The Alchemy of Absence
Transmuting Melancholy into Meaning
A Communion with the Unsaid
There’s a kind of sadness that doesn't cry.
It just sits.
Low in the belly.
Heavy in the bones.
A presence that says: I’ve been here longer than your joy has known its own name.
Lately, this old ache has surfaced again.
Not like a wave crashing—but like mist curling around a forgotten altar.
I didn’t invite it. But it came anyway.
And I—tired of resisting—opened the door.
What it showed me was not new, but newly seen:
A story etched into the marrow of my becoming.
A story I thought I had healed, rewritten, risen from.
But stories don’t die.
They unravel.
And this one began with a single sentence:
I am not worthy of being loved.
The Ache That Names Me
Even now, just writing that feels like betrayal.
Of the healed version of me.
Of the brave version.
Of the spiritual one who “knows better.”
But the wound doesn’t care for performances.
It just wants to be met.
This unworthiness—it didn’t start here.
It was passed down in glances not held long enough,
in love that came with conditions,
in the quiet assumption that I must earn presence to deserve it.
I have worn that story like a skin,
begged love to stay,
then resented it when it came too close.
The Bargain and the Burden
There was a time I blamed myself for the absence.
Then a time I blamed them for not receiving what I had to give.
It became a quiet negotiation:
If I am whole enough, will you choose me?
If I break in just the right way, will you finally understand?
But the truth underneath the bargaining is stranger: I am terrified of being loved.
Not the idea of it.
Not the version I can control.
But the kind that sees all of me—the untamed, unfiltered, unfixable me—and stays anyway.
A Thousand Selves, All Still Becoming
There are so many parts of me I have only just met:
The rebel. The wildcard. The one who doesn’t flinch.
The one who laughs too loud. Who cries mid-sentence.
Who doesn’t perform wisdom, but lives in the middle of her own undoing.
I love these selves.
But when love knocks, I still hesitate.
Which part will they meet? Which will I hide?
And more haunting still:
What if they see all of me… and love me anyway?
Where the Fear of Failure Hides
Underneath all of this is a deeper fear.
Not of heartbreak.
But of extinction.
The primal, ancient terror that to fail, to fall, to not be chosen—
is to be exiled from the tribe.
Left behind.
Forgotten.
This is why the wound feels like death.
Because once, in some far-off time, it was.
And in this modern life, we translate it into money, power, performance.
We hoard approval like it’s food.
We shrink our originality so we won’t be too much.
We isolate in plain sight.
Melancholy, My Mirror
And yet.
Melancholy does not come to destroy me.
It comes to cleanse.
It is not the enemy. It is the invitation.
To feel the weight of what’s unspoken.
To let the old language of not-enough crack open—
so something new can rise through the ruin.
This ache has rhythm.
It has wisdom.
It is the lull before the next creative thunderstorm.
And when I let it move through me,
something fresh always follows.
🌹 Love Without a Witness
There is a love I’ve started learning.
The kind that doesn't arrive with fireworks.
But shows up in silence.
In the way I hold myself when the world forgets.
In the way I don’t abandon my softness, even when no one understands it.
This is the love I want now.
The kind that doesn’t bargain.
The kind that doesn’t flinch.
The kind that sees the wound and says:
This, too, is holy.
The Last Word is Never the End
I used to think healing was the end of the story.
But it’s just the beginning of a deeper becoming.
So if you’re reading this from the middle of your own ache—
from the in-between, the unraveling, the not-yet—
May I remind you:
You are not here to overcome your tenderness.
You are here to honor it.
To create with it.
To bloom, even under the weight of your own gravity.
Even the moon disappears.
And still—it pulls the tides.
You are not unworthy of love.
You are love, learning how to hold herself.
And I promise—
That is more than enough.
-Minhaj