It’s the end of the semester, and time feels like something that’s slipping out of my hands faster than I can curl my fingers around it. Everything is due, everything is urgent, everything is piled so high I can’t tell where one responsibility ends and the next begins.
Professors send final reminders like countdowns, group projects stretch their ghosts over every free hour, and my inbox keeps flashing warnings about the future I’m apparently supposed to be ready for.
Time belongs to everyone but me, and I’m always the last person it circles back to.
When you’re a perfectionist, this part of the year hits like a truth you weren’t ready to hear. I sit down to do one assignment—one simple task—and suddenly my entire apartment becomes a crisis. The dust on the lampshade feels symbolic. My laundry basket looks like an accusation. I’ll start reorganizing my desk or my closet. As if color-coding my hoodies and arranging my makeup might somehow help me feel less behind in life.
It’s ridiculous, but it’s also a kind of self-preservation. If I don’t start, I can’t fail. If I keep moving, I don’t have to face the fear of not being enough.
People misunderstand perfectionism. They think it’s about being the best, but in reality, it’s about being terrified. Terrified of being seen in the middle of the process. Terrified of disappointing anyone I care about. Terrified of giving my all and watching it still fall short.
So, I clean. I organize. I rearrange. I pretend I’m creating clarity when, really, I’m just hiding from the weight of my own expectations.
And then there’s me. Me before anything else.
The part of me filled with love, so much of it that sometimes it spills out into places that can’t hold it. I’m someone who feels everything in colors, someone who hopes even when hope has let me down more than once.
But lately, that love feels stretched thin, like I’ve given out so many pieces of myself that I’m scared one day I’ll reach inward and find only echoes. Even my softness feels like it’s running out of time.
I’m a hopeless romantic in the most human way: I dream too much, I believe too much, and I keep expecting something gentle to find me even when life keeps handing me the bare minimum. Not necessarily from people, but from the world, from moments, and from the shape my days are supposed to take.
I keep thinking time will eventually bring me something that feels like home. But right now, it just feels like it’s running laps around me, daring me to keep up. This whole semester feels like standing on the edge of something—burnout, growth, heartbreak—maybe all three tangled together.
Being twenty is this strange balancing act between trying to build a life worth being proud of and desperately wanting someone or something to tell you it’s okay to rest. Time moves fast when I’m trying to be impressive, but it slows down painfully in the moments when all I want is comfort.
But right now, all I want is something steady. A night where I don’t owe anyone anything. A soft movie where the world slows down long enough for my heartbeat to stop tripping over itself. A moment where love, in all its forms, doesn’t feel like something I have to ration. A reminder that my tenderness isn’t something to hide or protect.
But beneath everything—the deadlines, the cluttered apartment, the racing heart—there’s a quieter truth I keep returning to. Maybe I’m not meant to have this figured out yet, maybe no one does. Maybe everyone is just moving through their own versions of this chaos, pretending they’re not overwhelmed.
And maybe, running out of time doesn’t mean I’m failing. Maybe it just means life is happening, and I’m still someone growing inside of it. Maybe I’ll always be catching up, always trying to keep my softness alive in a world that keeps asking me for more than I have.
But I’m still here, and for now, that’s enough.