If destiny needs a name, let it be his.

I beg the Universe—
quietly, on nights it pretends not to hear me.
I look at you and swallow the words,
I will wait.
No matter how long.
No matter how foolish it makes me look
, standing still while the world moves on.

I would hold your hand when the seas grow violent,
when hope slips through your fingers
and you forget how to breathe.
I would teach you how to live again—
not because you don’t know how,
but because I only ever wanted
to do life with you.

I would advise you, if you asked,
on how to soften the sharp edges of your days.
I would be the solace you kept searching for
in places that were never kind to you.

I say all of this, don’t I?
I say I am ready.
I say I have love—
more than I know what to do with.
I say I love you.

And you never say it back.
Not once.
Not when it mattered.

So here we are, losing—
not loudly, not dramatically—
but quietly, the way people do
when one heart is open
and the other is locked from the inside.

You weren’t willing to receive
the love I held out to you,
even when it came without conditions.

Who knew love could suffocate instead of save?
Did you know?
Is that why you stood in the doorway,
telling me you loved me—
your body already halfway gone,
your words never intending to stay?

And yet, even after all of this,
I bow my head to the Universe,
stubborn in my faith, reckless in my hope.

I ask it to rewrite the prophecy,
to be merciful where you were not,
and to still—somehow—
name my destiny after you.

So much unknown in the once known

Two people who were intertwined and tangled with each other a fortnight ago- now distant.

Parallel lines.

The eyes that felt like peace once? Now they don’t even look at each other to steal a glance.

The voice that called your name like worship? Now can’t formulate a simple “Hi” when they see you.

How ironical it is right? All you ever wanted for “us” was goodbye but you cannot bring yourself to form the word to say to me when I leave the once known?

All I wanted, on the contrary, was to keep you. Hold you close. Hoped that you would forever be in my orbit as the planet that gravitates only to my pull.

Then how is it that I form the word “bye” when I leave the once known?

The place that once was all about love and light and laughter and all things good- is now ice cold and dark. Maybe just for me though.

The one place I ran to every chance I got because it sparkled like love? The lights now out. Now my footsteps stop at the entrance. Contemplates. Traces the path back to the exit. And the love dwindles.

You are unknown to me now. Or maybe you’re just dressed in colours not meant for me.

Your voice- a faint echo of someone I loved deeply and completely. I love you still. But my love’s all fading into black. I’m fading into the black in your reality.

The end of our story is near. The end of our story is here. So to my once known before you’re forever unknown to me- light up the dark before it consumes you.

Learn to love before love learns to leave you.

Keep my space safe for if ever the wounded soldier returns home after fighting her war.

Keep my memories locked somewhere so that I always have a blip of known in the now unknown.

I didn’t plan to write a year-end reflection, but when has life ever gone according to a well carefully crafted plan anyway? 2025 changed me in ways I can’t ignore. It pushed me, tested me, and quietly taught me things I didn’t even know I needed to learn. Somewhere along the way — through late-night breakdowns, unexpected kindness, friendships that held me, and love that didn’t last — I grew. Not in the dramatic, life-altering way I once imagined, but in small, quiet ways that built me into someone new.
So here are the lessons I’m carrying into the next year, written with honesty, a little tenderness, and the hope that 2026 will be gentler with me.

· Life’s never linear. Most of the times the dips hit more than the rise: The December of 2021–2023 was a different era — a younger, softer version of me who still believed life followed a neat, predictable rhythm. Back then, December meant running around the streets of London, riding the high of Winter Wonderland, and feeling like love and direction were permanent fixtures. But life changed — brutally, abruptly, and without warning. I remember the chaos when immigration policies shifted, and suddenly my future felt suspended in a limbo I never asked for. I remember envying people who seemed to live the life I wanted with half the effort. Does it still bother me? Absolutely. Some nights I still wish things unfolded differently. But January-me and December-me are not the same. I’m steadier now, grounded in ways I wasn’t four years ago. Life didn’t go as planned — but maybe that’s where I learned the most.

