Bella Hadid is Spitting Bars

We could all have a little more gratitude.

The email came on a Tuesday. I remember reading it twice, maybe three times, waiting for the feeling to arrive — the one I’d seen in videos, the one where people cry and call their moms and jump around the kitchen.

It didn’t come.

I closed my laptop and made tea and sat with it. I got in. The school I’d circled in my head for years, the one that felt like a destination, like proof of something. And what I actually felt was — quiet. A little cold, maybe. Like standing outside a party you thought you wanted to go to, and realizing you’re not sure you want to go in.

I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with that feeling since.

Part of me wants to call it fear. Fear makes sense — it’s a big change, a new city, a whole new version of my life that I have to grow into. Fear is respectable. Fear means you care.

But I think it’s something slower than fear. It’s more like grief, maybe. For the version of myself who wanted this so badly. She worked hard for it. She deserved to feel it. And somewhere between then and now, I became someone slightly different — someone who isn’t sure this is still the right door, even though I spent so long trying to open it.

I don’t have a resolution. But I’ve stopped waiting for the gratitude to show up on its own. Maybe it comes later. Maybe it comes in a different shape than I expected.

Maybe wanting something and then getting it and then feeling nothing isn’t ungrateful. Maybe it’s just — growing. Outpacing your old wishes.

I’m still figuring out if that’s okay.