Obstacle

 obstacle /ˈɒbstəkl/

noun

a thing that blocks one's way or prevents or hinders progress.

"You are the obstacle to my interests."

I’ve seen enough, lived just enough, to know that the world has always been full of things that get in the way. Not just the big, loud ones that make it to textbooks or news headlines. But the quiet ones too. The kind that shape your path before you even know you're walking. Sometimes it’s history. Sometimes it’s just life being life. Some are born into struggle without even understanding what freedom ever felt like. Some grow up waiting at the gate while others are handed the keys. There’s no warning. No fairness. Just a long list of things people have to push through—rules, systems, expectations, the place you were born, the name you carry, the silence you grow up with.

Nature teaches it too. It doesn’t care if you’re good. It only knows if you survive. Animals eat or get eaten. Trees grow or fall. The storm doesn’t care about your plans. And somehow, through all that, things still fight to live. Even in the harshest places. A plant finds a crack. A bird builds a nest on a wire. Life doesn’t need permission. It just keeps going. But not without being pushed back. Not without losing something first.

And then there’s the kind of obstacle that doesn’t come with a name or a shape. The kind you feel inside yourself; the weight of being the reason things don’t move as they should. You think good intentions will be enough. You think listening will be enough. You think kindness will hold things together. But even when you do everything you thought was right, you can still be the one thing standing in the way. Not because you meant to. But because it just happens that way. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

I’ve tried not to be that person. I never wanted to hold anyone back. I avoided conflict. I stepped aside. I made space. I tried to be the one who understood. I thought that meant I was safe from being a burden. But the truth is, sometimes, maybe I was the obstacle. Maybe I didn’t know when to move on. Maybe I stayed too long. Maybe my version of love was too much, or too quiet, or too late. Even if my heart was in the right place, maybe my presence wasn’t. That’s the part that hurts the most; not that I failed anyone else, but that I didn’t even see it coming.

It makes me question everything I was taught. The values I held onto. The kind of person I thought I was becoming. It makes me wonder if trying not to hurt anyone is just another way of being blind to how much you already are.

So now I sit with that truth. No excuses. No defenses. Just this: I tried not to be the obstacle. But maybe I was. Maybe I still am. And maybe some lessons don’t come from reading or watching or being told. Maybe they only come when the silence grows loud, and all that’s left is the space where you once stood.