Ari Ven is a fictional character, but her story echoes the silent battles so many people fight every day.

Battles with family pressure, poverty, trauma, mental exhaustion, spiritual longing, and the suffocating expectation to survive without ever being allowed to simply breathe.

Was Ari selfish? That’s a question worth asking, but not to condemn her.

It’s easy to call someone selfish when they choose to protect their peace, when they step away from what hurts them even if others don’t understand. Ari wasn’t selfish. She was wounded.

She was tired. She was trying to carry burdens no 25-year-old should ever bear alone. And in the end, she didn’t abandon the world, she simply stopped letting it destroy her.

Her desire to die wasn’t born from hatred or drama, but from exhaustion.

From hearing the words;

“you’re not enough” in too many voices, for too many years.

But what makes Ari's story powerful isn’t that she wanted to give up, it's that she didn’t.

That even when her body was drowning in silence, her spirit still searched for light.

She didn’t escape. She chose to heal. She found a reason; faith, to live, not for others’ approval. But for something far greater: truth, peace, and the quiet, comforting knowledge that she is never truly alone.

For anyone reading this who has felt like Ari; who has cried quietly in crowded rooms, who has written things they were too scared to say aloud, who has hated the mirror not for how they look but for how tired their soul feels; I want you to know: your story matters.

You are not selfish for feeling lost. You are not weak for needing rest. And you are not alone in the darkness.

Thank you for walking with Ari Ven. This was never just her story. It might be yours too.

—With love,

Yaoyao🍊