Longing is such a quiet thing. It doesn’t crash through the door or demand your attention. It just waits. Inside your chest. Inside your days. Inside your silence.
We treat longing like a defect. A sign that we’re broken or not enough or too much. Something to smother under distractions or turn into jokes so it doesn’t make the room too heavy. We don’t trust yearning. We don’t let it linger. We’re told to “move on,” “get over it,” “be stronger.”
But what if longing isn’t something to escape from?
What if it’s a map?
Somewhere in that ache is a version of you that still believes love can be sacred. That connection can mean more than consistency. That intimacy doesn’t have to hurt.
I’ve spent years hiding the things I wanted most. Because wanting felt vulnerable. And vulnerability? That’s dangerous when you’ve been disappointed. I told myself I was fine alone. That I didn’t need what I wasn’t given. That desire was indulgent.
But longing isn’t weakness. It’s memory.
It’s the soul reminding you what it was built for.
So now, when I feel it rising, I don’t chase it away. I sit with it. I ask it what it’s trying to show me. And sometimes it speaks in the voice of someone I lost. Sometimes it shows me the love I haven’t found yet. Sometimes it tells me: You are not broken for wanting more. You are broken when you stop believing you deserve it.