we grow up and we understand the scam.

Not right away. Not at twenty, when you still think you can glue any cracked heart back together with enough patience. It comes later, when you realize you became exactly what they expected you to be: a sponge. A sponge for problems, frustrations, excuses. Emotional nurses, always ready to dress everyone else’s wounds, without ever asking who’s treating ours.

And yeah, that stings.

Not because we were manipulated, but because we let it happen in complete good faith. Because we thought it was normal. Because we realized too late that on the other side, nobody had learned to do the same for us.

So we get angry, at the world, at our mothers, at Disney, at those damn rom-coms, at ourselves.

But honestly, whose fault is it? We were given the training from the start.

Dolls to feed, to rock, to cuddle, so we’d absorb the idea that loving means taking care, carrying, healing. Little toy kitchens, miniature houses, crying baby dolls, so we’d understand early that we’d always be better suited to the role of the one who prepares, who arranges, who anticipates.

Meanwhile, what did they get? Remote-control cars, race tracks, plastic guns. Toys that teach you to charge forward, to aim, to conquer.

And us, with our dolls, we learned to wait for them to come back from their expeditions.

---

So let me ask you, for real.

If tomorrow it was your child, what would you give them?

A doll, so they learn to forget themselves for others? Or a remote-control car, so they learn to go full speed without looking back?

Because maybe the real problem is that we all needed both.

A doll, so boys learn care without calling it weakness. A car, so girls learn desire without calling it selfishness. A kitchen, and a battlefield. Tenderness, and courage. Responsibility, and freedom.

Not halves of humanity split by plastic packaging.

If tomorrow it was your child, I wouldn’t choose between the two.

I’d give them both.

And then I’d teach them the part no toy ever teaches: how to love without disappearing, how to be strong without becoming cruel, how to carry someone without turning them into your whole purpose, how to be carried without turning it into entitlement.

Because I am done raising sponges.

And I am done dating men who think care is something women are born owing them.

my lady and her tramp

My friend’s been seeing this guy for a few months now, but it’s not going well.

The relationship had barely started, and he was already waving a good dozen red flags right in front of her, while she did her best to look the other way.

At least she’s not blind to it. She eventually admitted she saw them too. Still, she can’t stop feeding this sham of a relationship.

I get it. When you get zero attention from men, even a breadcrumb from the city’s biggest joke can taste like a win. An ugly truth she’s not ready to admit. Not even to herself.

For now, she’s convinced that behind the bad-boy mask he wears so proudly, there’s something in there. And even though she still hasn’t found a damn thing, she keeps digging anyway. Spoiler: nothing.

He’s a rough draft that should have stayed private.

---

They had known each other for only ten days, and her 80-euro Hermès concealer had stopped doing its job. Those long nights spent arguing with that not-so-charming prince showed on her face every morning.

The House of Hermès refuses any association with this guy.

And that’s not even the worst part.

On top of his awful behavior, the guy doesn’t even seem interested in settling down. He’s the kind of bum who would refuse a luxury flat in front of the Eiffel Tower just to stay on the street.

Some people don’t deserve beautiful things.

And my friend? She’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever met in my life. Terrible sentence, but you get my point. Beyond the classic pretty-smart-funny package, she has a softness that’s almost unmatched.

Next to her, a baby’s ass looks like sandpaper.

---

So when I start my daily speech about how she deserves so much better, she argues back with more conviction than the most devoted conspiracy theorist. She doesn’t know her own worth.

Still, as much as I can’t stand him, I still show up as her friend. So when she asks me for help crafting the perfect text to send him, I storm into her personal space with all my inspiration and brainpower.

Because talking to men? That, I can do. Unlike her, I’m pretty good at the fine art of manipulation.

And that’s exactly why I hate this guy.

Because dealing with him means using low, unglamorous methods. Methods my friend doesn’t have. It’s an uneven fight against a ruthless opponent.

---

Anyway.

Slumped on the wooden chair on her terrace, eyes glued to the cracked screen of her iPhone 12, she asks me how to make him react. She feels helpless because he doesn’t text much, takes forever to reply, and when he finally does, there’s no heart in it.

She goes, “Maybe I should text him again?”

She’s just not built for the modern dating jungle. Being able to date without projecting. Text without waiting. Sleep together without catching feelings. Stay in a relationship without getting attached.

