Who is Priya?

Priya has a knack for ruining things with truth.

Not big dramatic things, or relationships or reputations or national elections, just moments that everyone else seemed to enjoy. Because they had either completely surrendered to the script, or were just better at pretending. But not Priya.

Priya would notice the man behind the curtain and immediately point and say, “Hey, that’s just a guy in a polyester robe pushing buttons.”

She wasn’t trying to be difficult, she was just awake. That’s all. Wide-eyed in a world that kept telling her to sleep in, be grateful, and stop asking questions like “Why are we pretending this is fun?”

When she was 5, she asked why she had to touch strangers’ feet. “To get their blessings,” her mother said. Priya replied, “But their feet are dirty and nasty and how is that nasty thing supposed to give blessings?!” That was her first lesson in cultural disrespect.

By 7, she had figured out that Santa wasn’t real, and she tried telling about it to her classmates. She thought she was doing a public service. Instead, she got labeled “emotionally disturbing.”

By 12, she had mastered the art of the silent eye-roll. By 16, she had enough existential crises to qualify for a spiritual pension. And by 18, she was just done with the performance of pretending this whole thing wasn’t weird as hell.

Because here’s what nobody tells you growing up: Most of life is theatre; and Priya was born without a script.

Other people seemed to glide through existence with this blind confidence that everything had meaning. That suffering made you stronger and heartbreak was beautiful. That the universe had a plan.

Priya thought the universe barely had WiFi, let alone a spreadsheet of everyone’s soul contracts.

She didn’t believe in God, not in the traditional “sky daddy with a checklist” way. She believed in gravity and sarcasm and that pain was random, not poetic.

People said things like “everything happens for a reason,” and she’d think, yes, and sometimes the reason is that someone was stupid and you have to face the consequences of their stupidity!

What made it worse was that everyone else seemed to be buying the delusion wholesale. People posted “grateful for growth” captions like it meant something. Like growing through trauma was noble instead of just sad. Like becoming functional after years of emotional chaos deserved a standing ovation and a Canva quote card.

Priya wasn’t buying it.

She didn’t want to grow. She wanted to nap. She wanted to find a corner of the world that didn’t demand enlightenment or positivity or whatever new word the internet had chosen to make us feel guilty for not smiling enough.

She wasn’t unhappy. That was the part people didn’t get. She could laugh harder than anyone, especially at her own despair. She wasn’t a raincloud. She was more like a smoke alarm that’s annoying, loud, and only going off when something was seriously off, which was all the time.

She noticed things.

How everyone said “I’m fine” with a tone that meant “I’ve already died twice today.”
How couples said “We’re working on it” while silently texting their exes or sidekicks.
How friends hung out only to scroll through other people’s lives and call it quality time.

She noticed, and she couldn’t un-notice.

She didn’t have the luxury of illusion. That switch was missing from her brain, the one that lets you lie to yourself just enough to survive. Her mind had a flashlight and it never turned off, not even in places it shouldn’t go.

At school, she was the girl who made teachers nervous because she asked “why” too much. At parties, she stood in corners with a drink she didn’t finish, quietly analyzing how fake everyone’s smiles looked under the fairy lights.

She had friends, but they were usually people who mistook her honesty for wit. And by the time they realized she wasn’t just quirky but catastrophically real, they ghosted her gently, politely, with a “you’re just too much” kind of fade out.

She had a dating history that read like a warning label. “Emotionally intelligent but alarming.” “Beautiful mind, terrifying insights.” “Would recommend if you enjoy staring into the void during dinner.”

She had questions. Always.
Like why everyone pretended to enjoy weddings.
Or why small talk wasn’t considered psychological warfare.
Or why people had kids when they clearly needed exorcism, not tiny versions of themselves to ruin.

But questions made people uncomfortable. Especially when they came from a girl who didn’t smile enough and spoke like she knew secrets no one wanted to hear.

So eventually, Priya learned to smile like a customer service employee. She became fluent in fake laughs, half-nods, and phrases like “Haha that’s so funny” even when nothing was. It was easier to pretend than to explain.

But late at night, when everyone else was dreaming about careers or marriage or whatever future they’d been programmed to chase, Priya would lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, wide awake with a million tabs open in her head.

Because some part of her knew that the whole thing was off. Like the world was buffering behind the scenes, and no one else seemed to notice.

Which made her wonder…was she the only one who was awake?