· They were ready for love, just not for you: As someone who has never known nonchalance in love or lied about something this tender, 2025 bruised me in ways I didn’t anticipate. Early in the year, someone warned me: “Beware of the love that starts suddenly — it will disappoint suddenly too.” I dismissed it with the arrogance of someone who believes she can love deeply enough to change the ending. But nine months later, there I was — watching the same person who once stumbled over the idea of commitment suddenly become soft and certain… just not with me. It’s a strange kind of heartbreak, witnessing someone become the version you always wished they’d be, but for someone else. I watched the mushy nicknames appear, the carefully planned dates, the inside jokes, the way they slipped this new person’s name into conversations as effortlessly as breathing. I watched them become attentive, thoughtful, romantic — the very things I waited for, the very things I had poured my patience into hoping to receive. And it taught me something painfully liberating: some people are ready for love, but only when they meet the person their heart finally decides on. And no amount of goodness, loyalty, or honesty can make them choose you if you aren’t that person.It hurt — deeply, silently, and in ways I won’t pretend away. But it also freed me. Because I finally understood that I wasn’t unlovable — just not their choice. And there’s a quiet strength in accepting that without resentment.

· Healing is rarely loud — most days it looks like boring consistency. 2025 taught me that healing isn’t cinematic. It’s not the big breakdown or the dramatic epiphany. It’s the small, mundane acts — replying to emails on time, cleaning your room when you don’t feel like it, choosing sleep over spiralling, showing up to the gym even when grief sits heavy. Healing is discipline disguised as routine. And some days, discipline is the only love you can give yourself. But this year wasn’t gentle with me. It was chaotic in ways I didn’t expect. My body rebelled — violently, confusingly — in ways I had never experienced before. I have woken up in the middle of the night with a sharp ache in my chest, breathless, overwhelmed, tears spilling before I even understood why. Disbelief reigned supreme. How could something that didn’t even last that long break me this deeply? I’ve dragged myself out of the rabbit hole of shame and self-hate more times than I can count, only to fall right back into it two days later. Healing hasn’t been linear or graceful. It’s been messy, repetitive, exhausting — a cycle I’m still learning to navigate with patience instead of punishment. It’s a work in progress. I’m a work in progress. And hopefully — gently, quietly — the next year will look up.

· Friendships save you in ways you don’t expect. This year, I learnt that sometimes it’s not the grand gestures but the quiet “Did you eat?”, the random meme, the 11 PM phone call, the friend who remembers your exam date, the one who shows up even when you didn’t ask. Love from friends is softer, steadier, and more healing than any romantic crescendo I chased. The right people don’t just stay — they anchor you. Because apart from the family I was born into, this chosen family of mine has saved me more times than I can count. They’ve stolen me away from the pit of my own darkness and taken me on early morning rides to places they call their “little slices of heaven,” just so I could remember what peace feels like. They’ve spent three-hours on a phone call with me simply because something in the way I texted sounded off. They’ve reminded me of my worth on days when heartbreak convinced me otherwise, and they’ve stood guard at the gates of my heart, helping me fight off the half-hearted connections I stumbled into earlier this year.They’ve hated the guts of the guy who made me miserable — loudly, shamelessly, and with a level of loyalty that only true friendship can carry. And they’ve loved me enough to tell me they will let me go, if and when I decide to leave this city behind again… hopefully for one last time.This year proved that friendships aren’t just constant — they’re lifelines.

· You can outgrow people you still love.Not every goodbye is a failure. Sometimes you outgrow someone simply because you grew in a direction they didn’t. You evolve, and they remain who they were. And suddenly the conversations don’t flow, the comfort doesn’t feel the same, and your heart knows long before your mind catches up. Letting go isn’t cruelty — it’s clarity. They say you let go of people for the same reasons you fell in love with them. And oh, how deeply and loudly I have loved these two souls. But as the years — and more painfully, the months — passed, I noticed the shift. While love allowed me to grow, while I chiselled parts of myself to make us work, they stood their ground. The very traits that once made my heart soften — their decisiveness, their stubbornness, their consistency — eventually became the reason I felt stuck. It was in the littlest of things, the small refusals to bend, the reluctance to meet me halfway. Things that once felt charming began to feel heavy. And little by little, I realised I was outgrowing a situation I had once prayed for. After months of choosing them over myself, I chose myself. Not out of anger, not out of exhaustion — but out of recognition that I deserved reciprocity, not just affection. Does that make them evil? No. Like I said earlier — they were ready for love, for softer versions of themselves, for love songs dedicated to them… just not from me. The flowers they received from me always looked like carnations, even when I had plucked roses and lilies and orchids with the utmost care. Sometimes the love you give simply blooms in the wrong garden.

