I really like this challenge. I adore writing. I know I'm not that great yet but what I do know is that I like writing, I enjoy writing because it is the only place I can be myself. I can pour all of my emotions and mould them into a character or a situation and I love the power it gives me. The only place I feel powerful is when I write because I get to decide what direction I want to give to my stories and characters, which I hope to publish someday.

I got diverted. I feel like none of my friends understand me. We used to be a group of seven friends at my university, we used to do everything together and it used to be so fun. These people made my college life worth it. Among these seven friends, we had an inner closer friend group of just 4 people. Me, my roommate let us name her 'Pam', my neighbour 'Danny' and our friend 'Amy. I loved this inner circle of friends. I felt like we understood each other so much and that this group would remain forever. My dreams were evidently short-lived. There was a huge fight between my roommate, Pam and the rest of them. I was left hanging in the middle. Left to handle both sides. I know I can never leave my roommate alone because I do not think she was in the wrong. I think one of my other friends 'Sarah' poisoned the minds of my other friends and suddenly they didn't want to talk to her anymore. Sarah has always been jealous of Pam, the way she had an inner circle that Sarah was not a part of. Sarah envied her, and still does.

Both sides were sympathetic towards me, knowing that I had to balance both friends. I put in efforts, I put in effort for four months and these days I began feeling myself slipping. I've begun feeling that Sarah, Amy, and Danny are very fake towards me, they don't really want to talk to me but they're putting in unnecessary effort. I feel my friendship with them has gotten too 'forced' hence, I've stopped trying. This has left me in a problem.

Amy used to be a really good friend of mine, I still consider her a good friend but she's gone around and made Sarah her best friend. I haven't been able to properly talk to Amy in more than a month and I regret that. She gets me, a little but I've gone and thrown it down the drain. I'm left with no energy to reconcile. I feel I've been giving too much of myself with nothing for myself.

I've also realised people only care about their own problems, they don't want to listen to other's problems if they can help it. Humans are selfish, it is a known fact. We mostly centre our lives around ourselves, thinking of others to be side characters in our movie. We fail to realise that there are simultaneously millions of movies screening and everybody is a side character in one or the other movie. The problem lies in the fact that nobody has time for my movie. I've been watching others movies for a while now but nobody is interested in mine. This is mainly also the problem of Pam, she gets too caught up in her own movie to ever even enquire about mine. She has to say something about everything.

I'm different. I've never fallen in love with anybody (not counting family and friends) I haven't really felt romantic feelings towards anyone. I don't know if I'm aromantic or not. What I do know is that everybody is in a relationship and I don't want to be in one like ever and that makes me different and weird. But sometimes I think that nobody else has really liked me either. I know that for a fact. My friends have been pretty all my life and the story has been so centred around the movies they are starring in that we never got the chance to reach mine. This is the first time I've ever admitted this insecurity of mine.

I'll be okay, I know that I'm okay with being a side character in most movies, I know that I'll be okay tomorrow but I saw this challenge and I wished to write it. Thank you so much for listening. I hope all of you do well and sleep well!

The world passes by as she sits by the coffee shop and stares through the window. She watches as a mother scolds her son to tie his shoelaces, she watches a young couple kiss and blush, and she watches as a homeless man sits by the pavement, hope long sucked out of his eyes.

Her heart blossoms with a strange feeling, a feeling of lingering longing. Longing for a time when her problems used to be taken care of by someone else, today her problems are her own. nobody is fighting her battles for her today. She curses herself for, ever wishing to grow up fast, to leave the safety of her mother's scarf behind. She wishes she could hide behind that scarf where all her worries would be drowned away by the warmth and love it holds. A single piece of cloth that could take her back to a time when the world used to be different and her biggest worry used to be 'What if my sister eats my ice cream.'

She sighs and looks into her coffee mug, the warmth it held long gone. It sits there cold and unwanted. These days she feels as if her life is a movie, the people are just characters passing by, and she has no control over anything. It had begun to feel like someone else was directing the movie that is her life. All semblance of control was lost to the director. Every night in her dreams she tries to see the person behind the directing chair but each night she gets closer to finding out, she wakes up.

She knows that thinking deeply will not take her anywhere, it never does, all it does is distract her from her pending work. The word work reminds her of all the files kept on her desk in her house that she needs to get back to. The never-ending pile of doom. No matter what she does, it is never enough. It doesn't get the work done, she doesn't sleep peacefully, another night that ends too soon and another morning that descends too fast another day where she has left people disappointed. Sometimes she wonders, is it only her that is so out of it and cannot handle the pressure? how is nobody complaining? She fails to realise that everybody is complaining they are just great actors at hiding it.

She thinks of what she is doing these days, waking up to do meaningless and endless work that puts food on her table at the end of the day. Is it worth doing such a job that you feel disassociated with? no zeal or passion for the subject, doing it just for the sake of doing it. She wishes she could escape the cycle and do something different. She feels deep envy for the people who have been able to achieve and do exactly what they dreamed of doing, those who are happy with their jobs.

She remembers a time when she had a passion and a younger version of her believed that she would be a writer in the future. Writing fiction novels for young adults. She mourns the time when she lost sight of her passion and the other things in her life became so important that it overshadowed her love for writing. She still has documents and WIP folders in her laptop, deep down, buried somewhere among the files of her work, never opened in many years.

No matter how hard life gets, one must never leave behind that which gives one peace. In the hardships of life, we forget that which has helped us through our worst times. Writing used to be her escape from reality, her bomb shelter when the world outside was burning to hell, but it got left behind in the tragedies of life. She made up her mind. She asked the waitress to heat her cold coffee and opened her notebook.

She began writing which hopefully would give her life a new beginning as well, she titled the chapter 'A New Beginning.'