I'm writing this on day 20 of my fast, and I need to be honest with you about something I wasn't expecting.

I thought fasting would be about discipline. About clarity. About stripping away the noise and finding some kind of spiritual breakthrough or mental reset. And maybe it is those things. But what I didn't anticipate was how much it would bring up everything I've been quietly avoiding—especially when it comes to love.

There's this thing that happens when you stop filling yourself with food. You start to notice all the other ways you've been filling yourself. The distractions. The busy work. The scrolling. The constant motion that keeps you from sitting still with what's actually going on inside.

And for me, what's been sitting there—waiting, patient, relentless—is this anxiety about love.

Not the romantic comedy version of love. Not the "meet cute" or the "happily ever after." I'm talking about the messy, vulnerable, terrifying kind of love that requires you to be seen. The kind that asks you to show up as yourself, fully, without the armor or the performance or the carefully curated version you've convinced yourself is more palatable.

The fast has stripped away my usual coping mechanisms, and suddenly I'm face-to-face with this question I've been dodging: Am I even capable of letting someone love me?

When you're fasting, your body starts screaming for what it needs. At first, it's food. But then, if you sit with it long enough, you start to hear the other hungers. The ones you've been ignoring because they felt too vulnerable to acknowledge.

I'm hungry for a connection that goes deeper than surface-level conversation.

I'm hungry for someone who sees the parts of me I usually hide and doesn't flinch.

I'm hungry for the kind of love that doesn't ask me to be less weird, less intense, less me.

And admitting that—writing it down right now—feels terrifying. Because it means admitting I don't have it all figured out. It means acknowledging that for all my talk about independence and self-sufficiency, there's a part of me that's lonely. That wants to be chosen. That's tired of being the person who always leaves before anyone can leave them.

Here's where the anxiety comes in.

I look at my life—the way I've structured it, the way I move through the world—and I wonder if I've made myself unlovable. Not because I'm not worthy, but because I've built walls so high that no one could possibly climb them. I've made myself so independent that partnership feels impossible. I've convinced myself that I'm "too much" or "too complicated" or "too unconventional" for anyone to actually want to stick around.

The fast has forced me to sit with this fear. To feel it fully instead of eating it away or distracting myself out of it. And what I'm realizing is that the anxiety isn't about whether I'm lovable. It's about whether I'm brave enough to let someone try.

Because here's the truth: Being vulnerable is scarier than being alone.

Loneliness is familiar. It's predictable. You know what to expect. But vulnerability? Opening yourself up to someone and risking rejection, misunderstanding, or abandonment? That's the real fast. That's the real hunger. And it's the one I've been avoiding my entire life.

I'm sharing this not because I have answers, but because I know I'm not alone in feeling this way.

If you're reading this, there's a good chance you're a misfit too. You've probably built a life that looks unconventional to outsiders. You've probably convinced yourself that independence is the same thing as strength. You've probably wondered, late at night, if choosing this path means choosing to be alone.

And I want you to know: You're not broken for wanting love.

You're not weak for craving intimacy. You're not betraying your values by admitting that you want someone to see you, fully, and choose to stay. The nomadic life, the creative life, the misfit life—it doesn't have to mean going it alone. It just means finding someone who's willing to drift with you. Someone who doesn't need you to be anything other than what you are.

But here's the hard part: You have to let them in.

You have to be willing to drop the armor, to stop performing, to risk being seen in all your messy, complicated, beautiful humanity. And that's terrifying. I know it is. I'm sitting here, day 20 of this fast, feeling that terror in my bones.

But I'm also starting to realize that the alternative—spending my life protecting myself from hurt by never letting anyone close enough to matter—is its own kind of starvation.

I don't have a neat conclusion for you. I'm still in the middle of this. Still sitting with the discomfort. Still trying to figure out what it means to want love while also wanting freedom. Still learning how to be vulnerable without losing myself.

But I wanted to share this with you because I think that's what community is for. Not the polished, Instagram-ready version of our lives, but the raw, unfinished, still-figuring-it-out version. The version that says, "I'm scared, and I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm doing it anyway."

So if you're feeling this too—if the fast (literal or metaphorical) has brought up feelings you weren't expecting, if you're wrestling with the tension between independence and intimacy, if you're anxious about love and what it might cost you—I see you. I'm right there with you.

And maybe that's the point. Maybe the misfit life isn't about going it alone. Maybe it's about finding the other people who are brave enough to admit they're scared, too. And then figuring it out together.