Hi, I am Ikram.

My chest is too small for my heart. My body is too small for my soul.

Hello.

After meeting with people, my body feels strange, like it’s trying to reject something it agreed to carry. I replay my laughter, my nods, and my timing. I wonder which parts were real and which parts were survival. I leave conversations feeling hollowed out, like I’ve misplaced myself somewhere between sentences.

I am afraid of how carefully I move through the world. How rehearsed I am. How much of me is instinct, and how much is fear pretending to be politeness? Sometimes I feel like a collection of responses rather than a person. Like if no one is watching, I might disappear.

There is a quiet shame in not knowing how to belong. I wear different versions of myself depending on the room, and none of them feel like home. I draw invisible lines around my heart because I don’t know how to let anyone cross without panicking—without doing too much.

I am clumsy and clunky, often too loud.
I could be a better friend, a better partner, a better sibling, a better daughter.
I am full of love in all my messiness, through all the abrasiveness, too.
I don’t know—I just like looking at the scenes around me.
I like petting cats on the street and watching cars pass by.
My heart is big in my chest, and sometimes I have to cradle it and love it, even when I’m shying away.

Some days, I wake up already exhausted by the effort of existing. I think this is the day I won’t make it. And then I do. I always do. I don’t know when survival became muscle memory, but here I am, breathing through it again.

Sometimes I wrap my arms around myself.
I watch a fan spin.
I stay very still.
I guess I’ll just love myself until I mean it.

I am learning that staying is its own kind of bravery. The sun keeps showing up for me even when I forget to show up for myself. Time keeps moving, gently, without asking if I’m ready. And somehow, I keep becoming me, over and over again.

I am trying to forgive myself for being human. For having hands that shake, for needing reassurance, for wanting too much and saying too little. I am trying to hate myself less, not all at once, just enough to keep going.

Inside me, I am building someone who understands. Someone who doesn’t flinch at my softness. Someone who knows that even when I feel unlovable, I am still worthy of being held.

I don’t need everything to be okay. I just need moments—small, warm ones. People to love while I’m here. Proof that tenderness still counts for something.

If all I ever do is make people feel a little less alone, then maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s the point. This quiet life, with its tiny joys and ordinary miracles, already feels enormous to me.

I rarely knock on doors. I always assume I am too much or not enough. I wait and wait and tell myself it’s safer this way. But sometimes I wish someone would knock on mine without being asked.

I say I want to go home, but what I mean is I want to feel settled inside myself. I want to rest without guilt. I want to return to a place that never really existed, but still aches like it did.

I carry old sadness carefully, like glass. Things I felt when I was twelve still live in my chest. And yet—when I see stars through my window, or fold warm laundry, I am reminded that wonder survives me. That love keeps finding me in ordinary disguises.

There is so much love in me. It spills everywhere. I just don’t know how to ask for it back. I don’t know how to say, please choose me, without my voice breaking.

I am afraid this longing will outlive me. I joke about it, hide it, pretend I’m fine. But it hums constantly beneath my days. I don’t know where to put it all.

Still, tonight, I am okay. Things are ending. Things are beginning. I am learning to let both happen at once. How strange, how beautiful, to realize I am the love of my own life.

I want to learn languages, make art, and and fill rooms with warmth. I want a soft corner in a quiet home. I want music and color and time.

But more than anything, I want to love and be loved.
I want to move through this world gently, honestly.
Everything I do comes from love—
and a little chaos, too.