Dear Lord, send her a husband already.

on being moody

They said I was too emotional. Too sensitive. Too much.

For years, I believed them. I tracked my failures — the days I couldn’t focus, the weeks I couldn’t create, the months I felt like a fraud. I built spreadsheets of my own inadequacy.

Then, at 29, someone finally gave it a name: PMDD. Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder.

---

The pattern I didn’t see

Every month, like clockwork: two weeks of fire, two weeks of fog. The fire felt like me. The fog felt like punishment.

But here’s what nobody tells you about PMDD — once you see the pattern, you can’t unsee it. And once you can’t unsee it, you start to wonder: what if the fog isn’t a bug? What if it’s just a different mode?

What I stopped doing

I stopped fighting the fog. I stopped scheduling launches during my luteal phase. I stopped comparing my Tuesday self to my Saturday self. I stopped calling myself lazy when my brain was literally running on different chemistry.

What I started doing

I started tracking. Not just symptoms — creative output. Energy. Ideas. Confidence. I started mapping my moods to my cycle, and what I found was not chaos. It was rhythm.

The world told moody women to calm down. I decided to build something with it instead.

The tool I built

That’s how Patterns was born. Not from a business plan. From desperation, honestly. From opening yet another period tracker that asked me about cramps but not about whether I could make a single decision that day.

I learned to code for this. Me — the business school girl, the one who was “not technical.” I sat down and taught myself because no one was building what I needed.

---

This is the first essay in what I hope becomes a longer conversation. About moods. About cycles. About creating anyway.

On est ensemble.

my worst fear

For as long as I can remember, I have loved fantasizing.

As a child, I eagerly awaited nap time, not for rest, but for escape. It was my chance to live a life that was, in reality, out of reach. Curled up under my blanket, eyes still open, I would first set the scene. Characters, costumes, storyline, plot twist. I left nothing to chance. I wanted a perfect love story, without a single flaw.

And yes, my childhood fantasies often revolved around love.

My privileged daily life imposed no greater concern than catching the attention of the opposite sex. Back then, my heart belonged to a boy who sat next to me in math class. Fate, or rather, alphabetical order, had placed us side by side, our last names beginning with the same three letters.

To me, he was everything. To him, I was a way to improve his grades.

His eyes only landed on me during the rare in class tests, when his gaze pleaded for me to whisper the right answers. Beyond that, I was invisible.

But in my story, he secretly loved me. And one day, unable to hold it in any longer, he would confess, passionately, in front of the McDonald’s across from our school.

---

As time went on, I became addicted to these moments of pure fantasy, to the point where my mother started to worry. My naps became increasingly frequent, and when I wasn’t taking them, I was elsewhere, lost in my thoughts. My imagination spilled into my reality, and reality, in comparison, became unbearably dull.

Driven by teenage hormones, I saw almost any remotely attractive boy as an opportunity to launch a new romance in my head. I cycled through crushes and naps, and my scenarios grew more complex as I aged. By thirteen, thanks to the experience I’d accumulated since seven, I was producing much better movies.

I wasn’t naïve. I knew these delightful moments were compensating for my lack of courage, for my deep seated fear of rejection. Creating the movie of a lifetime was far easier than auditioning for a role in my own.

Still, this long period of intense mental activity and physical inaction had a strange benefit. It trained my creativity. It gave me a powerful ability to project myself into the future.

So when I finally found courage, around fifteen, maybe, I had all the tools to succeed. I still dreamed, yes, but I learned to act. I became the screenwriter of my own life and the architect of my own destiny. Studies, music, sports, everything went my way.

One night I would dream of accomplishing something, the next day, I would. My ambition was limited only by my imagination, meaning, not at all. In my mind, everything was possible, so in my life, everything became possible.

---

But in any good movie, an inciting incident comes along to shake your certainties.

I was 19 when another life intertwined with mine, a love life.

It arrived embodied as a tall, handsome young man two years my senior, and it brought its share of devastation. My love for him was dazzling, fueled by a desire so raw it made me blind to reality. Betrayals, lies, humiliations, none of it managed to stain the picture I had painted of him.

In my mind, he was perfect.

It took me a long time to realize my imagination hadn’t been a gift. It had been an accomplice.

As with every other aspect of my life, I had written the perfect script for our relationship. But he had no desire to play the part.

The first failure of my career.

