As far as I can remember, I've always loved pink. You could probably point at fifty different things in m house, and I wouldn't be surprised if forty nine of them were pink. Pink flowers, pink bottles, pink cushions, pink sofa, pink little things I bought simply because they made me happy. I've never really needed a reason to love a color. It has always felt like home.

But lately, it's been Terracotta.

Perhaps because I remember the day you stood next to me again, wearing terracotta. After all those days of distance, all those conversations that had to travel through a screen, there you were. I remember looking at you and suddenly forgetting every thought I'd ever rehearsed. I had imagined seeing you again, had probably prepared a hundred different things to say, but the moment you were standing in front of me, my mind went completely quiet.

Then you looked into my eyes, your hand resting around my waist, and I remember thinking that perhaps distance was a rather cruel invention. How could someone feel so far away for so long and then, in a matter of seconds, feel so impossibly familiar? I wanted to stay in that moment a little longer. I wanted to memorize the way you looked at me, the warmth of your hand, the sound of your voice without a telephone between us. I wanted to be there, not thinking about when we would have to leave or how long it would be before I saw you again.

I think I like you in ways that are embarrassingly ordinary. I like hearing about your day. I like knowing what you're thinking, what you've been doing, whether you've eaten. I like the little interruptions, the unexpected calls, the conversations that have no particular destination. I like having someone to tell things to, even when those things are completely unimportant. Especially then, perhaps. Because sometimes I don't need a conversation. I just want you to be part of my day.

I like being called woman by you. Not in any grand, defined sense of the word. Just the way you call me that, almost casually, as though it is the most natural thing in the world. I wonder whether the next time someone calls out "woman", I'll still turn my head, hoping it's you. Or whether I'll eventually learn not to look for you in every familiar sound.

I don't particularly want to learn that.

I don't want to get used to not hearing from you. I don't want to stop having little things to tell you. I don't want to become someone who knows how your voice sounds only because she remembers it. I don't want to look at my phone and have to remind myself that I shouldn't be expecting your name to appear. And I don't want to pretend that the thought of all this becoming something that happened once doesn't hurt.

I have heard you, even when I haven't quite known what to do with what you've said. I don't want to make you responsible for feelings you never asked me to have. But God, I wish knowing all of that made wanting you any easier.

Because I do want you. Not just the person who has been there through the difficult days. I want the person who exists outside of all this, too. I want to know what a completely ordinary Tuesday looks like with you in it. I want to hear your stories when there is nothing urgent to discuss. I want to see you again in another shirt, in another city, on another day that doesn't have to mean anything special. I want more memories that don't have to be explained by the circumstances that brought us together.

And sometimes I think about that Friday morning. How you woke me from a really deep sleep, and how, for a little while, I remembered what it felt like to sleep peacefully beside someone. How the morning had barely begun before it was already asking you to leave. I wonder what it would have felt like if you hadn't needed to go. If I could have turned towards you, still half asleep, and found you there without the quiet arithmetic of how many minutes we had left. If we could have stayed in bed a little longer, talking about absolutely nothing, letting the sunlight move across the room without treating it like a reminder that time was running out.

I wonder what a Friday morning would look like if we lived in the same city. If you were only fifteen minutes away instead of a flight, a border, and a thousand things that need arranging. Perhaps you would come over with your hair still messy from sleep, and you would complain that I was taking too long to get ready. Perhaps we'd stand in your kitchen brewing coffee together, arguing about how much water to pour, waiting for the kettle to finish while the rest of the world went about its business. I would make you smell the beans before grinding them. You would probably laugh at how seriously I take something as simple as a cup of coffee. And perhaps, somewhere between the first pour and the last, I'd look at you and realize that this was all I had wanted. Not an extraordinary life. Just an ordinary morning that didn't end with somebody having to leave.

Maybe we'd have our own routines. Your glasses lying somewhere among my pink little things. Two cups drying beside the sink. A familiar pair of shoes by the door. Maybe we'd spend an entire afternoon doing separate things in the same room, and I'd find myself looking up every now and then simply because I could. Because you were there. Because there was no screen, no countdown, no reason to memorize the moment before it disappeared.

