Writing with a full stomach

March 22, 2026

There are parts of me today that my younger self would not recognize.

You do not always realize how far you have come until a random quiet day arrives, when you find yourself sitting alone in a coffee shop, sipping your drink slowly, eating your favorite pastry, and watching people pass by as if time has softened for a while. It is in moments like this, when nothing extraordinary is happening, that memory quietly returns.

Then suddenly, you remember another quiet day years ago, one that looked almost the same in silence, but carried a completely different weight. You were alone in your room, surrounded by thoughts too heavy for your age, writing because you did not know where else to place what you were feeling. The pages knew how messy your mind was, how often you wished time would stop, how sometimes hunger felt easier to ignore than reality itself.

Back then, you wrote with longing, with confusion, with questions you were too young to answer. You wrote about wanting life to become gentler, even when you did not know what gentleness would look like. You did not know where life would take you, or whether the things you whispered in your prayers would ever find their way back to you.

You had no idea that one day, in your 20’s, you would still be writing—but this time, your words would sound different. Less desperate. Less afraid. Still carrying traces of pain, but no longer drowning in it.

This time, you are writing while your stomach is full. Writing while your coffee slowly turns cold beside you because you became too lost in thought. Writing while realizing that some of the things you once begged life for have arrived so quietly that you almost failed to notice them.

Not everything became perfect. There are still days that feel uncertain, still parts of you that ache, still questions that remain unanswered. But something undeniable changed: you stayed long enough to meet this version of yourself.

The child who once feared hunger would not immediately understand this version of me—sitting still, breathing slowly, and knowing, at least for today, that I am no longer hungry.

Perhaps that is why this ordinary afternoon feels almost sacred, because once, the younger version of me only imagined surviving days like this. Now, I am here, living one.