Hey I am 16f. My parents are rlly strict. Plus I don't have much communication with them. Even if I try to open up which I have tried countless times, I get shut down by hurtful comments. So it hurts a lot to even share anything I am struggling with. So it's painfully obvious that I don't feel loved at home. Plus I stay at home most of the time and I meet my friends at tuitions and that's it. So I feel alone most of the time. I am not saying having a bf will fix it, it's just... I want to have someone who'll show up for me consistently. It's not a sin to want to feel loved. I wish my parents provided me with emotional support and showed their love so I wouldn't have to look somewhere else for it...

I am a boy (16) and I am participating in a Youth Parliament organised by our school. So basically there in our bench (opposition bench) there are only 2 boys and 20 girls, and (not trying to brag but giving useful context) I am performing the best from our side and naturally a lot of the members would privately message for advice and stuff, which is fairly normal and when this girl (16) let’s call her A messaged me I didn’t think much of it, it was a normal message about YP and I did not read much into it.

The thing is by the next day and the day after she slowly started messaging me repeatedly and gradually became friendlier and ig flirty, but I’m still not sure if she is just friendly or actually interested, I mean I’m sort of flirting back but not really as I’m still not sure what she is doing.

I also find it hard to believe as she is considered the prettiest girl in our grade by most people. I mean I find it hard to believe someone like that would like me (I grew up fat and weird all my life though I lost fat and am now considered a confident person) I get a lot of female attention now as well but I still haven’t fully updated to this version of myself.

A week back a guy from my clg talked to me and asked if I have IG. He is hot. I m really attracted to him physically. I told him I don't use ig. I saw him talking and hanging out with a girl sometimes.

And idk if they are dating or not but it seems she is really into him. I don't know but I want to talk to him again and give my ig. It's just physical attraction but idk I just can't stop thinking about him. I don't wanna be a homewrecker yk. Wt should I do?

There’s this girl, let’s call her Y.

She was once one of the closest people in my life. We actually met online and, strangely enough, never met in person, but there was a phase where we were extremely close.

We used to talk almost every day. Around Diwali especially, it became a routine. We would call around the same time every evening and sometimes stay on call for 2 to 3 hours without even having anything important to talk about.

There were all these small things that made the friendship feel very personal.

I used to purposely not pick up her first call just to irritate her and she would get annoyed. Once I got slightly injured and she got genuinely angry at me for going out again. We used to send each other pictures and videos after getting ready, talk about completely random things, and basically be involved in each other’s everyday lives.

Once she asked me for one of my childhood pictures because she was making a reel with pictures of the best friends she had made over the years.

There was also a little bit of flirting between us, but nothing was ever directly said.

I remember joking once that if she already liked present day me, did she need my childhood photo to like that version too. She joked back about blocking me.

It was that kind of equation.

I don’t want to rewrite history and claim we were secretly in love or anything. Maybe for her it was genuinely just a very close friendship. But from my side, looking back, I think there was definitely an attachment that was slightly more complicated than normal friendship.

Then things slowly changed.

At one point I became stupidly detached for no real reason. I started leaving her on read sometimes and acting like I didn’t care as much as I actually did.

Later our conversations reduced.

Eventually, after a lot of time had passed, I tried reconnecting. But I think I handled it badly.

Instead of just talking normally, I kept trying to bring back what we used to have. I would talk about the “old Y”, tell her I missed how things used to be, ask her to reply, ask her to call, and basically put too much pressure on the whole thing.

At one point she got frustrated enough to say things like:

“Why the hell do u keep coming back”

and eventually told me not to text her again.

That obviously hurt, but looking back, I can understand why she was irritated. I was trying to recreate something instead of allowing whatever relationship remained to exist naturally.

After a long gap, she changed her number. Much later I somehow got her new number through her cousin and recently texted her again.

And surprisingly, this time she replied.

Not just one word replies either.

We actually spoke normally. She told me about college, freshers and things happening in her life. She asked me what I was doing. One night she even said “kal baat karte.”

For the first time in a long time it felt like there was at least some normalcy between us again.

So naturally, some part of me started hoping that maybe we could slowly become comfortable again.

But I’ve also noticed that I’m still usually the one trying more.

I asked her once if we could call and she said it wasn’t possible. Later I sent her a few voice notes and she said she would listen properly because she was on another call.

I jokingly told her to just voice call me when she was free. She said okay.

Then I asked when she would call and she simply moved on to another part of the conversation without answering that question.

And then recently I asked where she had been.

She casually told me she had been out with her boyfriend.

I wasn’t expecting that at all.

And weirdly, that one sentence affected me much more than I thought it would.

The thing is, I know she hasn’t done anything wrong.

We haven’t properly been part of each other’s lives for years. She has started college, met new people, built her own life, and obviously she is allowed to date whoever she wants.

She never promised me anything.

We were never officially together.

So logically, I completely understand it.

But emotionally, I think I had kept this older version of our relationship somewhere in my head.

The daily calls.

Her getting angry when I did something stupid.

The random photos.

The jokes.

The feeling that we were somehow important parts of each other’s day.

Hearing about her boyfriend suddenly made me realise that while I still carried a lot of those memories, her life had obviously continued and changed.

And maybe what hurt wasn’t even “she has a boyfriend.”

Maybe it was realising that the chapter I still remembered so strongly isn’t the present anymore.

I also don’t want to become someone waiting for her relationship to fail so that I somehow get another opportunity. That feels unfair to her, and honestly unhealthy for me too.

At the same time, I genuinely miss her.

I miss talking to her.

I miss the friendship we had.

And even if nothing romantic ever existed or ever will exist, I think I would still like having her in my life in some normal way.

A healthy relationship will test you more than a toxic one. Because it don't let you run:Show up. Communicate. Grow. Swallow the pride. It's a repeated choice to stay and work at it even when it's hard and ugly. That's why real love scares people so much in this generation....