Elysienne

Ok, so this year taught me something I genuinely wish someone had told me earlier: self-respect is NOT optional. like i used to just let things slide, let people treat me a certain way, and just...  deal with it. and it always caught up with me later. always. I used to give up on myself so easily. The second something got hard, I'd just fold. But starting college kind of flipped that for me. I realised loving yourself is actually so much better than I thought it was. I used to think if i was sitting alone somewhere, it meant something was wrong with me, like i didn't have people. But that's not it at all. it just means i've learned to give myself space and do the things I actually like, without needing someone next to me to make it feel valid. and honestly that's where self-respect really comes from, not from saying "I respect myself" but from what you actually let happen to you. if someone's being disrespectful, the move isn't to hold on tighter...

Hiiii everyone, I'm back. This year's blog is gonna look a little different i think, still figuring that part out. but happy new year to everyone reading this!! i really really hope 2026 is better than 2025, like genuinely, because 2025 taught me SO much but this year i actually want to use it, not just survive it lol. and we're like a few days in and it's already giving me things to think about so here we go. so the first thing, the didi who comes to clean our house. every single day she shows up with a smile, like actually smiling, never once complains, and she WALKS more than 3km just to get here. we went to her house recently and it was smaller than like, a bathroom honestly, and she lives there with her whole family (five people) plus some baby dogs she takes care of too. and she has zero complaints. none. just shows up and does what needs to be done. and i won't lie that hit me kind of hard. like how often do we complain about stuff that genuinely doesn't ...

So I was walking back from the gate today and I literally stopped mid-step because the trees in my society are COVERED in flowers rn. like when did this happen?? i swear they didn't look like this even a week ago, I would've noticed. i just stood there for way longer than necessary tbh. they're so pretty, like that pink you only see in those cherry blossom pics from japan on Pinterest, except this is just my society, on a random day, for no reason. no one planted them to look like that. no one's out here specially watering them. they just bloomed whenever they felt like it. which is kind of crazy when you think about it, like pretty things really just take their own time and don't ask anyone first. anyway i got so obsessed i picked up a few that had fallen on the ground and pressed them into my journal lol. idk why but i liked the idea that even on days i don't write anything, i'll open it and there they'll be, just sitting there being pretty. and ok...

So lately i've just been letting life do whatever it wants tbh. like some days are just heavy for literally no reason, some days pass by and i don't even remember them, and then some random day just sticks with me and i genuinely could not tell you why. i've started noticing all these tiny things lately, like how the air feels right before it rains, or how time just slows down when i'm stuck in my head thinking about nothing, or this weird comfort in just... watching the world do its thing around me. i literally call myself an autumn girl and i've never even seen autumn once in my life lol. it's just rain here basically. but idk maybe that's actually the whole point? like you don't need some perfect aesthetic moment to feel something. a boring grey sky can hit just as hard as golden leaves if you actually let it. we spend so much time waiting around for the right person, the right moment, the right whatever. but honestly life's already giving us e...

I was literally just lying in bed thinking about how one small trip can change you. like actually change you, your whole perspective, idk how else to explain it. anyway for me that trip was udaipur. two three days away. that's it. that's all it took apparently. ok so my parents took me and i'm still not over it honestly. udaipur is not a JUST A  place. it's SO royal it doesn't even feel real, like i kept forgetting i wasn't in a movie. NAINA, YOU WERE SO RIGHT ABOUT UDAIPUR. three days and i genuinely did not want to come back, I think I actually said that out loud like five times and everyone got annoyed w me lol. i just got so into being there that i forgot i even have a life waiting for me at home, like everything just. didn't exist for a bit. we went because a family friend had an event, and the resort we stayed at was insane, like actually one of the most beautiful places i've ever been. and ok i have to say this bc it's crazy, my screen time wa...

  Ok, so real talk, I blog not bc i have life figured out (i very much do not) but bc writing gives me some peace, and also bc yelling into a Google Doc is apparently how i process things now. it helps me clear my head even if literally no one reads it, which, statistically, is probably true for like 80% of these posts. it's basically become my way of figuring out what i'm feeling without spiraling about every single little thing for six hours straight. also yes, i journal literally everything. the big stuff, the tiny stuff, stuff that genuinely does not matter at all but i wrote three paragraphs about it anyway. if something mildly interesting happens to me there's a solid chance it's getting documented somewhere, no exceptions. there's something so weirdly comforting about just. putting your thoughts into words instead of letting them run laps in your head all day. it's like talking to yourself except this version doesn't ask follow up questions, doesn...