· Beginning again is not failure — it’s proof that you’re still thriving. If 2025 taught me anything, it’s that life will make you start over when you least expect it. I’ve started again in love, in friendships, in career paths, in the way I understand myself. Some endings blindsided me, some beginnings felt forced, and some transitions felt like the ground disappearing beneath my feet. But I’ve come to realise that beginning again is not a step backward — it’s bravery in motion. It’s choosing to rewrite your story after it’s been torn apart. It’s finding the strength to gather your pieces, even when your hands are shaking. It’s accepting that sometimes the universe says “not this,” so it can gently guide you toward something better, even if the in-between feels like freefall. Every time I stood up after a heartbreak, every time I opened a new document to rewrite another CV, every time I walked away from someone who couldn’t love me fully — I wasn’t failing. I was continuing. And that counts for something even if I don’t know what it is!

If there’s one thing this year has taught me, it’s that life will never look the way I thought it would at twenty-one, or twenty-three, or even at the start of 2025. I’ve learnt that grief comes in waves, love leaves without warning, healing takes longer than we think, and friendships often arrive like lifeboats in the middle of a storm.But I’ve also learnt that I am resilient in ways I rarely give myself credit for. That even when my heart was splintered, even when my chest ached at 3 AM, even when I was convinced I had nothing left to give — some quiet part of me kept going. Kept hoping. Kept believing that the next chapter could still be kinder. Maybe that’s what growth really is: not sudden transformation, but the slow, stubborn refusal to give up on yourself. 2025 didn’t give me the life I wanted. But it gave me the lessons I needed — grounding, humbling, painful, and ultimately shaping me into someone stronger, softer, more self-aware. And as the year ends, I hope 2026 brings gentler love, clearer paths, warmer beginnings, and the courage to choose myself again and again. Here’s to healing, to outgrowing, to beginning again.

And here’s to the version of me who survived it all.

~ Penny ♥️🧿

Imagine asking someone “Would you love me in December the way you love me in May?” and the answer keeps coming back as yes.

You feel the fear of losing in that question?

I knew you wouldn’t love me. Or maybe even the fact that you never did.

The illusion of us was beautiful though. And I spent a lifetime during my 90 days in heaven before you tore it all up. And left that version of us to rot. With me.
Left me to live with memories of us “in love”. Only to come back in newer colours.
And you have no idea how you’re breaking me now because you’re oblivious to my grays still.

I see you try in love with someone new. You say you are getting your karma back now? And I see you happy in love.
Oh I don’t mind that. At all. I want you to be happy. And in love. Even if it’s not with me.
But no karma isn’t getting you right now. At least not in the way you treated me. Because you have no idea what I’m living with and how I’m breathing in bits.

I wish you tried. For me. Oh! I would have given you the world.
I would have fought the world for you. I would have been a shield, like I already was, in your absence too. I would have held your hand through the storm to brighter days.
Oh the way I would have loved you.
But instead I heard you say “you deserve a lot better than me. Someone who will love you the way you should be loved.”
And that broke me. Into a million pieces. Because I thought I finally found it. My missing puzzle piece.

You are someone else’s now and I’m still trying to find ways to not live my life in half breaths.

You ask me how you can make things better for me and I want to say “you can never because you’re the one who’s hurting me” but all I say is “it’s not for you to heal”

And you know. You know that you’re hurting me. You know that holding me back with you now is tearing me apart. But you still don’t let go.
And I resent you for that. I regret you, for that. While it’s not for you to heal- it’s for you to make sure it stops hurting.
And I know. Oh God, I know you don’t love me. Not in the way I do. But you don’t let me go either.

You hold on a little longer. And then a little more. And now your hands are like a rope cutting into my skin. The friction is making me bleed more and more. Profusely now. And you still don’t see the red.

When will you see me bleed out? From the bullets you shot? From the injuries you inflicted? One by one. With the utmost care. When I’m on the ground? Gasping for breath?
Will you see me then? Will you come running and sit at my feet as I am on my last breath? Will you say that you’re sorry then? Sorry for breaking me? For killing the lover I had in me?Will you look at me and know that you are the reason behind my demise? Or will you still be ignorant?

Will you try and love me then? Will you love me next May, the way you don’t love me this December?

Someone asked me to write about hope yesterday. And you gotta give what your readers want right? Also, what a word this is.

