Sunday was an unusual day.
I stepped out of my isolated routine — which basically consists of wine, self-preservation, and solitude — and spent the weekend with my family.
Later, scrolling through Instagram, I saw an old colleague post a sweet little gender reveal video.
Spoiler: pink smoke.
I remembered when he first started falling for that church girl.
He used to say she was too special for him, that maybe he wasn’t enough.
Spoiler two: he got brave, asked her out, she said yes.
They married, as the script goes: courthouse, church, gathered family, the red carpet of traditional life.
Now, the natural evolution of the species: parenthood.
I truly thought it was beautiful.
But — there’s always a but.
What really cut me was seeing, in a fleeting Sunday story, a dear friend walking through the streets of Paris.
The trip we once dreamed of doing together.
Today, she went with someone else.
Another friend who maybe has more money, more time, more... presence.
A substitute. Maybe even an upgrade.
It hurt. But it was a different kind of pain.
Earlier, at the family gathering, the talk turned to kids. And I knew, with certainty: this topic doesn’t stir anything in me. No spark, no longing.
I’ve never pictured myself pregnant, doing a photo shoot holding a baby shoe, sepia filter, biblical caption.
It’s not judgment. It’s just absence.
What sets my heart racing is the airport.
Maps.
Stamps in my passport.
French wine with a name I can’t pronounce.
It’s writing from a café in Montmartre, overlooking the life I’ve always dreamed of.
And that’s when I understood:
there are different kinds of envy.
The kind that stings from the absence of something I never wanted…
And the kind that bleeds from everything I haven’t lived yet —
but know belongs to me.