I Want To Exist In Someone’s Inner World.

Long silences scare me.

Not because I have nothing to do.

But because they leave me alone with the one person I still don’t fully know how to be with — myself.

I seem to need constant communication, reassurance and validation from the people around me just to feel okay.

One day a close friend asked me, “Why are you not happy with your seemingly perfect life? What is it that you want?”

I paused for a minute to reflect. For years, I’d carried a vague feeling that something was missing. Somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten what I really wanted. What is the missing piece I am chasing? Or is it that I have somehow convinced myself that something is missing when in reality nothing is?

I may have wanted different things at different stages of my life. If I had to sum it all up in one need, what would it be? Then one sentence quietly appeared.

I want to exist for someone.

I know no one can be the center of another person’s universe forever. Yet some part of me still longs for that impossible certainty.

A few weeks after I casually mentioned a difficult meeting at work, someone texted, “How did it go?”

I remember staring at the screen for a second. They had remembered something I had almost forgotten saying.

It felt strangely comforting for something so small.

That’s the kind of love I’ve always searched for.

I want to stay in someone’s mind long after the conversation is over.

Someone who genuinely likes the kind of person I am. Someone who reaches out whenever I cross their mind.

To be loved through the art of noticing. Someone who notices the difference between “ok” and “okay.” Someone who knows the things that make me smile before I even realize they do.

I want to feel special without having to plot for it.

Somewhere along the way, vulnerability became something to manage rather than express. I’ve tried telling myself to hold back. Not to overgive. To reply late. To act like I cared less than I actually did. None of it ever felt natural.

I still don’t know whether what I’m looking for is love, belonging, or simply the reassurance that I matter to someone even when I’m not around.

Maybe I was never asking someone to love me more.

Maybe I was asking someone to remember me in the quiet moments when I wasn’t asking to be remembered.