Imagine the magnanimity of it — five letters carrying the unbearable weight of survival. The beauty of hope is that no matter who we are, no matter how bruised or broken we become, we return to it instinctively. We hope for better days, better careers, better pay, better love, better friends. We hope for a better life. Even when life has given us every reason not to.

This year, especially, has tested my relationship with hope. It has not been kind. It has not been gentle. It arrived with lessons I did not ask for and endings I did not consent to. It took people, certainty, comfort — and replaced them with silence, questions, and an aching kind of clarity. There were moments when hope felt foolish, almost offensive. Like a naïve friend who refused to understand how tired I was of believing.

And yet, here I am.

What this year has taught me is that hope is not loud. It doesn’t announce itself with optimism or blind positivity. Hope is quiet. It sits beside you on days when getting out of bed feels like a victory. It looks like showing up even when your heart is still in pieces. It looks like choosing to believe that the version of life you are walking away from is not the only one you will ever know.

Hope, this year, was staying when everything in me wanted to shut down. It was trusting that rejection was not redirection’s cruel cousin, but its necessary beginning. It was learning that endings do not erase the meaning of what once was — they simply make space for what has yet to arrive. It was allowing myself to grieve without deciding that grief would be my permanent address.

I didn’t always hope gracefully. Some days hope showed up as stubbornness. Some days it looked like tears and clenched jaws and whispered please into the dark. But even then, hope persisted — not because I was strong, but because something inside me refused to believe that this was all there was.

Hope did not promise me ease. It promised me continuity. It promised that even after disappointment, even after heartbreak, even after a year that demanded more than I thought I could give, life would still offer me mornings worth waking up for. New conversations. New versions of myself. New joys I cannot yet name.

So yes, hope is a magnificent word. Not because it guarantees happiness, but because it keeps us moving forward despite the absence of it. And if this year has forced anything upon me, it is this quiet, defiant kind of hope — the kind that survives not because life is good, but because I am still here, still trying, still believing that better days are not behind me.

They are waiting.

They belt out “Have a holly jolly Christmas, it’s the best time of the year,” as if joy is compulsory and grief has taken the season off. Reels flood my screen—Mariah Carey hitting that impossible note, Michael Bublé crooning like love has never failed anyone. The air smells like gingerbread cookies and chai sugar biscuits, mulled wine simmering somewhere, strawberries dipped in chocolate—things meant to be shared, not eaten alone.

And amidst all of this, I think of you.

You—not as you are, not even as you were—but as the idea of you. The love of my life. Or maybe just the person I loved like one. The line between the two still blurs on nights like these.

This year hasn’t been kind in love.
It began with letting go of someone who had the best intentions for me—someone gentle, someone safe, someone who tried. Loving them felt like standing in sunlight that never quite reached my skin. And then came the others. A series of almosts. Men who spoke beautifully but showed up poorly. Men who mistook attention for effort, intensity for intimacy. Men who were never worthy of my time, yet somehow occupied my heart longer than they deserved.

I wanted the clichés this year. I won’t lie.
I wanted to be kissed under mistletoe, to laugh with someone whose hands felt like home. I wanted to welcome the new year pressed against a chest that felt certain, counting down seconds that felt like promises instead of reminders. I wanted love that felt festive—easy, mutual, unquestioned.

Instead, December arrived with space.
With empty chairs beside me. With photos I didn’t take. With moments I didn’t live. With the quiet realization that once again, I would be my own plus one.

But Christmas also reminds me of the last time I fell in love.

The last time love happened to me for the first time. The split second for which you were mine. A moment in time in March when you looked at me like nothing else mattered.
Unhesitant. Untaught. Whole.

With you, love lived in subtleties. In the way your hands tied my hair back because you said it looked better that way. In the way I trusted you without needing proof. You were the love of my life once. And then, somehow, you became the loss of it.

How that happened, I will never know.

How tenderness turned brittle. How warmth drained from your touch. How the same hands that once felt careful grew ice-cold—tightening, taking, stealing the air from my chest. There was no dramatic ending. Just a slow unraveling. A quiet forgetting of who I was while loving you.

I will never know how love learned to hurt like that.

So when Christmas arrives dressed in carols and candlelight and promises of miracles, I stay still. I let the world celebrate what it found while I sit with what I lost. I think of mistletoe that never mattered and midnight kisses that never came true. I think of wishes whispered into December nights that went unanswered.

