Soul Over Storybook

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

-Anaïs Nin I grew up on stories with perfect endings. Fairy tales dressed up as truths. Love looked like a crown, and sounded like a promise. The prince always showed up, eventually. The girl always said yes, even if she had to fold herself in half to fit. No one warned me that those stories were written in ink that washes away when life gets messy. No one told me that love, real love, rarely looks like the movies. That it doesn’t always show up holding flowers. Sometimes, it doesn’t show up at all.

But I still chased it.

I chased the spark. The drama. The romance wrapped in red flags and late-night confessions. I mistook chemistry for connection. I mistook being chosen - for being cherished. I fell for the story more than the person. The version of us I built in my head, not the one unfolding in front of me. I wanted to be enough for someone to stay. I wanted the storybook to come true so badly, I stopped hearing the sound of myself breaking.

I stayed when I was already gone. I shrank until my silence fit the space between us. I smiled through dinners where my heart was starving. I waited for him to look up from his life and say, There you are. I see you. But he never did. Not really.

I thought if I could just be good enough - pretty enough, patient enough, light enough- love would finally stay. But all I became was tired. And invisible.

It took years of ache to realize: I wasn’t mourning the loss of him. I was grieving the illusion. The story I had clung to like a life raft. The one that told me love is something you earn. Something you prove. Something that looks good in pictures. I wasn’t just heartbroken. I was soul-weary. Shattered not by one person, but by a lifetime of trying to fit into someone else’s dream.

And then - something shifted.

It didn’t come with music or clarity. It came like a whisper. In letters to myself. In silence. In a moment I didn’t expect, where someone saw me - not the version I presented, not the girl with the curated smile - but me. The parts I thought were too much. The parts I thought I had to hide to be held. And it didn’t feel like fireworks. It felt like exhale. Like someone had turned the volume down on the world, and I could finally hear my own heart again.

That’s when I knew.

Love isn’t loud. It’s steady. It’s not about how well someone fits your life. It’s about how their presence fits your soul.

I started letting go of the checklist.

The Instagram smiles.

The career accolades.

The gym body.

The passport stamps.

The man who makes everyone else say, “You’re so lucky.”

What’s the point of chemistry if the silence between us feels like abandonment? What’s the point of love that doesn’t hold your grief, or worse - asks you to keep it hidden?

I don’t want to be worshipped. I want to be witnessed. In the mess. In the becoming. In the nights I don’t have anything left to give but breath and presence.

I’ve come to believe something wild. That soul connection doesn’t always look like romance. It doesn’t always come dressed in the right story. Sometimes it arrives in a moment of deep recognition. A calm nervous system. A shared quiet. A seat beside you in the storm.

If that makes me naïve so be it!

I would rather be the kind of woman who chooses truth over fantasy. Soul over storybook. Every time.