And the World, Perhaps

The world moves, endlessly and without pause, its rhythm indifferent to the quiet lives of those who walk its surface. For as long as she could remember, she’d felt it—the rush, the swell, the great weight of something much larger than herself. Yet, in its vastness, she always seemed to stand still, like a small ripple in an endless ocean.

She wondered, late at night, if the world had ever noticed her. If the people bustling past her on crowded streets had ever caught the fleeting glimpse of her smile, the trembling hesitance in her voice, the spark of something not-quite-forgotten in her eyes.

“And the world, perhaps,” she thought, “doesn’t care.”

The thought wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t bitter. It simply was. The world spun regardless of her tears, her joys, her whispered prayers to the stars. She knew this. She accepted it. But in the quiet spaces of her mind, she longed for more.

More what? She couldn’t quite name it. Connection, perhaps. Recognition. To be known, not just seen. To be someone’s first thought when the day broke and their last when it ended. To be a story worth telling, a memory worth keeping.

There was a time when she thought she could force the world to see her. She’d made herself small in moments when the world demanded silence, only to stretch herself thin when it demanded noise. She’d learned the art of being everything and nothing all at once—a chameleon blending into the background until someone, anyone, chose to focus on her.

But that focus never came.

“ And the world, perhaps, forgets so easily,” she thought.

She stood by her window, the city below her alive with lights and sounds. A train rumbled in the distance; laughter spilled from a café across the street. Life went on, endlessly vibrant, relentlessly alive. She watched it all, her reflection faint in the glass, a ghost haunting her own life.

She placed her hand on the cool surface, feeling the divide between her and everything else.

“And yet,” she whispered to herself, “I am here.”

The words were small, almost inaudible, but they felt heavy in her chest. She was here, wasn’t she? Breathing, living, feeling. She existed, even if the world refused to notice. And wasn’t that something? To exist in a world so vast, so full of chaos and beauty and pain. To carve out a small space, no matter how unnoticed, and claim it as her own.

The realization didn’t erase the ache, but it softened it. The longing remained, a quiet hum in the background of her thoughts, but it no longer consumed her. She turned away from the window, the world still spinning outside, and sat down with her journal.

She closed the journal and placed it on the table beside her. The city lights still danced beyond the glass, but now, they felt different—less distant, more like a backdrop to a life that still held promise.

She stepped away from the window, her reflection fading with each step, and turned toward the quiet of her apartment. The stillness no longer felt suffocating; it felt like a space she could fill with her own presence.

Maybe the world wouldn’t notice her, not in the way she’d always hoped. Maybe the whispers of validation she longed for would never come. But as she moved through the quiet of her room, she realized she didn’t need to wait for the world to see her. She could see herself.

And that, she thought, was a start.

She lit a candle on her bedside table, its soft glow pushing back the shadows. Tonight, she would write. She would create, dream, and breathe her story into the silence. Because she was here, alive in the vastness, and that was enough.

For now, it was more than enough.

She wrote:

“And the world, perhaps, is not mine to understand. But I am here. And I will write my name into its silence, carve my story into its indifference, and live—if only to remind myself that I was never small. Never invisible. I am here. And that is enough.”

For the first time in what felt like forever, she smiled.

And the World, Perhaps,” showcasing the reflective solitude and quiet longing of the story