When I said I wanted to feel like the main character, I did not mean Gregor Samsa

Metamorphosis isn’t scary because Gregor turns into a bug. It's terrifying because one morning, the people you’ve spent your whole life loving wake up and no longer recognize you. Maybe they choose not to. Maybe they never really did. 

Relationships fade—not with grand exits, but in the way silences stretch too long or words fizzle mid-air. The kind of loss you don’t notice until it’s too late, like water slipping through your fingers. I used to obsess over that shift, thinking I could catch it, change its course.

I clung to the fantasy that somewhere, someone could perfectly tune into my frequency, truly see me. But what if that’s just another illusion? What if, no matter how close you get, there’s always a layer of glass between you and the people you love?

Weirdly, that thought's not as scary as it used to be. In fact, it's freeing. When you stop expecting the pieces to fit, you stop needing them to. The glass isn’t a wall, it’s a mirror. You think you’re looking at someone else, but really, it’s just pieces of yourself. The freedom is in not minding the cracks.

So even in the distance, I keep trying. I keep offering pieces of myself. The act of listening, the act of being present—flawed, distracted—feels almost like a ritual, one that keeps me anchored in this strange, separate world. It’s not desperation, but more like the way a moth circles a light, drawn to something it can’t quite touch but still finds itself returning to.

The reaching is where it all lives. The reaching is what keeps me from becoming completely lost in myself. And sometimes, just for a blink, someone reaches back. It's not magic, but something close—a flicker of recognition, like catching sunlight underwater. There, then gone.