Echoes of Mahnoor

Talking to my friend the other day, she casually mentioned that her younger cousin doesn't know who Mr. Bean is. I genuinely had to pause for a second. How does a four-year-old not know Mr. Bean? How does a child grow up without knowing the characters that practically raised an entire generation? It sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud, but it made me realise just how different childhood has become. There was a time when coming home from school meant throwing your bag somewhere, grabbing a snack and rushing towards the television because your favourite cartoon was about to start. There was no scrolling endlessly through hundreds of videos, no algorithm deciding what you should watch next and certainly no option to replay an episode whenever you wanted. You simply waited for it. Then there were the weekends. The kind where waking up early didn't feel like a punishment because there was a Ben 10 movie playing at noon. You'd already seen half of it before, but that didn...

You're so used to bundling everything up, closing it as tightly as you possibly can with a zip tie, throwing it into a box, and putting that box somewhere so far away and so deep within yourself that you eventually forget it ever existed. You become so accustomed to shoving everything away that when someone suddenly asks you to reopen that box and untangle everything inside it, only then do you realise how terribly you were treated, how much you tolerated, and how much of yourself you had quietly abandoned in the process. That's what dismissal does to you. You tell yourself to "forget it", to "leave it", to "not make such a big deal out of it", when somewhere deep down you know that it did pinch you. Maybe it hurt more than you allowed yourself to admit. But you leave it anyway, because hiding something away is often easier than having to look directly at it. Perhaps that's what running away does to a person. Instead of fight, you choose flight...

Perhaps everyone carries a cemetery of unlived lives within them. Versions of themselves that existed only for a heartbeat before a single decision quietly buried them. Somewhere, in another version of the world, there's a person who chose differently. They boarded a different bus, replied to the message, stayed instead of leaving, left instead of staying, chose another university, trusted another person. They aren't real, yet somehow they feel familiar. A decision is the death of another possibility. Every choice is an introduction to one life and a goodbye to countless others. Choosing one road isn't simply about moving forward; it's about quietly closing the door on every path that could have been. Sometimes, life places us at a crossroads where neither road is wrong, yet neither comes without a cost. One asks us to choose ourselves. The other asks us to choose everyone else. So we sit there, drawing out every possibility in our heads. One life lets us keep the peace...

It's strange how all your life you've held yourself together. Like trying to carry all the groceries in one trip, refusing to make a second round because you've convinced yourself you should be able to manage it all. Like gathering every piece of laundry in both your hands, carefully making sure not a single sock slips onto the dirty floor. Like standing in front of the stove, watching the milk so it doesn't boil over because you know you'll be scolded for making a mess. Somewhere along the way, you learn that everything is your responsibility. Dropping something feels like failure. Asking for help feels like weakness. So you convince yourself that you're okay, even when every part of you is screaming that you're tired. And then they come along. They hold you the way you'd hold a butterfly with torn wings, afraid that even the slightest pressure might hurt it more. They hold you the way you'd cradle a weak kitten, careful enough not to frighten it. T...

There are people who spend years in our lives and leave almost nothing behind. Then there are people who stay for a few months, a few conversations, or even a single afternoon, and somehow leave fingerprints all over the person we become. That makes me wonder if they know the change they instilled in me. I wonder if my Physics teacher knows that he saw potential in me when I couldn't see it myself.  I wonder if my Sports teacher knows that entrusting me with the netball team taught me confidence and responsibility.  Seeing potential in someone is much like sunlight falling on a flower. The sun doesn't ask the flower to bloom overnight, it simply keeps showing up every day until, one day, the flower blossoms into something beautiful and fragrant.  Sometimes, all a person needs is someone who believes in them before they can believe in themselves. Then I wonder if that friend who broke me ever realized that they taught me when to leave. We spend so much time thinking about ...

I thought leaving would hurt the most. Everyone talks about how difficult it is to let go of someone who once meant everything to you, so I prepared myself for sleepless nights, for the urge to text them, for missing them in places they'd never even been. I prepared myself for grief. What I hadn't prepared myself for was relief. The day I walked away, I wasn't counting the things I had lost. I remember feeling lighter, almost guilty for how light I felt. I kept wondering if something was wrong with me. Wasn't I supposed to be heartbroken? Wasn't I supposed to miss them? Why did breathing suddenly feel easier? Relief almost felt like guilt, especially when the people around me made me feel as though leaving had been the wrong choice. It made me question myself. Had I given up too soon? Had I failed to fight hard enough? Was I the problem all along? For the longest time, I convinced myself that I had escaped untouched. I told myself that maybe I hadn't loved deepl...