5 Honest Things I’ve Learned in the Last 5 Years

Some blogs just happen. I sit down, and the words come without trying too hard. There’s a rhythm to it…thoughts connect, and it all flows naturally…This one’s not like that!

I’ve been circling around this for a while. It’s not that I don’t want to write it, it’s just… hard to put into words. The last few years have been full of things I haven’t fully processed, career shifts, emotional mess, friendships fading, figuring out how I actually think, how I feel, who I am (or maybe who I’m not). It’s not simple. But still, I want to try. Maybe this ends up being just a scattered collection of thoughts. Maybe it makes more sense later. Either way, this is me trying to put some of it down. It’s a long (and somewhat pretentious) read for sure.

Here are five things I’ve learned from life in the past five years. Nothing too deep, nothing too tied up. Just honest stuff I’m still figuring out.

1. Loneliness is real, even when you’re not alone.

Imagine yourself five years ago. That time when we were all stuck at home, not knowing when we’d come out of our little shelter again. It felt like the world had paused, but inside, so much was shifting. Those few months (or rather, years) ended up shaping my view on human existence entirely. I’m sure I’m not the only one. Some people found joy in that stillness, more family time, space to breathe. Others suffered quietly, locked away from the ones they needed most. No surprise there’s been a huge rise in mental health issues since.

I graduated during that same time. Got a job, made some friends online. Honestly, as an introvert, it felt like an ideal setup. I was one of those rare people who actually enjoyed the pandemic. But life doesn’t stay still. My friends drifted away…slowly, silently. Messages that used to be daily became weekly, then monthly. It’s not like anything went wrong. Everyone just… moved on. Followed their own threads.

It affected my family too. I had spent half of my education life away from home, so I never felt deeply connected to my parents. But living with them during those years changed something. I started earning for the first time. I watched them grow older, noticed them needing help with things…things I’d never imagined them struggling with. That shift hit me quietly. It felt like I was stepping into some role I wasn’t fully prepared for. And even though I was with them, I still felt like I was experiencing everything alone.

That’s when it really hit me…this loneliness I felt wasn’t about not having people around. I had people. I was literally surrounded. But still, something felt… distant. Isolated. And the more I looked, the more I noticed: everyone else was kind of in their own world too. My parents, my friends, even people online. It was like we were all floating next to each other but wrapped in our own invisible bubbles.

I realised early that no job was going to satisfy me if I didn’t feel connected to it. So I kept one foot in my current job while quietly looking for something else. But even in that, I felt weirdly alone. I didn’t care much about money beyond the basics…healthcare, a decent laptop, a few comforts. That alone made me feel disconnected from the usual rat race.

I also realized I don’t relate to most people’s life paths. Not because they’re wrong, but because they feel… scripted. Money → marriage → kids → retirement. I can’t relate. I’m not into arranged marriages, but I’m also not into hookup culture, so I sit somewhere awkwardly in the middle. And I’ve realized I’m not someone who easily feels “deep emotions” either, so it’s hard to build something meaningful when I can’t even access that part of myself fully.

Even with my parents…I can’t just detach. Being a single child comes with this quiet, constant weight. Their mental and physical health, their worldview, how they’re adapting to the world, it’s all stuff that somehow became mine to think about. I’ve even seen this with my grandparents, how they shaped their small worlds with whatever was in reach. It made me realize how deeply personal life becomes, no matter how connected we appear on the surface.

But then I started thinking, maybe this isn’t something to fix. Maybe this is just how life is. It’s my fear of losing people. My anxiety about jobs. My care about my parents. My sadness that maybe it’ll all fall apart someday. Every single thing starts with I. Not we. Not us. Just me.

And that’s the part that’s weirdly comforting. Because if I feel like this, chances are, others do too. Everyone’s living inside their own mind, their own little reality. We might sit in the same room, share the same dinner table, laugh at the same meme, but what we feel underneath is our own. That’s not loneliness in the way we usually talk about it. It’s just… being human.

So yeah, I feel lonely sometimes. But not in a “no one loves me” kind of way. More like, even when people do love me, I still have to walk through this life inside my own head. And so does everyone else.

