Someday I Want to Tell the Truth About How I Survived, but For Now I Only Count the Raindrops in My Sleeves

Lately my days feel like walking through a temple before sunrise; the kind of quiet that doesn’t soothe, but forces me to hear everything I’ve been trying to ignore. I count expenses, hopes, and deadlines like prayer beads, unsure which one I’m actually praying to. My wallet sighs, my heart persists, and somewhere in the middle I work to fund my brother’s future even when my own feels blurred. I keep going, not because I’m strong, but because love has a way of insisting—the cracked bowl still holding water because it must, not because it’s unbroken.

Being held by my lover feels like a harbor I rarely admit I need. There are nights when my thoughts scatter like birds and the body speaks louder than the heart, like a bonfire pretending to be candlelight. I sometimes wonder what it means when comfort and longing coexist so fiercely—when rest and desire circle each other like two hands of the same clock. Maybe that is simply the human condition: the soul asking for peace while the skin aches for fire, both real, both honest, neither wrong.

Work echoes in the back of my mind like a coastline I can see but can’t swim to. I push myself because I’ve been told to be capable, resilient, tireless; as if effort should always turn into achievement. But the harder I try, the farther the horizon stretches, and it’s hard not to notice how others seem to sail while I stay learning to stay afloat. On those days, shoshin slips quietly into my thoughts—that the beginner isn’t failing, only learning—yet even wisdom feels small compared to the ache of wanting to be finally enough.

I miss my friends in a way that feels like longing for a past life. I miss Niar’s presence—not her words, not her gestures—just the way her existence calmed mine. Kak Ia lives on a different orbit now, anchored by the tiny gravity of Xylo, and somehow that distance feels tender rather than cruel. I think about Adit and Edo too, and how my heart shrinks at the idea of meeting them while I still feel unfinished, still becoming. But maybe mono no aware has been whispering all this time; that missing people isn’t proof of emptiness, but proof that something once bloomed.

Sometimes it feels like adulthood is a long apprenticeship in contradiction: loving someone while fearing failure, craving touch while doubting yourself, missing people while hiding from them, giving your best while wondering why it isn’t enough. On those days I try to remember ikigai not as a grand revelation, but as a quiet thread: maybe in the shape of my brother’s dreams, a single message from someone I love, or a stubborn hope that tomorrow might sting a little less. And even if it doesn’t, I want to keep showing up for my own life.

I don’t know what 2026 will bring. It waits ahead like a doorway made of both light and shadow, asking nothing, promising nothing, daring me to step through anyway. I’m excited, frightened, and strangely grateful; because fear only exists where hope is still alive. And if the year breaks me again, I want to remember kintsugi not as a philosophy, but as a quiet truth: that if I shatter, I will not vanish. I will gather myself patiently, and when I’m ready, I will trace the seams with gold; not to pretend I was never broken, but to honor the fact that I survived.

Nov 29, 2025