PeonyMagazine

  The darkening of the day turned the alley into a thick, dark liquid, and in this kind of dusk, every doorway was like a shadowy figure sharing a secret. I zigzagged my tiny suitcase over the paving stones in Lisbon, counted the tiles until I reached the one that should have been the blue door with the brass fish knocker.  Before I could utter the slightest word, the woman at the reception stood up. “You came,” she said, almost as if touching was an essential step and the  friendship  would be created in a few seconds. She pointed to the kettle, the clementines, and the  Wi-Fi  code hidden under a small porcelain swallow in front of us. I loved the lobby being so lively, with fingerprints on the postcards, the ghost of the citrus-cleaning scent, and the sounds from the kitchen, where someone was quietly having a good laugh while cooking. The lady at the reception took me to my room that night in Lisbon, demonstrated the deadbolt and the safe to me, and gav...

  When I was younger, I thought needing friends made you weak. In my early twenties, I survived on independence, or at least that’s what I told myself. I was the type who handled things alone, brushed off hurt alone, healed alone. I didn’t think I needed a “tribe.” I was fine moving through life quietly, keeping my world small, guarded, and manageable. Somewhere along the way, life placed a handful of women in front of me who felt like a soft landing. I didn’t go looking for them. They just arrived. I was around 28 when we found each other, or maybe when we finally allowed ourselves to be found. Back then, our idea of bonding was drinking until our worries dissolved into laughter and someone cried about a breakup at 2 a.m. We were messy in the most honest way. We carried each other through heartbreaks, wrong decisions, life turning points, and those early years when we didn’t know who we were yet. We talked over each other without caring who finished the story. Someone always laugh...

  Like allergy season, it occurs every quarter. We’re all auditioning for jobs we don’t really want when someone mentions “stretch opportunity” during the Monday stand-up. There are new OKRs, a new round of “visibility,” and another calendar block that is inexplicably named “ Career Pathing .” I watch my colleagues click into performance mode: bright voices, bullet points, cross-functional collabs, and I feel it again: that small, stubborn honesty rising like a blush. I’m tired of pretending I want the next rung. There was a time I did. I collected mentors the way other people collect houseplants, arranging them near sunny windows and asking for watering tips. I volunteered for special projects, took a course in “influencing without authority,” and learned the taxonomy of titles. I kept a promotion packet like a scrapbook, curating artifacts of productivity: dashboards, kudos, and before-and-after slides. I knew how to say “impact” while pointing at a bar chart. It was a decent gam...

  Sometimes the hardest part of life is having a plan. I used to believe that a real adult had everything mapped out, career, savings, love, success, all neatly arranged five years into the future like pins on a board. I thought not knowing meant I was failing. So I forced myself to create timelines I didn’t believe in and goals that didn’t feel like mine. I would write them down, stare at them, and feel nothing but anxiety. What no one tells you is that  a plan can become a cage . I wasn’t scared of the future, I was scared of choosing the wrong version of it. What if I planned my life too carefully and still ended up unhappy? What if I followed a path just because it looked responsible, not because it felt right? So I kept rewriting my five-year plan, hoping one version would finally feel like home. It never did. There was a moment when everything I had planned fell apart. The job didn’t work out. The direction I was so sure of suddenly felt empty. I remember sitting alone o...

  I used to think success had one clear shape. The kind of answer that sounds acceptable at family gatherings. The kind you say confidently when a relative asks, “ So what are you doing now?”  Something neat, explainable, and easy to be proud of. However, I was tired. Not just physically, but  emotionally.  Tired of pushing. Tired of proving. Tired of pretending I was okay with a pace that didn’t feel human.  I didn’t realize it at first.I learned to accept exhaustion by watching everyone around me wear it like a badge. Late nights were praised. Burnout was joked about. Rest was something you earned only after proving you were tired enough.  So I stayed. I tried harder. I ignored the quiet voice inside me that kept asking,  Is this really the life you want? The soft era started the moment I admitted to myself that the life I was building no longer felt sustainable.  I noticed how guilty I felt when I rested. How my worth felt tied to how busy I wa...

  I used to think love didn’t need to be explained. I remember sitting across from someone I cared about, the conversation drifting past my feelings without ever touching them. Nothing was wrong, exactly. There was no argument, no goodbye. Just an unspoken understanding that as long as we were still there, still choosing each other, everything must be fine. Words felt optional, even unnecessary. I told myself actions mattered more, that needing reassurance was a weakness I should eventually outgrow.  Then I fell in love with someone who rarely said what they felt.  He wasn’t unkind. He just believed that love was understood. When I needed reassurance, he would offer logic instead of comfort.   It usually came up in small moments. Late at night, when the day was finally quiet, I asked something simple, “ Do you still feel the same about us?”  He would look at me, confused more than annoyed, and say,  “You know I care. Why do I need to say it?” When I tried t...