By: Ananya Das, Associate Editor, GSDN

The date was June 07, 2025. I don’t know what cracked open inside me today, but I can’t put it back. And I don’t want to.

It’s strange how we walk through life with working legs and closed eyes. I’ve had better days than today, more eventful, glitterier. But not one of them made me feel this loud inside. Not one made me this aware of the silence I had been swallowing for years. I’ve never had this kind of urge to post online before, not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t think I had something real to say.

There was this book, just lying there in my shelf like a ghost of responsibility I never claimed. For years. I’d walk past it, feel a little guilty maybe, and forget again. Today, I don’t know what god or demon twisted my gut, but I picked it up and started reading. And then I had to stop. The words weren’t just ink anymore. They were truth bullets. They got under my skin. They forced me to bleed.

We’re taught the same damn moral line since childhood — “Respect everyone equally.” What a joke. Schools shove it down our throats, parents pretend to live by it, and then we all grow up and become the kind of people who don’t even look at a waiter’s face while accepting service. You think saying “thank you” without eye contact makes you a decent person? You think handing someone a tip without treating them like a human being makes it okay? That book described it. The quiet violence of being treated like a tool. Security guards, waiters, nail artists, people who feel dehumanized every single day by the very people who pretend they “respect everyone.” And it’s true. It’s all true. We’re not humans, we’re walking scripts. Robots trying to remember how to sound polite while actively ignoring souls.

Even the teachers preaching these things in class aren’t exempt. Most of them are just saying words like empty envelopes. They don’t even believe what they’re teaching. They want their salary, their off-time, their life back. And we just eat it up, recite the same values, and become part of the same disease.

That hit me like a truck today.

And then, as if the universe wasn’t done dragging me through the mud, another thought slammed into my chest: what about those who can’t even read this book? What about those who don’t speak English? What about those who’ll never access this pain, this clarity, because privilege never kissed their doorstep?

And even for people like me, people who can read, who do have access – we let things rot. I had that book for years. Just lying there. Like most of us do with our potential. We ignore it. Because we can. Because nothing forces us to care until something inside us is dead enough to finally notice the funeral.

Later today, in the evening, my brain said, “Let’s watch a film.” No reason. Just… because I can. And that sentence alone made me flinch. The privilege in that. I have had a Netflix subscription for over two years. The film I chose? “Mona Lisa Smile.” My friend recommended it to me five years ago. I didn’t watch it. I wasn’t interested. I was busy being empty.

But today I did. And it gutted me. Because it tied everything together, that book, that thought, this generation, this broken system we pretend to thrive in. It all came full circle. That film screamed what I was already hearing in my head.

I realized I’ve had the platform all along. I’ve had the language. I’ve had the space. I’ve had this blog sitting here like an open mouth, waiting for me to say something real. For months, my to-do lists have said: “Write the blog. Write the goddamn blog.” And I didn’t. Not once. I had all the time, outside work. I had words boiling in my throat. But I didn’t write.

Why?

Because I was too damn used to wasting myself.

Even my Latin classes. I started like a star. The outperformer. The overachiever. And then? Flatline. I kept showing up like a shell of that version. I told myself it’s okay to be normal. But it’s not. Not when you know you’re meant to be more. Not when you’ve tasted more.

Today I killed that version of me. The one that made peace with shrinking.

And it made me see just how lucky we are. We, who get to speak. Who get to write. Who gets to read in languages that others never got the chance to learn. We are living in an age where women can share their minds, where broken people can scream into the internet and someone, somewhere, will listen. We are living the dreams of those who died screaming into pillows. And still, we scroll. We numb. We wait for some “right moment” that never arrives.

This era isn’t perfect. People are cruel. The world is unkind. But you know what else is true?

If you ask for help, you’ll get it. If your pain is honest, someone will hear it. If your voice is real, someone will read it. But you have to use it. You have to stop wasting your one damn chance at being heard.

So here I am. Writing what I should have written months ago. Screaming what I should’ve said out loud. Because I finally remembered that no one was holding me back. It was me.

Use your privilege. Use your voice. Use your time.

Because somewhere, someone died without ever having the chance.

And you?

You’re alive.

So, act like it.