IF I WERE YOU

If I were you, I'd open the fucking blinds. Not because light heals anything. It doesn't. I've met plenty of miserable people standing in sunlight. But at least you'd finally see the room you're living in. The piles of unfinished grief. The resentment mould growing quietly behind the walls. The life you've spent years calling "fine" because calling it dead felt a bit dramatic. I'd put on the shoes gathering dust in the wardrobe and go for a walk. Not one of those Instagram walks where you discover gratitude and buy an overpriced turmeric latte. A real walk. The kind where you end up three suburbs away wondering how the fuck you got there. The kind where old memories catch up with you at traffic lights. The kind where you suddenly realise you've spent years managing your life instead of actually living it. And somewhere along the way, I'd go see your mother. Not because she's responsible for everything. Jesus knows, she's suffered enough. But because one day I sat across from my own mother and realised something uncomfortable. The adults who terrified me as a child were mostly frightened children who got older. Nobody handed them a map. Nobody taught them how to love. Nobody taught them how to grieve. They just kept moving. Working. Drinking. Smoking. Praying. Shopping. Fucking. Talking about the weather. Anything to avoid sitting alone with the ache. I'm not throwing stones here. My list just had different nouns. You see it if you stay long enough. The way your mother suddenly becomes fascinated by stirring her tea when her father comes up. The way someone's eyes drift toward the window when the conversation gets too close to the truth. The joke they've told for forty years because the joke is easier than the story underneath it. Turns out most of the adults I spent my childhood trying to understand were just people trying not to drown. Same as me. Same as you. We inherit far more than eye colour and bad knees. We inherit our father's silence. Our mother's worry. The things nobody talked about. The things everybody knew. Then we spend half our lives calling it "just who I am." Some families pass down jewellery. Mine specialised in anxiety and emotional constipation. If I were you, I'd go home after that. I'd sit down beside the person I claim to love. Not across from them in a couples therapist's office six months after the funeral. Now. Tonight. Before another year disappears. Before another argument gets added to the museum. Before another apology dies in your throat. And I'd say something terrifying. Not something clever. Not something you've rehearsed. The truth. I don't know how to reach you anymore. I miss you. I miss the version of us that used to laugh in supermarkets. I miss feeling like we were on the same side. Because underneath all the opinions and arguments and clever explanations, there's usually just a frightened little child who wants to be loved and has no idea how to ask for it. We call it love. Then spend twenty years defending ourselves from it. I know. I've done it. Shit, I practically earned a doctorate in it. The truth is, love rarely dies in one dramatic explosion. It dies the way old pubs close. Quietly. A little less laughter. A few less people showing up. The lights switched off one room at a time. The stale smell of it still there. The glasses still on the shelf. Everything exactly as it was. Just nobody left who remembers why any of it mattered. Until one day someone rattles the door and discovers nobody's been home for years. So if I were you? I'd start now. Not tomorrow. Not after you've read another book. Not after you've fixed yourself. Now. Open the blinds. Make the call. Ask the question. Say the thing. Because one day there will come a morning when you would give absolutely anything for one more chance to say what you kept putting off today. The conversation you were going to have next week. The apology you were going to make when the timing felt right. The love you were going to show once you finally got your shit together. Funny thing about later. It eventually runs out. And by then, the room will be exactly as you left it. Blinds closed. Shoes by the door. Just the life you kept meaning to get around to. © Zen Prem 2026