“There are times when I am convinced I am unfit for any human relationship.” Kafka wrote that in a letter to his fiancée. I don’t remember the context anymore, but I remember the impact. That line lodged itself somewhere deep and never left.
In 2023, I’ve read Kafka’s letters obsessively, especially the ones to Felice and Milena. The more I read, the more uncomfortable the resemblance became. Failed relationships. Relentless overthinking. A violent kind of self-criticism. Creativity that feels less like a gift and more like a compulsion. Chronic anxiety. Insomnia, especially insomnia. People call it Kafkaesque, dress it up as philosophy or literature. I don’t. To me, it looks like a simple, devastating truth: an inability to form basic human relationships.
Out of all his letters, this line stayed with me. Not the drama. Not the longing. Just this quiet admission of defect.
Recently, I went to Rishikesh. There, I met Piyush Bhaiya. We spoke at length, casually, honestly. I told him about my earlier essay on loneliness, where I had written something that now feels painfully accurate: For most people, someone like us is useful only from a distance. They admire the clarity, the articulation, the insight. They call it maturity. They look up to us.
But admiration is not attachment.
They don’t choose us in daily life. They don’t build routines with us. They don’t come home to us. We become people they quote, not people they sit beside in silence. Interesting, never comforting. Impressive, never restful.
From afar, we feel rare. Up close, we feel demanding.
And that is the part no one likes to say out loud.
At the time, I was complaining. Low-key blaming people. Calling them shallow, incompetent, incapable of depth. It felt comforting to believe that. But somewhere today, something shifted.
It’s not their incompetence. It’s our incompatibility.
They are not broken. We are the complicators.
We complicate things in the name of depth. We dissect feelings that were never meant to be dissected. We interrogate moments that were supposed to be lived. We try to ease life by thinking harder, and in the process, we exhaust & suffocate everyone around us. The people who come close don’t fail us. They simply can’t handle us.
And we never stop to ask what we ruin in the process.
We ruin their simple, beautiful delusions. We walk into calm lives and introduce chaos, then call ourselves superior for seeing what they don’t. They sleep peacefully inside their illusions. We lie awake, convincing ourselves that awareness is a badge of honour.
So who’s really winning?
They are calm. They are functional. They are loved.
We are honest, restless, and sleepless.
Maybe some people are meant to be alone. Not as punishment, not as tragedy, but as consequence. Today, I stop fighting that idea.
For years, I treated this as a temporary problem. Something to fix. Something therapy, awareness, or effort would eventually correct. I kept assuming that if I refined myself enough, if I learned to soften the edges, if I explained myself better, I would become livable.
That assumption was the real mistake.
Some structures are not meant for certain outcomes. Depth resists domestication. Hyper-awareness corrodes ease. People who live in constant internal clarity cannot offer the emotional softness most relationships require.
So yes, at some point, the rational response is not hope. It is acceptance.
Not bitterness. Not resentment. Just accuracy.
If I stop expecting intimacy, this part of life stops injuring me. The wound exists only as long as I keep testing it. Once I withdraw expectation, the pain loses leverage.
Giving up is not failure here. It is cost control.
There are areas of life where effort compounds. This is not one of them.
For people like me, peace does not come from being chosen. It comes from no longer needing to be. So, like Kafka, I finally accept it.
There are times when I am convinced I am unfit for any human relationship.