I think social media has genuinely changed the way a lot of us see...

I think social media has genuinely changed the way a lot of us see ourselves. We spend so much time looking at people who seem prettier, happier, more successful, more confident, that eventually you start feeling like you’re falling short just by being a normal person. I’ve caught myself doing it for years. Comparing myself, picking myself apart, wishing I looked or lived differently. And sometimes I have to remind myself that underneath all of that, I’m literally just a human being. I shouldn’t have to be the most attractive, interesting, successful or confident person in the room to feel like I belong in it.

towfiq

Confessions to the moon The most intimate thing, for me, is not kissing you, nor holding you. It's talking to you about myself. If I give you my body, I can take it back. But if I give you my thoughts, it's like giving you a piece of my heart. And when you leave, you take with you the deepest part of me — the one I'll never get back.

musti.dab

I think that’s one of the strangest things about losing someone who is still alive. Nothing disappears all at once. The person leaves first. The habits take longer. The conversations you continue inside your head take even longer. And the future might be the last thing to leave. I don’t only miss you. I miss things that never even happened. Trips we talked about but never took. Summers we never reached. Ordinary Sundays. Getting older. Going to the swimming pool, just the two of us Spending one New Year’s Eve together.

musti.dab

There are still things I want to tell you. Small things, mostly. A plant I finally learned the name of. Something stupid one of my cats did. A sentence I heard on the street that would have made you laugh. A tree somewhere in Berlin carrying fruit, the kind we would have stopped to inspect as if discovering it ourselves. Sometimes something happens and my first thought is still: I have to tell you this. And for one tiny second, you still exist exactly where you used to. Then I remember. There is nowhere to send it anymore.