Maybe Santa heard them.
Maybe he just didn’t bring you.

And so this Christmas smells like gingerbread and mulled wine and things meant to be shared, while I learn—again—that some loves remain unwrapped. Some wishes stay on the list forever.

This year, Christmas came.
You didn’t. And the grief of never finding you again in this colour, as mine, washes over me in waves.

His eyes are coffee brown—
the kind that stay warm long after the cup cools.
Some days they meet mine with a sincerity
I’m almost afraid to hold,
like he’s offering something he doesn’t realise.
Something I’ve spent years trying not to want.

In sunlight, they soften—
turn lighter, almost amber,
like someone stirred a drop of honey
into something already sweet.
There’s a gentleness there,
a warmth that makes the world feel less sharp
for a fleeting second.

At dawn, though—
they have a different story.
Quieter.
As if he carries dreams he never speaks of,
shadows of thoughts he’ll never admit to,
and I catch them only in those unguarded moments
between sleep and what he pretends to feel.

And then there’s that other look—
that impish curl of light he doesn’t hide,
the spark that tugs at the corner of my caution,
makes me wonder what falling could feel like
if he wasn’t so determined to stand his ground.
It’s ridiculous how someone can make you
wish for a different version of yourself—
one that wasn’t stitching her heart together
one careful thread at a time.

But I know better.
I know the universe doesn’t redraw its lines
just because a pair of coffee-brown eyes
decided to look at me
like I was something soft,
something worth choosing.

So I breathe. I smile.
I let his charm skim the surface of me
and go no deeper—
even when a small, foolish part of me
wonders how it would feel
to stop pretending I don’t fall in love every time you look at me.

This blog is going to be a little different from my last few. I’ve realised that switching between literary styles feels oddly liberating. It lets me breathe, expand, and exist as someone who processes the world through words.
Okay, that’s enough word vomit. Let’s get to the point.

Growing up on a steady diet of Disney movies, my idea of life was—of course—fairy-tale coded. Girl meets boy. They fall in love. Get married. Cue the happily ever after. On top of that, I also had the Bollywood version playing in my head: me living in Central London with a fancy big-girl job in one of the dreamiest cities in the world.

Well… turns out that while that might be true in lore, real life isn’t that linear. Not for me, at least. And I’m sure not for most of us.

This past year, life has felt less like a fairy tale and more like riding that mechanical bull—or whatever it’s actually called—holding on for dear life while it tries to throw me off every five seconds. And somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, I fell in love with my so-called Prince Charming. Or that’s what he seemed like at the time. Spoiler alert: he turned out to be Prince Hans from Frozen. That’s all I’m going to say about him.

Was it disheartening to get my heart broken again? Yes.
Did I stay in that phase longer than I should have? Also yes.
Have I lost hope in love? Absolutely not.

And yes, I’m painfully aware I sound like I am personifying an Instagram reel right now.

But here’s the crux: despite everything, I still haven’t lost hope in love. In fact, my many failed “love stories” have shown me exactly why they didn’t work out. It’s because I convinced myself that these were the kinds of “men” I wanted (yes, the quotes are intentional). But honestly, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

The truth is—I’ve never liked nonchalance. I need someone who loves literature, someone who doesn’t think I’m weird because I listen to Taylor Swift on repeat or because I love Taylor slightly more than I love him. I want someone who understands my obsession with writing, who shows up with cute stationery because he knows it’ll make my entire week.

I want a man I can love.
A man whose family welcomes me as their own.
A man who embraces mine the same way.
I want to build a home where Sunday mornings mean breakfast in bed, taking turns cooking each other’s favourite things.

It might sound like a long wishlist, but the past year has taught me not to settle. I’ve learned that manifestation works in mysterious ways. Sometimes you meet someone randomly and realise you could’ve crossed paths years ago—when you were teenagers, or again at some mutual friend’s event—but the Universe made you wait. Maybe a little too long. Or maybe we were too young, too raw, too unpolished to understand that some edges needed to be softened first.

And yes, I know I’m not supposed to chase love or talk about it too much. But like I said, I’ve never been a nonchalant person. Not in family, not in friendships, and definitely not in love. I’m the kind who will scream “I’M ENGAGED! I’M ENGAGED!” from the rooftop the moment it happens—so here’s to the man I didn’t settle for, but the man I genuinely, wholeheartedly and completely fell in love with.