And God, I wish I knew what that kind of ordinary would feel like with you.

Maybe that's too much to want. Maybe it's simply not something you can give me. But I don't think I can make myself want less just because less would be easier to carry.

And perhaps that's what frightens me most. Not knowing what happens next. Not knowing whether, once everything settles, there will still be a little space for me in your life. I don't want to be brave about losing you. I don't want to practice letting you go before you've even left. I don't want to turn every good moment into something I must remember carefully because it might be the last.

I want another morning. Another call. Another ridiculous conversation. Another chance to see that terracotta shirt and forget, all over again, what I was supposed to say. Another moment with your hands around my waist, pulling me closer, because Goddammit, I love the way you look at me. I love being looked at by you. And perhaps that's a rather dangerous thing to admit, but I don't think I've ever wanted to be anywhere else quite as much as I wanted to be there, with you.

I want to be able to ask you to stay. I do want you to stay. Not because I expect you to promise me anything, or because I haven't understood what you've told me. I just wish wanting someone could be enough to keep a little place for them in your life. I wish I didn't have to think so carefully about whether I'm allowed to miss you, whether I can call you, whether I can still tell you about the smallest things. I wish I could simply want you without having to prepare myself for the possibility of not having you.

And perhaps, if I were a little less afraid, I would tell you that I don't want a grand love story. I don't need every morning to be beautiful, every conversation to be meaningful, every moment to feel like something worth writing about. I would take the boring days, the sleepy Fridays, the coffee gone cold because we got distracted talking. I would take fifteen minutes of traffic to see you instead of counting down the days until another flight. I would take the comfort of knowing that, at the end of an entirely unremarkable day, I could still find you somewhere close.

I don't know if I do, or maybe I don't want to, and maybe it's not true.

But I think I love you.

Surabaya,

12 November 2026

It has been a thousand days since that one morning in August 2023.

Not that I counted each one deliberately, but grief has its own way of keeping time. It marks itself quietly, in anniversaries you try not to anticipate, in ordinary days that suddenly feel heavier for no clear reason, in moments that arrive and leave without the people who once held them with you.

A thousand days since my mother left.

And before that, nine months earlier, my father left too. On my birthday. A day that used to belong to me, that now carries something else entirely. It is strange how a single date can hold both celebration and loss, how something that once felt like a beginning can also become a reminder of an ending.

Back then, I kept asking a question I didn’t know how to answer. How much of me did my mother take with her when she died?

It felt like everything. Like something essential had been pulled out of me, something I couldn’t name but could feel in every breath, in every silence, in every moment that reminded me she was no longer here. I was afraid that I would spend the rest of my life as a version of myself that was incomplete.

A thousand days later, I think I understand it differently.

She didn’t take parts of me with her. She left parts of herself in me. In the way I think without realizing it, in the way I carry myself through difficult days, in the quiet strength I didn’t know I had until I had no choice but to find it. There are moments when I hear my own voice and it sounds like hers, moments when I make decisions and feel, somewhere deep inside, that she would have understood.

And my father, too, in ways I didn’t notice before. In the way I endure things I never thought I could, in the way I keep going even when I don’t fully know how. They are both here, just not in the way I once knew them.

And still, that doesn’t mean it stopped hurting.

Grief doesn’t disappear. It changes shape. It learns how to exist beside your life instead of overtaking it. It becomes quieter, more patient, but it never really leaves. It waits in the small spaces, in good news that feels incomplete, in the instinct to reach for your phone and realizing, again and again, that there is no one on the other end.

I still live in their house. The one they built, piece by piece, through years of work I only began to understand after they were gone. The walls hold more than just structure. They hold effort, sacrifice, everything they did so I could have a life that felt safe. People tell me not to sell it. I always nod, say yes, because it sounds like the right answer. But the truth is, I don’t think I could ever let it go. I would rather work endlessly just to be able to stay. Because this is not just a house. It is what they built for me, and what I am still trying to hold onto.

And yet, at the same time, it feels unbearably empty.