And once you accept that…that this journey is personal by design, not by accident, the loneliness doesn’t disappear. But it stops feeling like a failure. It just becomes the truth.

2. People are unknowable—and that’s both terrifying and honest.

I entered corporate for the first time. The office is a weird little machine. Everyone looks calm on the surface, dressed in their smart casuals, tapping on keyboards, sipping coffee like it’s all under control. But it’s not. Behind that calm is chaos…everyone’s trying to get ahead!, trying to be noticed by the right person at the right time. Nobody says it out loud, but it’s understood: your coworkers aren’t your friends. Not really. Everyone’s just moving toward their next goal, their next raise, their next client, and you’re either helping or you’re in the way.

But honestly, this isn’t limited to corporate life. It’s everywhere. I see it among my friends, in conversations, on Instagram stories, in the way people talk at weddings, even in schools. Everyone’s showing something to someone. Everyone is carefully curating some version of themselves. And I’m not above it either. I mean, I’m writing this blog right now, trying to make you see me a certain way. I want you to understand what I’m feeling. Even though I don’t know who you are. Even though maybe I don’t fully understand myself either.

And that’s the thing about showing, we decide what to reveal. We choose what makes it to the surface and what stays hidden. That control is subtle but powerful. I’ve had friends who were going through some of the darkest times in their lives but posted nothing but smiling selfies, vacation pictures, and family brunches. And yeah, part of me felt a bit cheated. Like, I cared. I wanted to be there for them. But the version they gave to the world didn’t leave space for that.

That’s when it started hitting me, people aren’t necessarily trying to lie or deceive. Sometimes they just don’t know how to share their truth. Or maybe they don’t even know what their truth is. And that’s a scarier thought. It’s one thing to hide. It’s another to be lost in yourself so deep you don’t even know what’s real anymore.

I think we’re all kind of floating. Playing roles without knowing we’re playing them. Showing up as the version we think the world wants, or maybe the version that hurts the least. It’s easy to become a character in your own life, especially in a world that rewards appearances more than depth. Somewhere along the way, people start mistaking performance for personality. They start living through a script that was handed to them…be a good student, a good employee, a good whatever…and never ask, “Do I even want this?”

And here’s the deeper mess: even if someone wants to understand themselves, it’s hard. Like, really hard. It takes effort, silence, space…three things we barely have anymore. Most people would rather book a trek or binge a show or scroll endlessly than sit with their own thoughts. And fair enough, because going inward isn’t some peaceful meditation scene, it’s often chaos!. The human brain stores too much. Every little memory, every random embarrassment from five years ago, every feeling we didn’t fully process, it’s all still in there. Reflecting on it is like opening a junk drawer that’s been untouched for decades. But that’s where the real stuff is. That’s where you start to sense who you are underneath all the noise.

Thing is, I’ve stopped expecting to ever fully get to the bottom of it. Myself or anyone else. I’ve accepted that people are layered, messy, half-formed. And that’s not a bad thing…it just is. We all carry versions of ourselves we don’t even understand yet. We all show only parts. Not because we’re fake, but because that’s all we know how to do sometimes. And honestly, maybe that’s all we can do.

So I try to meet people where they’re at. I accept what they show me without assuming there’s more, without forcing them to dig it up. I don’t want to worship someone’s potential or condemn them for their past. I just want to meet people here…in this messy, complicated, incomplete present.

3. Some wounds don’t bleed. They sit quietly in people.

Let’s not forget COVID. The death toll was so high, even our governments couldn’t be honest about it. But behind all those numbers, every single one was a person. And most of us know someone who didn’t make it. That’s what hit me the hardest, how close it came. How sudden and random it all was.

I saw my friends break in real time. I saw what grief did to them. One of my closest friends literally changed as a person. He went from a boy to a man within a few years. His smile lines turned into worry lines. His vibe completely shifted. It wasn’t loud, it wasn’t dramatic, just subtle, slow, but deep. You could see it in his eyes. He carried something heavy after that. That’s when I started noticing how much people carry without saying anything. I’d ask about something they went through and they’d just go, “Yeah, it was painful, but I’m okay now.” And at first, I’d believe them. But I get it now. That “I’m okay” is a cover. It’s code for “I’m still here, but I haven’t processed shit.”

