Sidewalks

Tag: reflections

  • I Spent So Long Longing, I Forgot to Live

    I Spent So Long Longing, I Forgot to Live

    I found this sitting in my notes app, dated over a year ago. I was in a very different place when I wrote this: burnout, debt, comparison spiraling, the whole thing. I’m sharing it exactly as I wrote it, because I think someone needs to read it today. Maybe that someone is me.

    There are days where everything just feels off.

    Not in a dramatic, crying-on-the-floor kind of way. Just in that quiet, slow-burning way where you wake up and think: this isn’t it. This isn’t what I imagined.

    You go through the motions. Pay the bills. Smile at work. But inside, it’s like a slow scream that nobody can hear but you.

    I want a break. Not a sleep-in-on-Saturday break. A real break. Lakeside naps. Sun on my skin. Reading a murder mystery in a pretty dress, my hair the way I love it: soft, effortless curls that make me feel pretty. I want to feel like I’m finally living in the soft girl dream I’ve been curating on Pinterest boards at 2am.

    Instead I’m here. Knee-deep in credit card debt and mounting stress, trying to remember what it felt like to look forward to something.

    It’s 6pm on a random Thursday and I’m scrolling through people’s lives feeling this weird mix of envy and sadness. Beautiful girls with perfectly toned, suntanned bodies spending their afternoons in a villa in France, swimming, laughing, just existing beautifully…while I’m here, working through a life I didn’t quite sign up for, doing a job I’m not passionate about, tired from overworking and undereating and going through the same dull, monotonous motions over and over again.

    And it stings.

    Not because I hate them, I genuinely don’t. But because I’ve somehow forgotten how to love where I am.

    I think that’s what longing does to you after a while. It convinces you that your real life is somewhere else. That it starts when the money comes, or when the relationship works out, or when you finally book that flight. You keep waiting for the conditions to be right and meanwhile your actual life is just… happening without you in it.

    The jealousy isn’t just envy.

    It’s grief.

    It’s this deep, quiet ache for a version of my life that feels aligned and abundant. And when you’re sitting in that feeling, the illusion that it’s better over there gets so loud. You start believing your life will begin when things finally fall into place.

    And then I was lying in bed, phone in my face at whatever time, mid-spiral, and I read this:

    “When you see your desire as separate, as distant, as something you must earn or chase, you’re reinforcing lack. And God doesn’t operate in lack. Don’t pedestal your desire. Be the version of you who already has it. Because here’s the truth: the desire is not the source. You are. The desire was born because you exist.”

    I had to stop and read it again.

    My longing isn’t proof that I’m missing something. It’s proof that I know what I want. And there’s a difference.

    I’m not going to pretend I have it all figured out. I don’t. But I’m tired of treating my life like a waiting room. I’m done sitting in the corner of my own story, waiting for permission to actually show up in it.

    So I made a decision that day. Not a grand, life-changing declaration. Just a quiet promise to myself. That I was going to start showing up for the life I actually have. Not the one I’m waiting for. Not the one on someone else’s screen. This one. I was going to intentionally find beauty in what I’d been given, instead of only keeping score of what was missing.

    Nobody is coming to save you. That’s the truth nobody tells you nicely.

    You can cry. Be angry. Be frustrated. Complain, whine, spiral. Do all of it. Feel every bit of it. But then you have to wipe your face, straighten up, and take the wheel. Nobody else is the anchor of you ship but you.

    They say the grass is greener on the other side. But I truly believe it’s greener where you water it. And I hadn’t been watering anything. I’d been so busy staring at someone else’s garden that I let mine dry out. So I’m weeding. Slowly. Pulling out what no longer serves me, making room for things that actually help me grow. It’s not glamorous. But it’s mine.

    You only get one life. One. So the question is: do you want to be a visitor in it, watching it pass by from the window? Or do you want to actually be in it?

    It’s been over a year since I wrote this. I found it a few days ago and it stopped me completely. I had to just sit with it for a minute.

    When I wrote this, I was working at a car dealership. I loved the high of that job. But I knew, somewhere deep down, it wasn’t it. I was in debt. I was tired. I was that girl at 6pm on a Thursday, scrolling and aching.

    A year later…

    I paid off my debt. I moved back to India. I started my own social club for women, and by the time this goes up, we will have hosted two fully sold out events.

