The Dream Scholarships Took Away

“Dreams are not meant to be affordable. That’s what makes them dreams. But somewhere along the way, life teaches you to check the price tag first.”

I don’t know how to start this, except by saying—I’m tired.

Not just tired in the “I need rest” kind of way, but in the way only someone who’s been carrying an invisible dream for too long will understand. The kind of tired that lives in your bones, in your voice, in your silences.

Seven years ago, I fell in love with a dream.
A dream stitched together with pages from Brontë, echoes of Shakespeare’s plays, the misty mysteries of Sherlock Holmes, and the magic of Platform 9¾.
A dream that whispered to me in every book I read: Come find me in the UK.

I’m from India.
I come from a middle-class family, where dreams are always balanced against EMI sheets, grocery lists, and relatives reminding you to be practical.

But still—I dreamed.

I didn’t have money. I didn’t have legacy. I didn’t have a godfather to open doors for me.

What I did have was hunger. Fire. A purpose so sharp it kept me awake at night.
So I worked. And I worked. And I worked.

While my friends laughed through college events, I worked shifts to save money.
While they travelled on vacations, I spent on IELTS, on application fees, on Statement of Purpose drafts that I rewrote fifty times, in the hope that maybe—just maybe—one day I would be able to afford a flight ticket. 

I missed college fests, weekend trips, birthdays, and carefree afternoons. While my friends enjoyed their freedom, I chased stability, discipline, and a faraway dream. I don’t blame them. They weren’t carrying the weight of a world they wanted to build from scratch.

I didn’t just study. I excelled. I topped my university. Every single exam, every project—done with a single thought in mind: If I slip, I may lose my only ticket out.

 While they explored freedom, I learned sacrifice.

“Hope was my currency. And I spent it everywhere.”

I told myself—If I just work hard enough, I’ll make it.

I graduated with the highest marks in my college.
I pushed through burnout and breakdowns.
I became a version of myself that scholarship applications demanded.

You want leadership? I’ll lead.

You want impact? I’ll create it.

You want clarity of vision for the next ten years of my life? I’ll write it down, even if I’m still figuring out how to finish research papers some nights.

Scholarships: The golden door to the dream. The ones like Chevening, Commonwealth—they were the only way someone like me could afford to study abroad. And so I molded myself.

They wanted future leaders, so I became one in my resume.

They wanted global citizens with strong networks, so I built bridges wherever I could.

They wanted volunteers, social workers, visionaries—I became all three. 

And somewhere in all of this… I forgot to be myself.

But what no one tells you about these prestigious scholarships is this:
You don’t just apply with documents.
You apply with your life.

And each time they say no, they aren’t just rejecting your paperwork.
They are tearing pages from the story you’ve been writing in your heart for years.

“The first time I didn’t get it, I told myself, ‘It’s okay. It’s just a warm-up.’
The second time, I said, ‘Maybe I’ll do better next year.’
The third time, I went quiet. Because that hope? It wasn’t hope anymore. It was a bruise.”

Three years.
Three years of pouring everything I had into this dream.
Three years of dragging professors for Letters of Recommendation—first with excitement, then with embarrassment, because how many times can you keep asking before even they begin to pity you?

And with that rejection came a silence so loud, it filled every corner of my heart. All the sacrifices I made—the nights I worked after shifts, the missed opportunities, the savings I scraped together—everything felt like it vanished in one email.

Nobody talks about what it’s like to tell your professors you didn’t make it again, and yet you need them to write you another Letter of Recommendation. No one tells you how painful it is to hear the hesitation in their voice. How each year, it feels like you’re burdening them with a dream that won’t let go. How even they start to ask—“You’re still trying?”

Yes. I was still trying. Because it wasn’t just a dream anymore—it was everything I was living for.

But now I’m here. Empty.

And this time… it broke me.

Not loudly. Not in some cinematic way. But quietly.

The kind of breaking where you’re walking home and suddenly your chest tightens.
The kind where you smile at people while feeling like your lungs are drowning.
The kind where you lie awake, staring at the ceiling, trying not to cry because you’ve cried enough already—and still the tears find their way.

“No one claps for the ones who almost made it.
No one writes stories about the ones who had to let go.”

And so here I am, writing this—because I don’t want to carry this grief in silence anymore.

Because no one talks about the millions of students like me.
The ones who did everything right—but weren’t the ‘right fit.’
The ones whose resumes weren’t glamorous enough.
The ones who didn’t have fancy networks or foreign degrees, but had mountains moved by willpower alone.

What about us?

Do we not deserve to be in those libraries in Oxford, those classrooms in Edinburgh, those writing circles in London?

Do we not deserve to be in the very lands that inspired the dreams we grew up on?

“They say hope is the strongest thing a human can have. They don’t tell you it’s also the one that can break you the hardest.”

I’ve never envied people who got the scholarships. They deserved it. Truly. But I do ask—what about the rest of us?

What about the ones who worked just as hard? Who didn’t have glowing resumes filled with exotic internships and polished networks, but had grit, endurance, and stories soaked in struggle?

Why must our dreams be judged by the yardstick of perfection, instead of perseverance?

Sometimes I wonder… if they knew the entire story—of how we saved for years, worked double shifts, gave up our youth for a better future—maybe they’d see our potential too.

But dreams don’t come with footnotes. Only numbers. And when you don’t fit the profile, they close the book on you before the story even begins.

“What happens when the dream ends, but the heart doesn’t know how to stop dreaming?”

I didn’t get the scholarship. Again.

This time, there was no anger. Just a strange quiet.