Everyone is fighting something. Some are stuck in their childhood. Some are trapped in family dynamics. Some are battling their own brain every damn day. And what’s wild is most of us don’t even know what we’re fighting. We just wake up with this heaviness. A weird weight we can’t explain. Numbness. Restlessness. Confusion. And it’s not even always our pain. That’s what messed with my head the most, realising some of the things I struggle with might’ve been passed down. Not directly, not through words, but through energy. Through silence. Through the way things were avoided. The stuff no one ever said, but you still felt.

That’s how trauma works sometimes. It doesn’t show up like a big bang. It just slowly seeps into your personality. Into how you respond, how you love, how you disconnect. It becomes part of your “normal” and you don’t even realise it until one day you’re like, “Why the fuck am I like this?”. I’m in a war too. My constant job searching. Not feeling at home even in my own home. Being stuck in my head 24/7 while the real world just… moves.

Psychologically, they call it dissociation. It usually comes after trauma, stress, or anxiety. But I used to think, “That can’t be me. I haven’t been through anything that bad.” But turns out, it doesn’t need to be one big thing. It can be a slow accumulation of things you never got to feel fully.

Part of it is just how my brain works. I’m neurodivergent. I struggle with emotional bonding, reading people, forming those natural connections. That already makes me feel a bit disconnected from the world, and even from people close to me. Including my parents. And while I can’t change how I’m wired, I can try to understand it. That’s why I write. To make some sense of it. But emotionally, it goes deeper. Since I was a kid, I knew I didn’t fit in. The way I thought, the stuff I liked, the way I talked about life…it didn’t match. So I rebelled. Not in a loud way, but in that “I’m gonna prove I’m not wrong for existing like this” way. I tried so hard to convince others that my way of thinking was valid… at least for me. But that turned everything into a fight. Existing became a challenge. And it was lonely. You get tired of constantly defending who you are.

Over time, though, I’ve realised it’s not just me. Everyone’s carrying that rebellion (much worse than me). Some wounds don’t show up like a cut. They don’t bleed. They just stay there, quietly sitting inside people. We don’t even realise they’re there half the time. But they creep into how we react, how we trust people, how we distance yourself without meaning to. And the worst part is we start thinking that’s just our personality. Like, “this is just how I am.” But it’s not. It’s just pain that never got dealt with. Stuff we didn’t even know was pain. And maybe we don’t need to fix it all, maybe we just need to notice it. Stop ignoring it. Let it exist. Because the more we pretend it’s not there, the deeper it buries itself.

4. Everything can fall apart without warning

Everything can fall apart without warning. Just like that. Like the death of a loved one. Like covid changing the whole damn world overnight. No signal. No build-up. Just, one day you wake up and things aren’t the same anymore.

I learned this in the most random, personal way. I left my job one sunny morning. Out of nowhere. Not after weeks of planning. Not because I had something else lined up. I just couldn’t get myself to attend one stupid meeting. One meeting that somehow became the final straw. I had no motivation to fake another day. No motivation to pretend to care about something that didn’t mean shit to me.

But obviously, it wasn’t just the meeting. It was everything that had stacked up quietly over time, emotional stuff I hadn’t dealt with, neurological confusion, old dreams that didn’t land, the constant feeling of being out of place. All of that had been simmering. And I didn’t even realize it was about to boil over until it did. Just the thought of saying another fake “hi” to a colleague who was nice to me only because he needed help with his next raise…it made me want to vanish. So I resigned. Just like that.

But the weird part is, after quitting, I didn’t feel relief. I felt stuck. Utterly lost. For weeks I had no direction, no clue what I wanted, no answers. And that sense of being lost started spiraling. I began questioning everything, like, literally everything. Were the things I thought I wanted ever really mine? Or had they been planted in me by someone else? Do I even matter? Does anything I feel matter? Will the things I love ever actually be seen? Am I just pretending to be this thoughtful, smart person? Am I a fake? Do I actually care about people? Do I even know how to express my real self?

