A tweet from 2014 still lives in my head, mostly because I didn’t get it at the time. Now it feels like a prophecy.
I was 15 that year.
At the time, I wasn’t bored of public vulnerability. I was writing for free. On Tumblr. On Wattpad. On Instagram. About things I couldn’t yet name. Commodifying feelings I hadn’t sat with long enough (or wasn’t even mature enough) to understand. I started writing for myself, but it didn’t stay that way for long. Magazines, companies, publications started reaching out. They liked how I sounded. They liked that I could package emotion.
By sixteen, I was getting five cents a word. Then twenty cents. Still not enough to live on, but enough to pretend I was doing something brave.
People told me I was gifted. Wise beyond my years. Self-aware. Articulate. I didn’t feel like any of those things. I just felt like I knew how to write about growing pains in a way that sounded like they mattered. I didn’t know I could keep anything for myself. What started as expression became performance. Suddenly, it mattered less what I meant—and more how well I could deliver it. I thought writing meant exposure. That truth required an audience.
When I launched I Told You So on Bobblehaus in 2021, it marked a shift. I stopped writing about myself and started writing around the edges of other people. Mostly friends. They’d tell me a story and I’d ask, “Can I write this?” They’d send long voice notes. We’d talk it through. It felt like a way out of my own narrative. I was watching more than narrating. But I was still shaping emotion into structure. Still trying to make it sound like something you could live inside.
The column started with dating stories, but it became something else—a way to look outward. That became this Substack. The stories expanded. It wasn’t just about dating anymore. It became a way to write about how I saw everything else. The things I used to pass through without paying attention.
That shift felt honest. But it was still curated. I know it’s easy to think you know me because I write like this. But you don’t. Not really. You’re only ever seeing what I’ve chosen to hold up to the light.
So when I see that tweet now, it doesn’t feel ironic. It just feels true. Like something I didn’t grow out of, but toward.
Eventually, you get tired of turning your insides into something consumable.
And yes, I’m saying all of this on Substack. Believe me, I know what that means. (If you point out the irony, it’s actually really cute and self-aware.)
There’s actual psychology behind that. In your teens and early twenties, visibility can feel like a stand-in for intimacy. Posting your pain feels like proof you’re real. You think being vulnerable will save you from being misunderstood. But over time, constant self-disclosure starts to feel like surveillance. Even when you’re the one choosing it.
Oversharing becomes a form of emotional burnout. When too much of your life is seen, you start to lose your sense of where you end and other people’s perceptions begin. Your nervous system adapts. Slowly, it learns that stability isn’t about nothing going wrong—it’s about knowing you don’t have to narrate every shift. That changed how I understood peace (this is so Diary of a Madman of me). It stopped being something I performed or pursued, and started being something I noticed.
You start to crave moments that don’t need an audience. You want things that just work. A rug that fits. A chair that doesn’t wobble. A light you don’t have to think about. You start organizing your space like a way of returning to yourself. It’s not about lifestyle. It’s about proof: that you’re still here. That you can make things feel better without needing them to mean more.
Eventually, you start making your apartment nicer.
Not just cleaner. Not just better lit. You start nesting—tending to your space like it’s your body. Like it needs rest too. Nesting isn’t decorating. It’s not for guests. It’s not aesthetic. It’s instinct. The quiet, private urge to make your surroundings soft enough to return to. Over and over. Without thinking about how it looks from the outside.
I didn’t know how to make a place feel like mine until I moved to Amsterdam. I came here the way most girls do: temporarily. As a student, with a plane ticket my parents paid for, certain this was just a beginning. It wasn’t meant to be home. But then again, neither was anywhere else.
What eventually felt like home wasn’t a city. It was painting the walls, swiffering the floor, and putting my name on the buzzer.
Now I know how I like my furniture arranged. I know what kind of flowers last the longest in my apartment. I keep a book in every room, even the bathroom (How else are you supposed to keep your fingers from pruning?). I leave trail of rings wherever I go. I know what kind of soap smells like home (Objets d'Amsterdam from Marie-Stella-Maris…). I own a feather duster I care about. It’s not aesthetic. It’s rhythm. It’s control. It’s proof that my life belongs to me.
Last week, half my body was hanging out my third-floor window while I tried to install an insect screen by myself so I could sleep with the window open. It was ridiculous and peaceful.
These days, my friends and I send each other links to things we don’t need. We walk through IKEA like it’s theater, play-fighting in staged kitchens. Some nights, we stay up watching bids. Not because we plan to buy anything, but because it feels good to want something small: a sconce, a side table, a reason to imagine a different corner of your home.
This shift feels specific. Taste becomes a new love language. You know who hates beech wood. You know who refuses to buy a greige rug. You know who has never owned a matching set of plates and probably never will. We’re not archiving pain anymore. We’re curating comfort.
I think about all the things I used to ignore in favor of documenting. How many moments I bulldozed while trying to make them usable. The times I flattened joy by describing it too early. The number of times I noticed myself having a feeling just so I could write it down.
The other day I was folding laundry with the window open. A song came on. My body moved before I noticed. Hips swaying. Fingers tracing the air. I wasn’t performing contentment. I wasn’t building a paragraph. I was just there.
It reminded me of something I saved in my notes app a while ago:
I don’t know who wrote it. But I’ve read it enough times to know it by heart. Not because it’s wise. Because it’s accurate. It doesn’t offer anything. It just notices.
We live in a content economy. The urge to turn your space, your joy, your quietest moments into proof of life is everywhere. Once, my friend Yassmin came to my house for the first time and asked why I didn’t post more photos of it. The walls were painted. The light was good. It looked lived in.
I said, "Because I don’t want to be perceived". It sounds little too online, but I meant it.
Some things don’t need to be seen to be real. Some beauty doesn’t need a caption. Some spaces are sacred just because no one else is in them. But this doesn’t feel like vulnerability. It wasn’t a secret. Just something I didn’t need to say.
Now I want to be a little slower. A little dumber, even. A little less convincing. I want to clean my apartment and not talk about it. I want to send my friend a photo of a lamp and have her say “yes” like she’s agreeing with a feeling, not just a thing.
Today I folded laundry. I danced a little. I put things on hangers. The light came in just right. I noticed it.
No one clapped. No one cared.
But it wasn’t for anyone. It’s just for me.