    Am I proud of myself? Honestly? Not in the way people expect you to say yes. Because I still have so far to go. So much to learn. But compared to where I was — I feel the growth. I feel the progress. And right now, that’s enough.

    I won’t lie. The comparison thing is still there. I still scroll past girls living what feels like my dream life. But I’m learning to detach. Because slowly, quietly — the life I’m building is starting to feel like mine. And I know, I just know, that I too will sit in St. Tropez one day, reading a murder mystery on a lazy Thursday afternoon with the sun on my face.

    Until then… I work. I write. I show up. And I’m building a life I wake up to with joy, not dread.

    That’s enough for now.

    xo,

    Yachna

  • The Cake I Kept Waiting For

    The Cake I Kept Waiting For

    This year, I finally bought my own birthday cake.

    That probably sounds like a very ordinary thing to do. Adults buy themselves things all the time. But for me, it felt strangely significant.

    Every birthday before this one, the cake came from someone else. A partner, a friend, or a family member. And while I was always grateful, they were never quite the cakes I secretly wanted.

    Not because they weren’t good. They were.

    But we all have our own little desires.

    And if there’s one day of the year that’s supposed to feel entirely yours, shouldn’t the cake be too?

    For years, I kept a Pinterest folder filled with beautiful cakes. Vintage cakes. Over-the-top cakes. Cakes that looked like they belonged in old photographs and fairytales. I would save them absentmindedly, never really imagining I would one day order one for myself.

    This year, I finally chose one.

    Originally, I wanted a swan cake. But after much deliberation, I settled on a vintage red cake with the words “Witches Don’t Age” written across the top in icing.

    Chocolate cake with creamy vanilla filling.

    Exactly what I wanted.

    Yet when I placed the order, I felt unexpectedly sad.

    I’d spent years imagining someone surprising me with exactly the cake I wanted.

    What never occurred to me was that I could simply order it.

    I think what saddened me wasn’t paying for the cake.

    It was letting go of the fantasy that someone else would know exactly what I wanted without me ever having to ask.

    Ordering the cake felt strangely final.

    Not because I was spending money on dessert, but because I was giving up a story I’d been carrying for years.

    The story where somebody would surprise me with exactly the right cake. The exact colour. The exact flavour. The exact words piped across the icing.

    Buying it myself felt like admitting that story wasn’t going to happen.

    At least not this year.

    For a few hours, that realization sat heavily with me.

    It felt lonelier than I expected.

    After all, birthdays have a way of stirring up our expectations. They invite us to take stock of our lives, our relationships, and all the little ways we hope to be seen and celebrated. Somewhere along the way, I had attached a surprising amount of meaning to a cake.

    Not the cake itself, but what it represented.

    Being known.

    Being thought of.

    Being chosen.

    But then my birthday arrived.

    And something surprising happened.

    When I saw the cake, I wasn’t sad at all.

    I was delighted.

    It looked exactly the way I’d imagined it would. The red was perfect. The lettering was delightfully dramatic. It looked like it had stepped straight out of my Pinterest folder I had been curating for years.

    And in that moment, none of my earlier sadness mattered.

    Because the thing I wanted was right there in front of me.

    Exactly as I’d imagined it.

    That’s when I realized how often we confuse the source of our happiness with the thing itself.

    I thought I wanted someone to buy me the perfect cake.

    What I actually wanted was the perfect cake.

    I had spent years believing that the gesture was what would make me happy. That somehow the joy depended on who brought it to me.

    But standing there on my birthday, staring at that ridiculous, beautiful cake, I discovered something else.

    The happiness was still there.

    The excitement was still there.

    The only thing that had changed was who made it happen.

    There’s a strange kind of freedom in realizing that.

    Not because we stop wanting love or thoughtfulness from other people. We do. And those gestures will always matter.

    But some of the things we’re waiting for don’t actually require permission, luck, or someone else’s initiative.

    Sometimes the thing we’re waiting for is already within reach.

    Maybe growing older isn’t learning how to need less.

    Maybe it’s realizing that some of the things you’ve been waiting for someone else to give you were never out of reach in the first place.

    The cake sat on the table exactly as I’d imagined it years before, when it lived only in a Pinterest folder.

    And for the first time, that felt like enough.

    Xo,

    Yachna