I’ve always kept a journal to jot down my experiences each year. It’s a way for me to reflect on the past year and see if I’ve truly lived it to the fullest, and if there’s room for improvement. 

I’ve started 2025 touching the snow in a place I only see in calendars or desktop wallpaper. I have never thought I’d be able to walk into that place frozen in a fairytale. This set the mood of how I wanted my year would be.

I started falling back in love with photography. A hobby that was an extension of my habit of observing people and scenes—grateful for the beauty in my surroundings and taking steps to preserve it, so that my feeble memory can never forget it.

This year I have become my largest—not because of muscle mass—but because of irresponsible choices and self-neglect. Those late-night fast food cravings and cozy comforter hugs during winter definitely played a part in me to weigh more than 100kg. It served as a wake-up call, prompting me to shed what was holding me back and take control of my life. I’ve lost over 20 kilograms of this weight before the year ends, and I feel much better now. I have almost forgotten how good it felt like to wear perfectly fitting clothes. 

What I am most proud of that I have managed to do this year is to genuinely connect with people. Be vulnerable to them and with them. To be able to express my thoughts and my emotions and to be understood in return. It helped me process and understand my old traumas. Where such thinking and behaviour originated and how I can healthily let go of them. By guarding my heart excessively, I inadvertently neglected and buried myself. I was lucky there are people who can see past the dirt and nurture the seed of kindness I have long forgotten.

I have said goodbyes to some and concluded some relationships—but this time, with no resentment and a heavy feeling of being left. I’ve come to terms with the fact that our time together on this journey has come to an end. While it’s uncertain if I’ll ever cross paths with these people again, I’m hopeful that fate may allow for such a possibility in the future. I’ve discovered solace in saying “Talk to you later” instead of “Goodbye” because the former conveys more hope than sadness in the language of farewells.

However, this doesn’t imply that I’ve never appreciated those who remain by my side. The immense love and gratitude I feel for these people. As lives move on and being a bear witness of them all—sometimes it’s just comforting to find people who do not let you drown in the chaos and be left in memory. You have been walking with me without me noticing—you are those souls who reminded me that life is always worth living. 

I’ve witnessed sunsets in various locations, each displaying a unique palette of colors and evoking distinct emotions. Despite these differences, I’m continually astounded by the way each sunset consistently calms and soothes me. A gentle reminder that a day has passed and I’m still breathing. And the accumulation of those days has come at the end of this year. 

2025 brought me emotional stability. 

I am more grateful. 

I am at peace. 

I promised myself that I would go back to reading (other than clinical notes and ECG) to stimulate my mental processes and get back to writing. It’s almost my birthday, and another year has passed— a statement I kept on saying to myself each year— almost forgetting that life can instantly end.

I finished reading The Year of Magical Thinking, forgetting why it was saved on my must-read list. The whimsicality of the title suggested otherwise, as it was about the sureness of death and how its expected arrival still shocks us to the core. It’s about how grief presents itself in many ways we can try to understand and how it affects our understanding of our past, our perspective of the present, and how we view the future.

Would you feel loss if you don’t even realise what you have? Would you feel sad if it was already your default? And if you do feel more sad, would you change your usual ways to find comfort or carry on with the burden not too unfamiliar to begin with? I may have been lucky (or unlucky) not to experience one of the things that makes us human, but last year reminded me how I could still have so much to lose and hence, got curious about how much of my mental and emotional fortitude— if there is any— can handle such a breakthrough of life that is death.

Finishing this book gave me a sense of gratefulness that I have lived long enough— that I haven’t died yet or I haven’t lost anyone significant yet. It humbled me that being aware of the things I probably would feel and understand about loss won’t make me immune to the pull of grief. A realisation too significant considering that I am entering an era where death will be more common no matter how hard I tried to prevent it from coming to others. 

You know those moments when you opted to get out of the bed with the hopes of Hypnos visiting you later through midnight, you prepare yourself a warm cup of tea made with half a cup of milk and some empty feeling of oblivion. You wonder along the quiet staircase and a dark corridor why some of your clientele would irrationally ask a cup of tea in the middle of the night.

You sip through the warmth as you scroll through recorded snippets of other people’s lives, you’d soon realise how living seemed to be a lonesome struggle to find answers and moments of bliss to find meaning existent but empty-hanging. And on a second-look, you’d find yourself to be one of the many who shares the same dilemma but colored differently; making living not so lonesome at all.

