Humans were never meant to be Nonchalant

I have never understood why we are so proud of looking like we do not care. There is something deeply sad about it. We have taken one of the most natural things about being human and turned it into something embarrassing. Caring now has to be hidden, measured, controlled?. God forbid someone sees that you wanted something badly. God forbid they know that their absence changed something in you. We would rather look uneffected than tell the truth, and I think that says more about how frightened we have become than how strong we are.

I understand why people become nonchalant. I do. There is relief in it. When you stop expecting, you stop waiting for disappointment. When you stop reaching, there is no hand left hanging in the air. When you stop asking for affection, you never have to hear that it cannot be given. There are times when I want that relief too. There are people I would never chase again. There are things I would never ask for twice. Sometimes you have to become indifferent to what keeps taking from you, or you will spend your entire life begging something to become what it has already shown you it is not.

But I cannot accept that this has to become the way we live.

I cannot accept the idea that healing means becoming so detached that nothing gets through anymore. I do not want to congratulate myself for how little I feel. I do not want to reach some imaginary point where I can lose people, lose love, lose hope, and simply shrug. What would I have actually gained? A heart that cannot be hurt is also a heart that has stopped opening. There is safety in that, yes. There is also an emptiness I do not want.

I think we have confused control with indifference. Being able to feel something without letting it control you is strength. Refusing to feel it at all is something else. There is a difference between saying, “This matters to me, and I will still walk away,” and saying, “This never mattered to me in the first place.” One takes honesty. The other takes denial. I know which one I would rather live with.

I want to be able to care without feeling stupid for caring. I want my feelings to exist without immediately asking whether they make me look weak. If someone matters to me, I do not want to spend half my time trying to make sure they never find out how much. That is such a strange way to live. To want to say something and stop yourself because you are afraid of what the honesty might cost you.

And I am angry that we have made this normal.

I am angry that people would rather leave a feeling unfinished than risk being vulnerable. I am angry that we praise the person who can walk away without showing anything while quietly judging the person who admits that they are hurt. I am angry that saying “I miss you” can feel like giving someone too much power. I am angry that people have learned to turn affection into a negotiation with their own pride. At some point, we stopped asking ourselves what we genuinely felt and started asking ourselves what would make us look least affected.

That cannot be the whole point of being alive.

I do not want to become someone who is always trying to win against their own emotions. I do not want to look back at something I once loved and feel proud that I managed to act like it meant nothing. If it meant something, then it meant something. I do not need to insult the past to prove that I have moved forward. I do not need to make someone insignificant just because they are no longer part of my life.

Some things can end and still remain important.

I think we forget that. We treat endings as if they erase everything that came before them. If something did not last, we assume it was foolish to care. If someone left, we convince ourselves we should never have wanted them. If a relationship failed, we act like the feeling itself was a mistake. I hate that way of thinking. Something does not become meaningless simply because it did not stay. A feeling does not become stupid just because it had nowhere to go.

There are people I would never go back to and still care about. There are things I would never choose again and still remember with tenderness. There are endings I know were necessary and still wish had been different. I do not see a contradiction there. I see honesty. My heart does not need to rewrite history every time my life changes direction.

Maybe that is what I want most: the freedom to tell the truth about what I felt without having to defend it.

I want to say that I loved someone and leave it there. I want to admit that I hoped for something and not feel ashamed when it did not happen. I want to say that I was hurt without turning that hurt into hatred. I want to leave without pretending I was never attached. I want to be able to carry what happened without making myself colder just to make the carrying easier.

Because I know what happens when you keep choosing indifference.

At first, it feels like freedom. Then it becomes habit. Eventually, you start keeping everything at a distance before it even has the chance to matter. You call it peace because that sounds better than fear. You call it standards because that sounds better than loneliness. You call yourself detached because admitting that you are afraid to need anyone feels far too honest.

I do not want that for myself.

I would rather risk being hurt.

I would rather have something matter enough to disturb me than spend my life protecting myself from every feeling that could leave a scar. I would rather be the person who cared and had to recover than the person who never cared enough to lose anything. Maybe that sounds foolish. Fine. I can live with being foolish. I cannot live with becoming empty and calling it maturity.

Still, I do believe in being nonchalant sometimes. I believe there are things that deserve no reaction from me. I believe there are people who should lose access to me without receiving one final explanation. I believe that chasing someone who has already made their choice is a form of self-abandonment. There is a point where you have to stop asking for what someone does not want to give, and there is nothing cold about knowing that point.

But I want my distance to come from clarity, not fear.

I want to walk away knowing that I cared. I want to choose silence knowing that I had something to say. I want to let someone go without pretending I never wanted them to stay. That feels far more honest than this performance of being unaffected. I can protect myself without pretending I have no heart.

And maybe that is where I draw the line.

I do not want to become nonchalant about everything. I do not want to lose my ability to be moved by people. I do not want to become so careful that love has to knock three times before I even consider opening the door. I do not want to treat every attachment as a threat to my independence. There is nothing wrong with needing people sometimes. There is nothing humiliating about being changed by someone you loved.

I think we are supposed to be changed by each other.

That is what makes relationships matter. That is what makes absence hurt. That is what makes reunion feel like something more than two people standing in the same place again. We leave pieces of ourselves in people without meaning to. They leave pieces of themselves in us. Sometimes those pieces stay long after the person has gone. I do not think we need to be ashamed of that.

I think we need to stop trying so hard to become untouchable.

There is a difference between having a soft heart and having no boundaries. There is a difference between loving someone and losing yourself to them. There is a difference between vulnerability and begging. I do not need to become cold to become wise. I do not need to stop caring to learn how to leave. I can have a heart that feels deeply and a mind that knows when enough is enough.

That is the kind of strength I want.

Not the strength that says, “Nothing matters.”

The strength that says, “This mattered to me, and I will survive it.”

I want to be able to say that without shame. I want to miss people without turning the feeling into a weakness. I want to love without constantly checking whether I am giving too much away. I want to be honest about what has hurt me without feeling like I have lost some invisible game. I want to stop treating my own tenderness like evidence against me.

Because I am tired of pretending.

I am tired of acting like the goal is to need nothing, want nothing, expect nothing, feel nothing. That is not the life I want. I want to care. I want to get attached. I want people to matter to me. I want to have things worth losing and feelings worth protecting. I want all the mess that comes with being human, and I want the courage to deal with it when it hurts.

Maybe I will get hurt.

Of course I will.

Maybe I will care about someone who does not care in the same way. Maybe I will hope for something that never happens. Maybe I will have to walk away from something I desperately wanted to keep. None of that makes the feeling foolish. It only means I was alive enough to want something that could be lost.

And I would rather have that than nothing.

Humans were never meant to be nonchalant. We were meant to be affected. We were meant to love things that could leave us, people who could disappoint us, lives that could change without asking permission. We were never promised that caring would be safe. We were only given the choice of whether we would care anyway.

I think I will.

I will learn when to leave. I will learn when to stop reaching. I will learn when silence is better than another explanation. I will protect myself where I need to. But I refuse to turn my heart into a locked room and then call the loneliness inside it peace.

Let me care.

Let it hurt when it hurts.

Let me miss what I miss.

Let something matter to me without forcing myself to become ashamed of it.

I do not want to be untouched. I want to be human, and being human means there will always be something that gets through.

If these words meant something to you, you can leave a little something behind. A coffee, perhaps. It helps me keep making room for the thoughts that are difficult to put into words, and for the stories that might otherwise stay unwritten. Either way, thank you for being here and reading.

Buy me a coffee.

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~Hasif
Editor, Postcards by Hasif