After two years of relentless struggle, I finally accepted the truth. I had to let go of this project that was leading nowhere. And since the script had been written specifically for him, I couldn’t keep a single line, not a single passage. So I tore it apart, the tear stained pages of our story, damaged by the floods of sorrow I had poured onto them.

---

That failure didn’t slow me down. If anything, it refined me.

It fueled an ambition, to find a far more qualified actor for the role, someone more inclined to follow the script.

Since then, I’ve developed a well practiced process, triggered every time my heart starts to race. I meet a high potential candidate, I write the perfect love story for him and me, then I do everything in my power to make sure he absorbs the script and fully embodies his character.

To minimize the risk of a bad casting choice, I even have criteria. I prefer mysterious men, distant, sarcastic, emotionally closed off. The less I know, the more room my imagination has to work. Since I don’t really know them, I’m free to imagine them exactly as I want them to be.

Pristine blank pages, ready to be stained with my wildest romantic fantasies.

It took no less than ten failures, and just as many broken hearts, to reach the most obvious realization.

I never loved a single one of these men. I loved their potential.

---

Their potential to play the role I wanted them to play, in the movie I had written and dreamed of producing with them.

So what now.

My mother advised me to let go and trust fate. In other words, to hand over my job as a screenwriter.

The idea might have appealed to me, if it didn’t also mean living without insight, without control, watching my own life unfold like a film I didn’t write.

The truth is, I don’t romanticize love. I romanticize control.

I call it intuition, standards, discernment, but it’s mostly fear dressed in better clothes. Fear of being ordinary. Fear of being rejected. Fear of wanting someone who doesn’t want me back, and having no way to rewrite the scene.

I don’t just fall in love. I storyboard. I cast. I rehearse. I direct. I micromanage the emotions on set. And when the actor refuses to follow the script, I don’t walk away. I work harder. I negotiate with reality like it’s a man I can convince.

That’s what fantasy has always been for me. Not escape. Power.

Because in my head, I never get left. I never get surprised. I never get humiliated in public, or dismissed in private, or replaced without warning. In my head, I am always chosen, always safe, always the one with the final cut.

Letting go would mean admitting I can’t control the ending.

And that is my real addiction.

My worst fear is not that fate will disappoint me.

My worst fear is that fate will be right, and I will still try to fight it, just to feel in control.

i found myself alone

That day, I found myself alone.

After all those years spent sharing my time with others, it now belonged only to me.

At first, I didn’t know what to do with all that time. I had too much of it. So I wasted a big part of it scrolling through social media, staring blankly, my brain switched off. A pointless death for such a precious gift. A waste.

So I decided to honor my time by killing it with meaning. It would become my ally in my quest for self-improvement.

Working out, eating clean, getting massages, draining my grandmother’s swollen ankles that I had inherited from her, writing poems, playing the guitar, and doing it all over again the next day. Every moment now served a purpose.

My time no longer died in vain - it had a mission.

But very quickly, I fell into obsession.

If, by misfortune, a moment slipped away without fulfilling its mission, I punished myself. More harshly than my worst enemy ever could. I had become my own executioner, my own commander, turning myself into a slave to my ambitions.

Three months passed like this. Three months of killing time with honor.

Until one day, everything changed.

---

That day, I had extra time. And I was exhausted.

My military routine had broken me.

Still, unwilling to waste my time on meaningless activities, I simply sat there, motionless. Sitting on a wooden chair, eyes fixed on the murky green pool of my starless hotel, I simply existed.

It had been a long time.

And in that silence, my inner voice emerged.

It had never stopped speaking, but I had drowned it under the constant orders I gave myself. And what it told me struck me like lightning.

“You’re lying to yourself. The meaning you give to your time is just an illusion. The truth is, you’ve searched for meaning for so long, but you’ve never found it. So you made one up. But then what? Where do you think this routine will lead you? What is the final goal, if not your own death?”

Those words shattered my reality.

My discipline, my control - it was all just an escape. A way to ignore the truth: I was afraid. Afraid to face the only thing I couldn’t escape - the finiteness of my time, and by extension, my own.

That night, I didn’t sleep.

And for a week, I didn’t get out of bed.

---

I didn’t have the strength anymore.

The commander who had been pushing me through my daily routines had abandoned his post. Probably offended that I dared to listen to reason.

