The sadness did not arrive loudly.

It did not crash in with bad news or sharp loss or some obvious before and after moment. It came the way dusk does… slow, unannounced, spreading until the room looked different and she couldn’t remember when the light had changed.

She was under the blankets when it settled in. She usually was.

They were oversized and wickedly soft, the kind that swallowed her whole if she let them. She never remembered what fabric they were made of though. It was an Amazon purchase. Something plush, something forgiving. Furry, almost. Like the blanket itself understood that she needed to disappear for a while without actually going anywhere. Wrapped up in it, she could pretend she was being held instead of hiding.

Functional depression, they might have called it if they were being clinical. But no one ever used that word around her. Because she still showed up. She still answered emails. Still worked out. Still tracked her meals, except for tonight, when there was a pint of ice cream melting slightly while wrapped in a wad of napkins and placed strategically between her hands. Quietly rebelling against her macros. A friend over FaceTime pointed it out causing her to take a good look into the pint. She noticed the irony and let it pass.

She scrolled through her phone with the dull patience of someone not looking for anything in particular. TikTok. Instagram. Faces smiling too hard. Jokes she almost laughed at. Videos she saved and never returned to. Sometimes she would read instead. Just sink into a book and let someone else’s sentences hold her together when her own thoughts refused to line up.

In public, she smiled well. That was the thing. She had learned how to smile so convincingly that people believed her joy before she ever felt it. In conversations, in group dinners, in rooms full of laughter, she played her role beautifully. But alone, the apartment grew quiet in a way that felt personal.

There were days she realized she hadn’t heard her own voice at all.

No meetings. No phone calls. No casual “thank you” to a Starbucks barista. Just silence and the soft hum of the bathroom fan (which… hello maintenance, will they ever fix that for her?) 

and the low glow of her phone lighting up the underside of the blanket. She would catch her reflection in the mirror sometimes, eyes tired, mouth neutral, and feel startled by how unfamiliar she looked when she wasn’t performing. 

Lately, her thoughts kept circling back to the ones she used to love.

Not in a dramatic, heartbroken way. More like a slow inventory she hadn’t asked to take.

There was the one from her hometown. The one who had known her when they were young, when the world felt smaller and simpler. A family friend. Safe, once. Familiar. When she had visited home weeks ago, he had looked at her like she was something he wanted to claim again! His attention warm, insistent, full of promise. And then, just as quickly, it vanished. The interest cooled. The signals disappeared. As if she had imagined the whole thing. As if she always did.

There was the one she almost had a…… Never mind.

She didn’t linger there long. Some grief never needed revisiting to be felt. It lived in her quietly, folded away, showing up in unexpected moments like a muscle memory she hadn’t consented to keep.

There was the old best guy friend who stopped being just a platonic friend. Or maybe never was. The lines blurred so easily with him. Nights that felt like something, mornings that pretended they weren’t. A cycle of closeness and distance that taught her how to hope without expecting anything in return.

There was the man who was always there. Reliable. Kind. Safe in every way except the one that mattered more than she wished it did. Choosing him would have meant choosing comfort over chemistry, and she couldn’t bring herself to build a life around something that felt incomplete.

And then there was the most recent one. Almost perfect. The kind that made her think, Maybe this is it. Until it wasn’t. One thing (cultural, fundamental, immovable) stood between them like a quiet wall. And beneath that, something else lingered. A restlessness in him. A volatility shaped by military experiences he never quite named. She sensed it before she understood it, the way women often do.

None of them were villains. That was the hardest part.

She didn’t want to be bitter. She didn’t want this story to be about heartbreak or lovers who failed her. What weighed on her was something subtler: the accumulation. The effort. The way she kept showing up with softness and hope, only to be met with hesitation, confusion, or half commitments.

Under the blankets, she shifted onto her side and let the phone slip from her hand. The room was still. The ice cream had melted enough to be soup now.

She thought about how strong she was, how disciplined, how intentional. How she could deadlift heavy weight, plan her weeks, build a life that looked full from the outside. And yet… how tender she remained. How easily sadness found her anyway.

Maybe that was the truth she was circling.

That strength didn’t cancel out softness. That discipline didn’t protect her from loneliness. That being functional didn’t mean she wasn’t hurting.

She pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders, not to hide this time, but to stay.

Tomorrow, she would wake up and return to her routines. She would choose protein over ice cream. She would smile again. She would keep going. But tonight, she let herself exist exactly as she was! Unnamed, unresolved, still becoming.

And maybe that was the quiet hope in it all.

Not that everything would suddenly make sense. Not that love would arrive neatly wrapped or sadness would disappear. But that she was still curious. Still open. Still here.

Wrapped in soft things.

Breathing.

Waiting (not desperately chile, but gently) for whatever came next.