Have you ever looked at the sky and realised you weren’t seeing it anymore?

I used to.
Once, the stars weren’t just dots. They were questions — mysteries — tiny invitations to wonder.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped noticing them.

🌌 The Nerdy Era

Back in sixth grade, my school organised a camp to Jim Corbett for a space-observation trip.
My friends went — I couldn’t. It was far from home, and I wasn’t allowed. I didn’t rebel, of course, but yes… I did feel like I missed out.

I’d pause YouTube at 0.25× to rewatch proofs and black-hole visuals.
Matt Parker at 2 a.m.
Veritasium paradoxes.
NileRed and NileBlue making chemistry feel like bedtime stories.
Steve Mould’s “wait, WHAT?” moments…

Somewhere between those tabs, I fell in love with the sky.

JWST threads, wormholes, Andromeda–Milky Way collision videos — they all terrified me in the best way. The universe felt big, loud, alive.
I’d lie awake, look at the sky, and think:
This could all disappear someday.

My father fed that wonder too — documentaries on entanglement, superposition, quantum weirdness.
He made the universe feel like something we could sit with, even if we’d never understand it fully.

🔒 The Lock-In (2021–23)

Then JEE prep happened.

“Don’t get distracted by quantum and cosmology. Crack the exam first. You can read all that later.”

So I listened.
I shut the tabs.
I did the syllabus.
I became efficient.

I was a topper kind of girl, yes… but invisible.
Marks came, but they felt like numbers on a sheet.
Astronomy got filed under “later.”

📉 Closer to Engineering, Further from the Universe (2023–25)

I thought BTech would bring the spark back.
A professor. A lab. A project. Something.

But what I got was:

practicals
attendance
deadlines
code that ran but meant nothing

A calendar that stayed full while my brain stayed empty.

I kept telling myself, “This is my path to the stars,”
but most days it felt like training for a fluorescent 9-to-5 under a ceiling instead of a sky.

JWST images went viral — everyone called them “breathtaking.”
I didn’t even click.

Not out of arrogance.
Out of distance.

Like the universe moved ahead and I didn’t know how to rejoin the conversation.

🔄 Overachiever, Out of Focus

School made me good at finishing chapters.
BTech made me good at surviving weeks.

Neither taught me how to keep curiosity alive when no one’s asking for it.

People still assume I’m the “studious” one.
The truth is far less shiny:

I’m tired.
I study, I submit, I move the goalpost…
and somewhere along the way, I forgot what the game even was.

📝 A Small Handle on the Door

Writing became my one steady handle.
Not a fix — just something to hold.

I journal. I post. I try to name the fog so it stops swallowing whole days.

If you’ve ever loved a subject so much it felt like oxygen…
and then watched that oxygen thin out until you weren’t sure how to breathe…

You know exactly what I mean.

✨ Not a Resolution

I wish this ended with
“and here’s how I got the spark back.”

It doesn’t.

Some nights I still look up and can’t remember the constellations.
Cassiopeia, maybe? Or not.

I let it go.
I stand there anyway.
I try to feel something that isn’t productivity or panic.

Maybe I’ll catch up on what I missed — the missions, the theories, the images I scrolled past.
Maybe not yet.

Right now, all I have is a page, a pen,
and the memory of a girl who once believed the stars would answer back.