My body ached, worn down by overtraining, every joint reminding me of my excess. I had no motivation left. And my mind was flooded with thoughts, my inner voice making up for three months of forced silence.

When the noise finally faded, one question remained: “And now what?”

And in perfect harmony, my reason, my heart, my body, and even my former commander whispered the answer:

“Don’t take life too seriously. After all, you won’t get out of it alive.”

A quote from Bob Marley, stored in my mind since the first time I read it at age eight. As if my brain had decided that only now was I ready to truly understand it.

Since that day, I have stopped trying to control my time.

I no longer seek to kill it or glorify it. I simply let it be.

I no longer need to give myself orders - life does it for me.

I trust in fate.

And I am finally at peace with my own ending.

That day, I found myself, alone.

so then, i'll be beautiful

The other day I caught myself staring at my reflection in the mirror, like some heroine in a dramatic movie, deep in existential introspection.

My gray hairs were multiplying, my dark circles were so intense I looked like I’d been out partying for eight days straight, and my stomach… well, let’s just say it had fully enjoyed last night’s pizza and wine combo. I was bloated af.

And that’s when this thought popped into my head: “2026 I’ll be beautiful.”

Because I’ve always wanted to be beautiful. I saw how beautiful girls were looked at. How they were treated. They got the smiles, the compliments, the opportunities… it was like they had a premium subscription to life.

But me? I never ticked the right boxes.

Up until high school, I had thick eyebrows when the trend was pencil thin. My hair was thick and curly when it absolutely had to be sleek and shiny. And I had acne, a lot, and my thighs were way too big for the low rise skinny jeans everyone was wearing.

So I worked on it. I plucked, straightened, concealed, tightened, sucked in, compared, regretted, and started over.

And after all this work, after years of fighting my own body, here I am… almost 30… still standing in front of my mirror, waiting to be beautiful.

But this time, I’m really motivated. I’ll do it.

If I can change it, then why not go for it, right?

So January. New goals. New routine. New me.

Let me grab my notebook and pen.

---

Ok, here we go.

1/ Get rid of dark circles. Apply eye cream morning and night. Sleep at least eight hours a night, no exceptions. Mmmh, let’s say 7 hours. And buy a better concealer for days when that’s not enough.

2/ No more acne scars. Book a laser treatment. Try a glycolic acid serum. And stop touching my face so I don’t make things worse.

3/ Have perfect curls that never frizz. Weekly oil treatments. Hydrating hair masks twice a week. Or once a week? Diffuse only. Maybe move to a less humid apartment.

4/ Finally get a flat stomach and a round butt. Pilates three times a week minimum. Personal trainer twice a week. Quit sugar. No carbs at night. Alcohol only once a month for special occasions. …Okay, twice a month. And only gin. And tequila. No more beer.

5/ No more gray hairs. Get my roots done every three weeks. Try henna. Meditate twice a day to reduce stress.

6/ No more body hair. Start laser hair removal. Moisturize every night before bed to avoid irritation.

7/ Perfectly symmetrical eyebrows. Book an eyebrow specialist every six weeks. Get one of those measuring tools for shaping them right.

8/ Long, strong nails. Take a three month brewer’s yeast supplement. Apply castor oil every night. And every morning.

9/ Whiter teeth. Rinse with water after every sip of coffee. Do a whitening treatment every three months.

10/ Thicker, curled lashes. Apply castor oil morning and night. Or get lash extensions every three weeks. Hmm… maybe both?

11/ Even, glowing skin. Drink at least two liters of water a day. Order that Korean skincare routine I saw on Insta.

12/ Slimmer ankles. Cut out salt. Elevate my legs for 20 minutes every night. Stop crossing my legs when sitting. Buy a resistance band for ankle exercises.

13/ No more cellulite. Lymphatic drainage massage once a week. Dry brushing morning and night. Walk at least 10,000 steps a day.

---

Well, looks good.

So I’m here, in front of my notebook, staring at my list, and suddenly, it all seems so ridiculous.

At this rate, I’ll probably achieve “perfection” about five minutes before I die, at, like, 96 years old.

And even then, knowing myself, I’ll be lying on my deathbed, taking my last breath, thinking:

“Damn, I should’ve worked on my arms more. I’m gonna look fat in my coffin.”

So yeah. I tore up the list.

2026, same old me.