The kind that wraps around you when you’ve cried every tear you had. The kind that sits heavy on your chest, even when you’re surrounded by people who care.

I wanted to scream, but what do you scream at? Fate? Policy? Privilege? God?

I wanted someone to tell me—“It’s okay, you tried your best.” But deep down I knew I didn’t just try. I built my life around this. Every choice I made, every sacrifice, every late night and early morning was a step toward that one dream.

And now that it’s gone, I feel like I’ve lost a part of myself.
The version of me who held on through all the odds… she’s tired. Bruised. And barely hanging on.

And it hurts in ways I can’t even name.

“It’s like asking Hermione to live without books. Asking a bird to forget how to fly. Asking a dreamer to just… stop.”

The UK wasn’t just a place. It was a promise.
A promise I made to the little girl who stayed up reading Brontë under the blanket with a flashlight.
A promise to the teenager who held her tears back after her work ended at 2 a.m.
A promise to myself—that one day, I’d be surrounded by the world I once only read about.

But now, reality has settled in like a storm that refuses to pass.

No one tells you how to let go of something that lived in your heart for seven years.

“I’m not jealous of the ones who made it. I’m just grieving the version of me that never got to live.”

They say—“Why don’t you take a loan?”

But how do you explain what it means to grow up with economic barriers?

How do you explain the guilt of even imagining putting your parents through more financial strain?

How do you explain that you’ve already watched them skip their own dreams for yours?

We aren’t afraid of hard work. We’re afraid of making our parents pay for our dreams.

How do you ask them to do it again?

You don’t.

So instead, you say, “It’s okay. I’ll figure something else out.”

And just like that, a seven-year-old dream is buried without a funeral.

“There are dreams you dream while sleeping.
And there are dreams you live wide awake.
Mine was the latter.
Which is why its death hurts like real grief.”

“And then comes the worst part—not sadness, not rage, not grief… but the quiet decision to dream smaller next time.”

That’s what this loss has done to me.
It’s made me believe I must earn the right to dream.

And now?

Now I pick smaller dreams.
Dreams that fit into my bank account.
Dreams that don’t demand so much from me.
Dreams that are easier to abandon if they betray me.

Because I don’t think I have it in me to break again like this.

And that realization… that’s the real heartbreak.

You watch the world through a glass wall—close enough to see it, never enough to touch it. And then you return to your tiny corner of reality, pretending it’s enough.

I tell myself I’ll try something else. Maybe a different path, a different country, a different plan.

But the truth?
I’m tired.
Tired of hoping. Tired of losing. Tired of pretending I’m fine when I’m not.

I don’t want a Plan B. I never did. I wanted this.
And now, I don’t know who I am without it.

You see, when you lose a dream that big—it doesn’t just hurt. It alters your DNA.
It changes the way you see the world.
It makes you flinch at hope.
It teaches you to calculate pain before pursuing desire.

It teaches you not to want too much.

“If I could ask the universe one question, it would be this:
Why give us the kind of dreams we can’t afford to chase?”

People will see me today and think I’m fine.

People around me won’t understand.

They’ll see my job, my apartment, my day-to-day smile and think I’m doing okay.
But they won’t know that every time someone mentions studying abroad, something inside me breaks a little.

They won’t know that when I say I don’t want to do a master’s anymore—it’s not because I lost interest.
It’s because I lost faith.

But what they won’t see is the ghost of a writer who once wanted to walk through the streets of London with a notebook and a dream.
They won’t see the empty shelf I left for books I never got to study.
They won’t see the visa forms I saved and the folders titled “UK Dream 2021. 2022. 2023.”

They won’t see the quiet heartbreak that lives in my bones now.

And most of all, they won’t know that every time I see someone else living the life I dreamed of—I feel happy for them, but I also feel like a part of me just quietly… fades.

And one day, when I stop talking about my dream altogether, they’ll assume I outgrew it.

But the truth is—I just ran out of strength.

“I poured years into a dream. Time. Money. Blood. Sleep. Laughter. Friendships. All of it. And in the end, I got nothing—except a heavy heart and a broken spirit.”

“And now what? You start over. You settle. You pick new dreams—ones that don’t hurt so much to lose.”

I don’t know where to go from here.

I know how to rebuild, I’ve done it before.
But it’s hard to start again when your heart is still stuck in the ruins.

They say time heals. Maybe it does.
But right now, it’s just passing—slowly, painfully, without meaning.

I’m trying to find purpose again. Trying to write again. Trying to remember who I was before this dream consumed me.

And maybe, just maybe… one day I’ll find beauty in this grief.
Maybe someone else will read this and feel less alone.
Maybe someone out there is holding on by a thread too—and this post will be the comfort they didn’t know they needed.

If that’s the case, then maybe it wasn’t all for nothing.

Maybe this, too, is part of my story.

“Sometimes, life doesn’t give you closure. It just gives you quiet.”

If you’ve ever lost a dream like this, I want you to know—you’re not alone.

You’re not weak for crying.
You’re not dramatic for grieving.
You’re not a failure for not fitting into someone else’s idea of “ideal.”

You were enough.
You are enough.

And I don’t know if I’ll ever dream that big again.
But if I do—it won’t be for scholarships.
It won’t be for approval.
It won’t be to prove anything to anyone.

It’ll be for the girl I used to be.
The girl who believed that books could build a life, and that words could take her across oceans.

If nothing else, I’ll write her story.

And maybe that’s where the healing begins.

“And even if I never get there, I hope one day someone like me does. Because dreams like these? They deserve to come true.”

 

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