It scares me how temporary everything is.

No one ever teaches you how to live with that fear. You just wake up one day and realize that everything—people, places, feelings—has an expiration date. You’re taught to chase after dreams, but no one tells you how to cope when they fall apart. You’re encouraged to build relationships, but not warned that even the closest ones can loosen in your hands. There’s no manual for grief in its slowest form: the kind that happens quietly, over time, until one day you notice something’s gone, and you don’t remember when you lost it.

I think what frightens me most is the absence of permanence. I want something—just one thing—that will stay. A hand I don’t have to worry about letting go. A place I can return to without fearing it’s changed. A version of myself I don’t have to constantly outgrow.

But the world isn’t built like that. Nothing stays. Everything shifts. Even the constants you once believed in begin to blur with time. People move. Homes fade. Love, sometimes, runs out. And you’re left wondering if there will ever be something you can hold without it slipping away.

I hate how things disappear. How laughter from one night won’t sound the same the next. How you can memorise someone’s favourite song and then forget the way their voice sounded when they sang it in the car. How someone can promise forever and still become a stranger because life moves in ways we can’t slow down.

I want something to root myself in. Something I can hold without worrying it will decay, drift, or grow distant. I want to believe in the possibility of forever, even in small forms. A familiar cup at breakfast. A song that always feels like home. A person who stays—not because they have to, but because they choose to. Over and over again.

But most days, I don’t believe in forever. Most days, I only believe in right now—and even that feels like it’s running through my fingers.

Still, I try to make meaning of the impermanent. I gather moments like keepsakes: a smile, a morning breeze, the sound of rain on an old roof. They don’t last, but they live in me a little while longer. Sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes, it has to be.

And maybe permanence was never the point.

Maybe the ache isn’t about wanting something to stay—but longing to be the kind of person who can let go, and still be okay. To say goodbye and not shatter. To lose and still love. To be left and still remain whole.

Maybe it’s not about having something that never leaves, but learning how to stay even when everything else doesn’t.

Still, it doesn’t stop the fear.

It doesn’t stop me from wishing—just for once—that something could be mine and stay mine. That something could last longer than the goodbye. That somewhere in this world, permanence exists—not as a promise, but as a presence. A quiet one. One that doesn’t ask for much. Just to stay. Just to be there.

Just to be real.