And all of these questions came, not after a car crash or some life-or-death event, but after quitting a job. That’s how fragile everything was inside me.

But ironically, that breakdown is what pushed me inward. That silence after leaving work is what led me to start reading neuroscience. That’s how I eventually got diagnosed with ASD. That’s also when I fell into philosophy. And yes, I even started reading Russian novels. I stopped reading to collect information. I started reading to survive. To understand. To feel something real.

This blog, this whole blog, is heavily inspired by The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. That book hit me hard. The way the character Toru Okada just… stops. No job. His wife disappears. And then strange things start happening, not always big, but deeply weird. And it all feels strangely familiar. The quietness. The sense of drifting. That feeling that the world is still spinning, loud and fast, but you’re somewhere just outside of it. I related to that so much. It made me feel less alone in my confusion. So yeah, thanks to that meeting I couldn’t motivate myself to attend, and the spiral that came after, I now know 100x more about myself than I ever did before.

It’s crazy. On the surface, it was just one morning. One meeting. But in reality, it was months of unraveling and rebuilding that followed. That’s where the change happened. That’s how it always is. People see the event, but never the aftermath.

Life isn’t fair. Not for anyone. And it doesn’t ask if we’re ready before it falls apart. There’s always a non-zero chance that tomorrow could wreck us. But what matters is what we do after. How we sit with the collapse. How we get curious about it. How we keep asking questions when everything feels pointless.

I still don’t have all the answers. I probably never will. But I know I’m a better human than I was on the day I avoided that one damn meeting!

5. There’s always more under the surface. Always.

When I just look at the last five years, like literally just five years, so much has changed I can’t even process it properly. My parents have gotten older in ways I didn’t notice until one day I did and now I can’t unsee it. Friends I used to talk to every day have drifted, not because of some fight or anything dramatic, but just… life. New people came into their lives, new paths opened up, their curiosity took them elsewhere. One friend who used to spam happy selfies on Insta now he knows how to quietly hold space for his emotions. Another one who lost someone close became this strange combo of strong as hell but deeply gentle too. Like something in him shattered and rearranged into something more real.

And yeah, I’ve changed too. Not in a “growth mindset” motivational reel kind of way. I mean really changed. Like I don’t relate to who I was five years ago. That version of me feels like someone I made up. I’ve learned more about emotions, mine and others. I’ve learned that people are way more complex than I gave them credit for. Pain is such a major part of all of us, even the ones who seem put together. I’ve learned the job I do isn’t who I am. Not even close. I’ve learned more about how my brain works than I ever thought I’d care to know.

And yeah, thanks to Dostoevsky, Murakami, and a bunch of other writers who just cracked something open in me. Made me stop trying to sound smart and start writing to understand. Thanks to all the people I reached out to when I had no idea what was happening inside me…some helped, some ghosted, some changed my entire outlook in one conversation. And yeah, thank you to that random-ass meeting I couldn’t bring myself to attend. That single refusal led me to all this. Wouldn’t be here writing this without that burnout moment. So thanks for all of it. The good, the shit, the confusion, the breakdowns.

But even with all that, I don’t feel complete. I still have no clue what I actually want to do next. I still don’t know if I’m built for working under someone forever. I still don’t know if I want to get married, if I can love someone so deeply to love them for the rest of my life. I don’t know if I can form a family (but yeah, I do know arranged marriage can fuck right off). I still don’t know if I’ve been living my own life or just playing out some autopilot version of it. There’s still so much inside me that feels unexplored. And when I look at the people around me, I can see they’re going through the same thing in their own quiet, unspoken ways. Like everyone’s in their own little simulation, looking for something without knowing what exactly they’re looking for.

I don’t even know if this blog is helpful. Maybe no one will read it. Maybe someone will. Maybe you’re already bored and clicked away. But that’s fine. I didn’t write this just to be read. I wrote it because I needed to write it. Because this is part of me figuring shit out. Organizing the chaos. This is me talking to myself in a slightly more structured format. And if something in here hits you, even one line, even one moment, then cool. That’s enough.

But yeah. There’s always more under the surface. In me. In you. In everyone. And I’m still digging!

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Thanks for reading! 🙂