Stuck Voyage of 20's

Delusion

People often define delusion as a false belief — something clung to despite clear evidence to the contrary. For some, it's a clinical term, a symptom of fractured cognitive wiring. For others, it's just... a softer way to survive.

Science calls it a mental condition — the result of disrupted cognitive and social processing. But if you step away from the clinical and lean into the human, delusion becomes something else entirely: a window into how someone experiences the world when reality gets too sharp to hold.

Avantika's delusion wasn't a sickness.

It was a wish.

A quiet, desperate hope.

She believed that adulthood meant happiness — that grown-ups had it all figured out, that life magically settled into clarity after a certain age. It wasn't because she was naive. It was because she wanted to believe it. Needed to, maybe.

She ignored the cracks. She blurred out the noise. Because sometimes, the only way to move forward is to pretend you already know the way.

It wasn't madness.

It wasn't denial.

It was just a phase.

A phase called delusion — and maybe, just maybe, it was her way of chasing the light.

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