the thing with ‘human metamorphosis’ is - it isn’t cinematic. no loud opening music or wind blowing in your hair while you’re walking nonchalant on the streets. it’s actually something very random and you don’t even realise it happening till it’s almost through.

i don’t care if metamorphosis isn’t aesthetic for me. i glitch, i upgrade, sometimes become a beta version of myself, un-installing and re-installing habits, experimenting with identities like outfits. but i am glad it’s honest.

bad timings are when you cross paths with someone who feels emotionally comforting or physically your type and both of you just click like your nervous system recognizes them even before your brain catches up. and then you find yourself sitting right beside them with a metaphorical bouquet in your hands but your life is a mess or their life is a mess, or both of you are mid-construction with emotional caution tapes everywhere.

this is the thing with fancy bouquets and valentine cards. they don’t wait for your timings or your five-year plan and don’t care if you needed five days extra time to heal from a burnout or heartbreak.

it’s easy to romanticise red roses. but no one talks about forcing roses in vases that are already cracked.

there’s a bird, as small as my palm and it always visits the cable in front of my window like a ritual. nobody could tell it had monsters inside its head, but i did because i noticed it a little longer than necessary. they were not the scary kind, definitely not visible from the outside.

and is it so wrong of me to assume that something is wrong with this bird, because at this point i am just personifying this a little too much. to the point that i may have envisioning myself as that bird.

‘love’ doesn’t have to be so dramatic and overhyped when it comes to feeling and being in the state of ‘love’. and it need not be the same palette or canvas size for everyone.

i only had this gallery of discarded love built within me to remind me how every canvas somehow has a story to tell and the way it filled and took shades at some point in my life. over time, some frames cracked, some colours faded, while some simply just stopped feeling familiar anymore.

and all of these recycled fragments of love are what i have been carrying with me all along. it makes me, more of me.

on most days, people-watching is as much about curiosity as about slowing down enough and trying to observe.

people-watching for me is a proof that everyone around me is carrying a life as full as mine or maybe heavier than what their backs could hold. and they just leave a fragment of their story and existence in my mind by just being in the same world as mine, at the same place and at the same time. somehow, this makes my own worries smaller and softer around the edges.

being in the creator filed, the audience expects you to boil down to a genre or niche. but being a human as well, i don’t feel we were not meant to be labelled and restricted to settle down. i am not here to build a labelled brand, i am here to document being a human without pretending i have it all figured out already.

welcome to thepaperbeings, where everything is real, but not everything real has to make sense every time.

this is a space for thoughts that arrive unfinished, feelings without footnotes, emotions we’re still learning how to name, and the beauty of not having answers yet.

come along with me on this journey, where we don’t rush clarity and we let the feelings arrive as they are.