The year began differently in her body before it even started on the calendar. There was a tiredness that didn’t come from sleep and a sensitivity that needed no explanation. It was hormonal, some would say. But the body doesn’t create pain out of nowhere; it simply opens doors. And when it opened, the past entered without asking permission.

She thought a lot about the previous year. She thought about the man she had liked silently for months, keeping the feeling to herself like someone learning not to bother anyone. When she finally spoke, she was clear. She didn’t ask for promises, she didn’t demand a future. She only said she wanted to get to know him better. The answer came politely, correctly, definitively: he wasn’t available to offer what she was looking for. She thanked him, said she understood, and left, outwardly whole. Inside, something began to crumble days later. It wasn’t simple rejection. It was grief for something that never came to exist, but that occupied too much space within her.

For a long time, she wondered if it was selfish to imagine that he might have tried. If feeling hope was already asking too much. With time, she understood that it wasn’t. To desire is not a mistake. Perhaps the mistake was believing that every feeling finds a home.

During the same period, she lost an eight-year friendship. There was no spectacle or shouting. There was a boundary crossed and a silent choice. Distancing herself was a form of survival, even if the cost was high. Some people leave taking with them old versions of who we are, and the emptiness that remains cannot be filled by anyone.

She also made mistakes. She gave herself to someone who didn’t know how to care, accepted empty presence when she needed support. There was a time when her body was used as an attempt to fill what was missing inside, and this led her to problems that didn’t match who she was. She’s not proud of that period, but she doesn’t deny it. It was there that she learned that attention is not synonymous with affection.

Now, in this new year, she is alone. Not bitter, not defeated. Just attentive. She refused easy connections, distanced herself from invitations that didn’t sound genuine. She doesn’t want a relationship, she doesn’t want new friendships, not out of fear, but out of respect for her own limits. After making so many mistakes, she decided not to betray herself again. Still, she remains available to others. She listens, advises, supports. She is there when someone needs her. But when everything falls silent, the question returns, insistent, almost childlike: who stays when she gets tired?

Perhaps this story begins here. Not with lost love, nor broken friendship, nor mistakes made. But at this exact moment when she realizes that surviving is not the same as living—and that, before moving on, she needs to learn to be with herself.