If there’s one thing I know about myself, it’s this: I am here to learn. Not just in the formal sense, as a PhD student surrounded by theories and frameworks, but in the quiet, persistent way a person moves from curiosity to curiosity, never quite settling, always reaching.
Lately, I’ve found myself drawn to the unapologetic boldness of Brutalist architecture. There’s something in its raw honesty, in the way it doesn’t try to please but simply is functional, severe, yet deeply poetic. I want to understand why these massive, concrete forms move me. Why their presence feels like resistance, and their silence, almost sacred. Maybe, at some point, I will study it more seriously. Maybe not. But the pull is real.
Cinema is another language I live in. Not the glamorous, escapist kind. I mean real cinema, the kind that unsettles, that doesn’t resolve, that lingers. Iranian films, minimalist frames, stories of women breaking under the weight of silence. I want to learn how these stories are told. Maybe I’ll find a way to study it. Maybe I won’t. But the hunger to understand how a single shot can hold an entire life that stays.
What I seek is not a life adorned by milestones you can pin on a wall or photograph for social media. I don’t dream of a big house. I believe the smaller the house, the closer we are forced to sit with one another, to be present, to witness.
I am not looking for something that can be bought. I want to keep living for the unquantifiable: a conversation that shifts my worldview, a book that holds up a mirror, a quiet moment under brutalist concrete that makes me feel strangely comforted. These are the things I want to collect.
I’ve always wanted to be a mother. That desire has lived inside me for as long as I’ve known how to name emotions. But I do not want to settle. Not for a version of motherhood that demands shrinking myself or becoming someone else’s shadow. I want to grow, and maybe one day, if it’s meant to be, I’ll raise someone who learns to live like this too, with curiosity as their compass, and experience as their legacy.
I do not know where this path will take me. I do not need to. What I do know is that every place I stop whether it’s a film, a book, a PhD seminar, or a new friendship I will sit there fully, learn what I can, and move when it’s time. That’s the only wealth I believe in.
