Olivia Rodrigo will release her upcoming album You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love next month, and that title has stayed in my head lately. If I had to rename it into something that feels closer to my own life, mine would probably be: “You seem pretty sad for a woman living pretty well.”

Because my life is pretty good, Alhamdulillah. My personal life is quite stable and grounded. I have a career and education I worked very hard for. I get invited into rooms I once only dreamed of entering. I teach, volunteer, create content, and get to meet brilliant people along the way. Sometimes I still pause and quietly think, “How did I even get here?” because a part of me still feels like the young girl from a small village who used to doubt herself so much.

And yet, despite all of that, there are nights when I still go home feeling unbearably empty. That contradiction is difficult to explain.

People usually see the visible parts of my life: the achievements, the confidence, the public presence, and the responsibilities. Then, they kept setting high expectations for me, like I should always deliver the highest standards. When I deliver less than expected, people would think I didn't do my best, even when it is already enough. They do not always see how exhausting it can be to constantly become “the high achiever one” when I am just a normal human. 

Recently, I realized why it was even more tiring for me: becoming useful is probably my survival mechanism since I was a kid. Useful people are appreciated, needed, and remembered. So I spent years trying to become competent enough, dependable enough, valuable enough. I became the person who handles things, who solves problems, who notices tensions in rooms, who checks whether everyone else is okay first. And after doing that for so long, it quietly becomes my identity.

There is also a strange confusion in constantly being needed. Because when people know you mostly for what you can provide, a small part of you begins to wonder: “If one day I stop being useful, would people still stay?” And maybe that question hurts me more than I usually admit.

Not because the people around me are bad people. Most of them are genuinely kind. But I think when you spend years earning validation through competence, you slowly become afraid that your worth only exists in your ability to give. When you start noticing the disappointment in people’s eyes whenever you fail to meet their expectations, you slowly arrive at a painful conclusion: maybe people only truly see you when you are useful to them.

Sometimes, I think what I truly want is actually very simple: to be seen as a human, with her flaws and weaknesses. To be understood and accepted as deeply as I try to understand other people. I spend so much time paying attention to other people’s feelings, trying not to hurt them, trying to make them feel seen, trying to love them gently. And sometimes I quietly wonder whether someone will ever love me with that same depth and care, too. Not because I want grand gestures. But because after spending so much of my life becoming emotionally attentive to others, a part of me longs to finally feel emotionally held, too.

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Life has humbled me enough to realize that achievements do not automatically heal my longing for genuine acceptance. Recognition does not automatically create understanding. And being surrounded by many people does not always remove the feeling of being emotionally unseen.

For a long time, I thought becoming more successful would finally make me feel emotionally secure. But healing, apparently, has very little to do with external validation.

Lately, I have been trying to understand myself more gently. Maybe I am not sad because my life is bad. Maybe I am simply emotionally tired from spending too much of my life trying to earn love through usefulness.

And maybe healing is learning that I deserve softness even when I am not performing. Learning that my worth is not tied to productivity. Learning that the people who truly love me will still stay, even when I have nothing to offer except my honest, human self.

I still do not fully know how to solve this feeling yet. But perhaps this is the first honest step: admitting that beneath all the accomplishments and expectations, I am still just a human being who wants to be loved not for what she can provide, but simply for who she is.

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