reading stone

a letter to one and to remind myself

last updated on 31st january

Hey.

I wanted to put some of it into words. Maybe for you, maybe for me. Maybe just to make some sense of things.

I know this might not be the best way to reach you, but unfortunately, restrictions make it harder to say things out front. So here I am, writing instead.

Maybe this is just a way of organizing my own thoughts. Maybe it's something you already know.

For the longest time, learning was my whole world. It was predictable, logical, and safe. When I moved from Shanghai to Singapore in fourth grade, I found new faces, a new language, and a school system I didn't quite understand. But math, logic, problem-solving made sense. They gave me something solid to hold onto when everything else felt uncertain.

And then computer science came along, and I fell even deeper into that world. Hours of debugging, refining, figuring out why something wasn't working—it never felt like work, just a challenge I wanted to solve.

But the more I dove in, the harder it became to come back up.

I never thought passion and connection had to compete, but I struggled to give both enough space. It wasn't that I didn't care about people—I just wasn't sure how to step away from that world in my head long enough to be present in theirs.

Somewhere along the way, I overcorrected. I found myself reaching for conversation, filling every quiet moment. With words. With presence. With you. I told myself that time with others couldn't wait, that every interaction mattered, and that silence might mean distance.

Because in a way, I think I needed to.

But I also know that needing someone too much can feel like a weight, even when it's not meant to be.

Lately, I've been thinking about space—how much of it we give to things, to people, to the future that always seems to demand more of us. I don't want you to think that silence means distance, or that fewer conversations mean I care any less. Sometimes, life pulls in different directions, and I'm still figuring out how to balance the weight of expectation with the things that matter to me.

I don't know what things will look like from here. But I do know that I don't want to hold on too tightly or too loosely. I want to figure out what feels right, in a way that makes sense for both of us.

Take care, okay? Just wanted you to know that.