A long time ago, I had the chance to get to know this girl. She was fairly young, and we kept in close contact over the years. We would always meet at her place at night to talk about anything and everything, after her classes and my work. She would always call me when she was extremely sad or happy, but would forget about my existence at other times.

When we first started talking, she sounded a little naive. Her words were pure, and the way she talked about people was full of hope. The way she whispered about what she wanted from the world was filled with hopes and dreams. I listened to her every night as she went on and on about how the world was full of love. After a while, I realized she was so deprived of love that she mistook almost anything for love; glances, attention, and empty words with no action. She thought common decency was affection, and the bare minimum was love. She would talk about her lovers with so much softness in her voice and so much love in her eyes.

She cried a lot, I realized. She got hurt fairly easily, and it was no surprise when she gave so many people a chance to hurt her. It was almost like she had no boundaries. The way she loved had no bounds, but she never noticed that it was rarely ever mutual. As much as I knew how fragile she was and how easily she laid herself bare, I also knew she was stubborn and had to make her own mistakes to learn.

She met people who weren’t very kind to her. Somehow, she thought it was love, the kind of love she earned and deserved. But she deserved so much better, and it was heartbreaking that she thought she deserved that kind of love. She would meet someone, be happy for a while, and then they would hurt her. Then she would cry for a few months until she met someone else, someone better according to her own metrics. The cycle would repeat.

After years of knowing her and witnessing her little messed-up relationships, she finally admitted that she was scared to be alone. She wanted someone she could call hers, regardless of how miserable she was. She wanted to keep up a front for the world to see; her friends, family, and strangers, to show that she had someone, that she wasn’t alone. She felt complete when she was with someone, but wasn’t necessarily happy, and that didn’t matter to her. She learned that in her recent relationship, she said. The guy she was with was a very good person but not a very nice partner. She refused to let him go, even after he proved so many times that he wasn’t right for her. Every time he messed up, she would come to me. She would cry to me and beg me to make it stop hurting. So I told her to write it out; that it would help sort out her thoughts and make her emotions bearable, and she did. Since then, every time she was hurt, she would write, one page after another. Once everything was back to normal, she would stop writing altogether, only to return to it when things got ugly again.

One of the nights we got together, I asked her why she wanted to endure all this misery just to be with someone who didn’t even care about her. With tears streaming down her face, rocking herself back and forth to self-soothe, she whispered that she was terrified to navigate the world on her own. What if she needed someone to talk to, someone who would support her and help her when she was lost but had no one with her? It was scarier than getting hurt, because she already expected to get hurt and knew she’d be fine after crying for a while. Leaving someone to be alone felt like jumping into an abyss. I asked her if she was truly happy then, even during the good times. She slowly shook her head.

Every day, I watched her lose herself slowly. I saw fewer and fewer smiles on her little face, which used to come so easily. She lost her spark, even when she did smile. Her eyes were always sad and empty. Painfully slowly, she started distancing herself from her partner. She would hang out with her friends more, start avoiding arguments, and withdraw from situations altogether, as if she was giving up. She stopped crying, which I thought was a good thing, until I noticed she was like an empty shell on auto-pilot. She stopped writing and started talking to me less as well.

One night, she called me. She said she couldn’t do it anymore. She said she was terrified but she wanted better, and she deserved better. I didn’t offer any words of advice; I just listened quietly. She said that she had caught a glimpse of her future if she were to stay with him, and that made her more terrified and suffocated than being alone. That was enough to give her the courage to call it quits.

The next day, she called me again to ask if we could talk over coffee. I was surprised because she never wanted to see me during the day. She was always with her partner or busy with classes. So we met up during the day. She looked lighter and happier. She said she didn’t feel sad at all. In fact, she felt proud of herself.

I smiled at her. I told her I was very proud of her. She said she read through all the journal entries she had written, and they were so silly and stupid, and reprimanded me for not stopping her. I told her that she had to go through it to make it out the other side swinging and to learn.

After a while, she went out on dates, met a lot of people, and learned a lot of things. She would tell me all those stories as if she were retelling random funny articles she read online. This girl could go on so many dates every week. She was annoyed with all the guys she’d been seeing, complaining constantly about them; how immature they were, how they didn’t know what they wanted, and how they didn’t know how to communicate like adults, with communication skills of a toddler.

I asked her if she also communicated her boundaries, and she went quiet. Slowly, she shook her head. I laughed and pointed at her: “There’s the common denominator.” She sighed, “It all makes sense now.” I laughed again and told her that, at least, she had discovered a problem she could solve.

When we met up again, her stories were a little different from before. She sounded bolder. She told me she had stopped wasting her time with people who couldn’t give her what she wanted. She felt happier. And instead of going on dates, she started attending social events on her own, simply to connect with others. Slowly, she stopped looking for love and started existing, at her own pace and on her own terms. She began to enjoy the little moments.

I stared at her a little longer and realized she looked a lot like me. When we first started talking, I had always thought she looked familiar. She looked exactly like me, but a little younger perhaps, with thick bangs covering almost half her face. Now, she looked more confident in the way she carried herself. She was more herself with every word she uttered—bolder and sharper. She used to be so cautious with everything she said. It was as if I was looking at myself. And i realized I was looking at myself. I went to touch her face, and she mirrored me.

I told her I was on holiday, traveling alone, at a place I’ve never been to before. I was eating at restaurants alone. I walked on the beach barefoot just to feel the sand and the waves against my skin, alone. I wandered around the streets alone. I told her that I had walked through this beautiful, small town with a lot of lanterns and along the river, alone. It was a gorgeous sight. The river was filled with boats and floating candles. The streets were buzzing with lights, travelers and chatters. And for the first time in my life, I didn’t crave any company because I felt complete on my own. I was enough. I told her about the time when I was getting dinner at one of the restaurants, and everybody was in groups. I felt a little sad that I didn’t have anyone with me. There was joy in having your friends with you, your family with you, but there was also so much joy in being in your own silence, being with yourself. She smiled. She said she was proud of me, proud of us.