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.

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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?

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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