You have that glimpse of reassurance coming out of nowhere, the kind that cannot be easily given by anyone, not even yourself. You embrace the moment to fill the empty feeling within with warmth; and that sometimes things would eventually make sense, and that sometimes they don’t. So they’re just there to give your journey some color and flavor to make it your own unique story to tell.

And hopefully, you’d understand why asking for a cup of tea out in the dark maybe the most rational thing for some to clear their thoughts. As it did to yours.

Ang hirap na ipilit pang ilaban kung di naman akma.
Pero di naman malalaman na akma kung di ipipilit na ilaban.
Minsan di mo rin alam kung saan ka lulugar.
Kung sa sarili mong ngang isip, ang bilis mong maligaw.
Tatakbo ng matulin patungong alapaap
Sa pagtigil ay mahuhulog palayo sa ulap
Magpapalutang-lutang sa hangin na takot ang dala
Pero duwag bang maituturing kung lumalaban kahit paubos na?
Wala ng dahilan sa paglingon sa nakaraan
Pero bakit ang hirap makita ng kinabukasan
Mauga lang ng onti, ang bilis ng maligaw
Kung kelangan kumapit, bakit naiisip bibitaw?
Pag may bagong paparating, natural lang daw matakot
Pero pano lalaban sa takot, kung wala ng tapang na mahugot

Ang hirap maglakbay sa buhay.
Pero mas pipiliin ko to kesa tumambay sa hukay.

I wonder if a cloud also gets tired with its inescapable routine.
The continuous carrying of precipitating vapors, to uncontrolled outbursts.
I wonder if it also blames itself for raining someone else’s parade.
Or shading that bright ball of sunshine with its gloom.
I wonder if it also gets tired looking for silver linings.
Or question its ability to carry light and rainbows.
Did it ever tried moving against the blow of the wind?
Did it ever felt lonely floating alone?

I guess answers would never matter
At one point, everything would end.
When the cloud finally escapes its routine
And stops carrying unnecessary weight
There will be no outbursts that will follow
Happiness would shine in everyone’s parade
No more silver linings to look for
No more carried rainbows nor light shining through
All will disappear with the change of season
With the hopes of becoming one with the wind.

“If we’re both single in our forties, let’s connive and grow old together.”

I’ve heard that proposition before. Quite a few times from different people. Most of them really had a special place in my heart. I’m not denying the slight pain that it was uttered because of the circumstances not going well with what we had. There’s also the annoyance that we need to wait for years after just to see if we could be together. That statement has been said repeatedly that I’m starting to believe that it’s a lyrics plucked out from a swiftie unreleased album.

But the hopeless romantic me is breathing. That either one or both of us could no longer be single in our forties. Or only one of us would even reach that age. Or even if we did connive, we may have a short span of life left to spend together. Or only one of us gets old.

The uncertainty of the future could shake the formidable promise written under this phrase. But comes with uncertainty is the gift of hope. That we may see ourselves being held by the one who loves us in our wrinkly smiles and gray hair glory.

I would also root for that.

Even if it means forgetting the existence of this proposition.

With some I don’t want to grow apart.

When this dread knocks upon my door, I can’t seem to stop myself from welcoming it and embracing it like an old friend. I tried to bask myself with its presence, continuously listening to its songs of sorrow, suffering and probably death.

And during this time, my mind would start finding its way back to you for you seem have mastered how to stay afloat in the ocean of misery brought about by our own minds. I wonder how you’d look like staring at our old friend when it comes looming in to your living room. I wonder how many cups of coffee would you consume as your fingers fiddle with your cat that seldom asked for affection. I wonder where your mind goes to escape the repetitive wails brought by this visitor.

For some unknown reason, thinking about you brings me comfort out of lust and romance. I still look up to you and your dead demeanor towards grief, pain and sadness. Like you’ve decided to fight fire with the same fire. It makes these kind of moments easier to ignore knowing that I wasn’t the only one who has cold soul that’s being followed around by shadows. And how we’ve kept them waiting before as we listened to jazz and bathe in the moonlight was still imprinted on my mind.

Funny that a brief idea of you and with you was enough for an escape. And knowing that you already have someone else to fight with pulls me back to the realization that I still have a lot of courage to muster. Hoping that one day, I won’t need you or your demeanor to overcome this.

Someday, I could fight this poison with a poison.
I could fight this grief with hope.