Boundary

Rahul wasn’t looking for love when he first met Rhea. She was just another girl in his group project ..smart, expressive, a little chaotic, but kind. What he didn’t expect was how effortlessly she’d start slipping into his thoughts.

It began with the small things. The way she laughed more at his jokes than others. The way she’d text late into the night, sharing random thoughts, sometimes even personal stories. How her eyes seemed to search for him in crowded rooms, how she once said, “I feel safe around you.”

Hints. Rahul started collecting them like fragile artifacts.

Every smile, every message, every slight touch on his shoulder felt like a thread being woven into something deeper. He believed she was slowly, silently choosing him.

Weeks turned into months, and though nothing concrete ever happened, Rahul’s heart was already convinced.

But then, cracks began to show.

One evening, while hanging out with mutual friends, he saw her eyes light up in a way he had never seen when a guy named Rohan walked in. The way she leaned into his whispers, the way her tone changed around him, was different. Not just friendly, but familiar. Intimate.

That night, Rahul didn’t sleep. He revisited every moment, every hint. His chest felt like it was collapsing under the weight of his own illusion. Was she just being kind all along? Was I blind to the truth?

A few days later, he overheard a friend mention Rhea and Rohan had been dating for a while quietly, away from the group.

It broke him.

Not because Rhea chose someone else, but because he realized he had built a whole story in his mind based on interpretations not facts. His mind had painted a love story that never existed.

For days, he avoided people. Then, one evening, scrolling through random posts, he stumbled upon an article titled “Boundary”.

It was about how the human brain decodes hints based on what it wants to see. How we project our desires onto people. How we mistake kindness for intimacy when we’re lonely. And how we must set emotional boundaries not just with others, but with our own interpretations.

He read it twice. Then a third time.

Something inside him shifted.

It wasn’t instant healing, but it was a start. Rahul stopped blaming Rhea. She never promised him anything. It was he who mistook signals, who filled in the gaps with hope rather than clarity.

Over the next few weeks, he started building a new version of himself. One who asks, one who observes with distance, one who sets emotional boundaries before drowning in meaning.

Because he finally understood:

Perception is not always truth. And boundaries are what protect us from our own beautiful, dangerous illusions.