STUCK BETWEEN THE PAST AND THE PRESENT

After a year of not writing — and after a year that has been everything and too much, all at once — I find myself sitting down at 3AM, at the kind of hour where ghosts feel most comfortable, to write what I’ve been too afraid or too tired to say.

“The distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” That quote has been sitting with me for a while. Einstein, in his quiet, mind-bending way, reminds us that time isn’t as cleanly divided as we like to believe — that the past doesn’t really stay in the past, and the future isn’t some faraway land we haven’t reached. Everything we’ve lived, everything we long for, is somehow still here. Somewhere.

I think that’s what makes it hard for people like me — people who’ve always carried their past too close, like a photograph folded too many times. I’ve spent years trying to preserve the good parts, replaying them to remind myself that once, things were beautiful. But the bad clings to the good like mold on old film — and every time I try to revisit the warmth, the cold creeps in too.

And in one particularly haunting reel of my past — there lives Delhi.

Delhi is not just a city to me. Delhi is iike an ex. An unresolved letter. A place that once pretended to love me but never really did. It’s that person who never gave you a reason to stay, but every now and then, gives you just enough hope to keep trying. With Delhi, the heartbreak has been slow and deliberate — not one loud slam, but a series of quiet doors closing, one by one.

None of my friendships from Delhi have lasted. I’ve wondered if it was my fault — if I was too much, or not enough — but in my more honest moments, I know it wasn’t just me. I’ve watched pieces of my heart stay behind in that city. Some Places in Delhi, there are words written by me that exist, some really beautiful words that delhi chooses to accept but it fails to accept me. And maybe that’s where the ghost lives — the one that visits me uninvited and takes me back to things I thought I’d buried.

Delhi has rejected me in every way it knows how — it’s denied me opportunities, shut me out of things I cared about, even refused to let me in for just two days to attend a concert that might’ve made me feel something again. If Delhi had a guest list, I’d be scribbled in at the bottom, underlined in pencil, easily erased.

It’s funny — my parents have always said Delhi was unsafe. And maybe they weren’t just talking about the streets. Maybe they were talking about the way the city holds you close just long enough for you to believe, and then lets you go without a warning. Even without living in that city - delhi has made be taste betrayal, heartbreak, Demotivation and primarily Rejection. 

I’ve been trying to grow up. I’ve been trying to tell myself that the past doesn’t define me, that I am here, now. But the illusion — this stubbornly persistent illusion — doesn’t let go so easily. Delhi still lives somewhere in my mind’s map, pinned down with memories I wish I could erase.

Every time I meet someone from Delhi, something in me pulls back. A version of myself I don’t like resurfaces — the one who tried too hard, gave too much, waited too long. And even now, after all this time, I still find myself asking the same quiet question:

Why doesn’t it like me back?

I’ve done everything I thought I was supposed to. I’ve tried to prove myself, to be better, to be enough — not just for Delhi, but for what it represented: belonging, love, possibility. And yet, every time I reach out, Delhi slips further away, as if I was never meant to be held by it in the first place.

Maybe that’s what hurts the most. That I kept trying. That I still do.

But maybe — slowly — it’s time to stop asking to be let in.
Maybe the healing doesn’t come from being accepted by the city, but from accepting that I don’t need to be.

Maybe the past is a persistent illusion — but I don’t have to live inside it anymore.

Not even for Delhi.