As I sit by this windowsill, I do a little people watching. It’s one of my favorite things to do — until they catch me observing. I’ve always been an observant person, so I love watching people as they go about their day. You can tell a lot from someone by the way they dress, the way they walk, the coffee cup in their hand, or the shopping bag they carry around with them. And still, there’s so much I don’t know and will never know. But the mind has its own little ways of filling in the blanks.
A couple walks by, fingers loosely intertwined, arguing about where to eat. A group of friends spills out of the bodega across the street, laughing at something I’ll never hear. A woman walks her dog with the kind of quiet consistency that I find beautiful — every day, without fail, rain or shine. These are the little things I notice. The things most people don’t.
Living in New York is not everything it’s touted to be. I love the city, but in a city of millions — celebrities, artists, writers, millionaires — it’s easy to feel a little lost. A little unseen. A teeny bit insignificant. And a lot of insecurity.
Who wouldn’t want to be noticed in a city with a little over 8 million people?
I know this feeling. I’ve known it for a long time.
There was a dining hall in college — my first year at the University of Illinois — where I would go every evening after a tiring day of classes. I’d put together a hefty meal and sit down at a table in the middle of the room. Not tucked away in a corner. The middle. Because I thought that maybe, if I was visible enough, someone might sit down next to me. They never did.
Some days, a friend would join, but most of my friends lived on the other side of campus, so those occasions were rare. I’d eat alone, contemplating the night ahead. When I finished, I’d walk back to my dorm quickly, pacing so I could get away from people — I didn’t want to be reminded of how solitary my college life really was.
I made it a habit to speak to someone new every lecture I attended. I remembered every name I encountered. None of them remembered mine.
I remember one night when it was all too much — I had no one to talk to, and I didn’t want to call home and worry my family thousands of miles away. So I sat on a bench outside my hall, dressed in PJs at 10 PM on a Saturday night. How pathetic. Posses of new-found friends exited my hall excitedly, headed toward some party, and I broke down. People kept passing me by, but no one really bothered to ask what was going on.
The most confident self-doubter you shall ever meet. That’s what I’ve always been. A momentary lapse of the façade is quickly brushed to the side. I straighten my posture, erase the glimpse of self-doubt from my face, and add a strut to my stride. But you’d never see it on my face.
Back then, I didn’t have a word for what I was feeling. I called it loneliness, and it was that — but it was also something more specific. It was yearning. Not just for company or a seat filled at the table. I yearned to be chosen. To have someone look at me and decide, without my asking, that I was worth sitting next to. Worth remembering.
I’m sitting in New York now, six years and a few thousand miles from that bench. Different city, different windowsill, same yearning. And for a long time, that felt like proof that nothing had changed — that I was still the same kid eating dinner by himself, hoping to be picked.
But something has shifted, even if it’s small.
I was walking home from the grocery store last week — one of those ordinary walks where you’re carrying too many bags because you refused to make two trips. A couple passed me, holding hands, and I felt the familiar sting. Then a group of friends crossed the street ahead, loud and easy with each other in that way that reminded me of my own people back home. And instead of the old spiral — why don’t I have that here, what’s wrong with me, will it always be like this — something else surfaced.
I miss my friends so much it physically hurts sometimes. My family is thousands of miles away, and that distance feels infinite on the hard days. But the yearning — the yearning means I have people worth yearning for. That’s not nothing. That’s not a deficit. That might actually be a privilege.
Not everyone has loved someone enough to miss them this badly. Not everyone has had the kind of friendships where the absence feels like a presence. I have. I do. And for a long time, I was so fixated on the empty chair across from me that I forgot about the full tables waiting for me elsewhere.
I don’t actually seek a connection. Not yet anyway. I’ve realized that what I’ve really been doing — for years, maybe always — is looking to be picked. To be deemed worthy. To be noticed. And there’s a difference between wanting connection and wanting to be chosen. One comes from fullness. The other comes from the fear that you’re not enough on your own.
I’m tired of the performative façade. That’s not really me.
So I’m trying something different. Small and maybe a little ridiculous, but real.
I stepped out of my house the other day, put on a fashionable outfit, and walked around my neighborhood. For no reason. For myself. I bought a latte and a blueberry scone because I wanted to, not because I was meeting anyone or performing for an audience. I sat at a café and just… existed. No one noticed me. And for the first time in a long while, that was okay.
I’m thinking of it as me dating me. And if I do say so myself, I’m a catch.
Is that true? I have no fucking idea. But you know what — I’ll keep you posted.
The yearning hasn’t gone away. I don’t think it will, not entirely. It’s been with me too long for that, and maybe it’s just part of who I am — the person who feels everything too intensely, who notices the little things, who remembers every name. But I’m trying to stop running from it. I’m trying to sit with it the way I sat on that bench in college, except this time, I’m not waiting for someone else to make it better.
Because here’s the thing about yearning — it only exists when you’ve known what it feels like to have. To belong. To be held. You can’t miss what you’ve never touched. And if the ache I carry is proof that I’ve loved and been loved, that I’ve had friendships worth grieving across oceans, that I’ve known what it means to be truly seen even if only briefly — then maybe the yearning isn’t the wound.
Maybe it’s the evidence that I’m alive.
Some days, walking home alone still stings. But some days, it just feels like walking home. And I think that might be progress.
Melan-jolly 