"We are always here for you" by PQHAÜS

Acrylic on canvas / 16x20 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS

We live in a world where we have both been the recipient of "We're always here for you" and the sender of "We're always here for you." I no longer hear those words because I've learned not to present myself in ways that invite them. Maybe I realized too early that people being there for me never fundamentally changed anything. Or maybe I simply stopped wanting help. Perhaps it was just a phase. I don't know.

For the longest time, I struggled to make eye contact. Instead, I would stand there staring at people's shoes as if I were having the conversation with them instead. I looked at the color, shape, material, and the way they tied their shoelaces. Then I would let myself drift into those tiny details until someone called my name and pulled me back. I still don't understand why I was so afraid of looking people in the eyes, or letting them look into mine.

One time, all my close friends and family came over for dinner. They spoke to me with the kind of reassurance reserved for someone they believed needed constant care. One by one, they held my hands and told me they would always be there for me.

I smiled.

Not because they were wrong to love me, but because I had quietly become a stranger to myself, and they were still trying to comfort someone they remembered.

I wasn't really living. I was simply continuing. Days passed. Conversations happened. Birthdays came and went. I laughed when laughter was expected and answered questions the way people hoped I would. Everything looked convincing enough from the outside. The frightening part wasn't that I felt broken. It was how ordinary it all became.

That night, when dinner ended, everyone went home.

I remember wanting to go home too.

The only problem was that I was already there.

Looking back, I don't think the saddest part was that I needed people to be there for me. They already were. They showed up, they waited, they loved me in every way they knew how.

The saddest part was that I had spent so long searching for somewhere to belong that I never noticed I had quietly abandoned the one person I was going to spend the rest of my life with.

Myself.

Maybe that's why those words always left me with a feeling I couldn't explain.

Every time someone promised they would always be there for me, I was gently reminded of the one person I had never learned to stay with.