They lived here long before I existed. I grew up within these walls, with them, in a space that was sometimes loud, sometimes quiet, sometimes chaotic, sometimes calm, but always safe. Now, when I walk through it, I still see them. My father sitting at the dining table, reading. My mother somewhere nearby, the sound of the television filling the background. It is all still there, just... without them. And that is the part no one really understands.

People wonder why I travel so much, how I manage it, how I can afford to keep moving from place to place. What they don’t see is that I am working for it, yes, but I am also running from something I don’t know how to sit with for too long.

Because staying means coming back to that silence.

To a home that still holds everything, but feels like it’s missing the only things that made it whole.

There are still moments when something happens and my first thought is them. I still want to tell my mother everything. I still want to hear my father’s voice exist somewhere in the background of my life. And then there is that pause, that quiet understanding that settles in before I can even question it.

And I carry it alone.

People say you get used to it. I don’t think that’s true. You don’t get used to losing people like that. You learn how to live with it. You learn how to hold joy and grief in the same moment, how to continue even when something in you knows that things will never feel the same again. The world continues. That was one of the hardest things to accept in the beginning. Watching everything move as if nothing had happened, as if my life hadn’t just been split into a before and after. It felt isolating. It felt unfair. It felt like I had been left behind in a place no one else could see. But slowly, without noticing it happening, I found my way back into it.

Not as the same person, but as someone reshaped by loss, by love, by everything they gave me before they left. Because in the end, what remains is not just the absence. It is the presence they left behind. In the way I love. In the way I continue. In the way I am still here, even on days when I don’t fully understand how I made it through.

A thousand days later, I am not the same person.

But I am still their daughter.

And maybe that is what stayed.

20 May 2026

The kind that arrives quietly, without asking to be noticed. Morning slips in through the blind, carrying a softness that lingers on her skin. The air feels lighter, touched by the slow movement of wind through half-open windows, by the warmth of a sun that is in no hurry to rise too high, too fast.

She wakes into it gently, without alarms, without urgency, only the distant hum of the city stretching itself awake somewhere beyond her walls. The faint rustle of leaves, the sound of someone passing by, life continuing but softened, as if everything has agreed, just for today, to slow down. The room holds onto the scent of clean linen, fresh and familiar, grounding in a way that does not need to be explained.

Coffee follows, as it always does. A careful pour, water meeting ground in a slow bloom, releasing something warm and bright into the air. Sometimes Bali Kintamani, sometimes Aceh Gayo, light and a little citrusy, almost playful. On quieter mornings, a simple drip bag is enough, something easy, something gentle. It is never just coffee. It is the way she begins.

She moves through the morning without needing to name it. Watering the plants as they lean toward the light, feeding the fish as they gather in quiet familiarity, tending to small things that do not ask for much but give something back in their own quiet way. Somewhere nearby, a voice calls out, a neighbor, an aunty with something small to say, and for a moment, words are exchanged lightly, carried through the morning air, nothing important, and yet, somehow, it is.

The hours pass without asking to be filled. There might be something in the kitchen, something simple, its warmth slowly settling into the room. Music plays somewhere in the background, soft enough to blur into the day. Nothing feels rushed, nothing feels missing.

Later, she steps outside, just for a while. The sun rests more fully now, warm against her shoulders, the streets moving but without urgency. She chooses what she feels like eating, letting her hands linger over things she does not need. Sometimes she brings home flowers, red lilies, something alive that will open quietly over the next few days, changing the room without asking for attention.

Back inside, the space shifts again. A tablecloth replaced, a corner rearranged, light falling differently, making everything feel slightly new. These are the kinds of changes no one else would notice, but she does, and that is enough. There is a rhythm to it, carried not by time, but by feeling, a quiet understanding of how she wants to spend her hours.

For the past few months, her weekends have belonged to movement. Airports, schedules, the constant pull of somewhere else. A different kind of life, one that leaves little space for stillness to stay. And so when a Sunday like this finds her, she lets it. She stays, letting the afternoon soften into evening, watching the light fade slowly across the walls, turning everything golden before it disappears.

At the end of it, she returns to herself once more. A face mask cooling against her skin, a glass of wine catching the last of the light, the room quiet again, holding the day gently as if nothing needed to be more than it was.

It’s just another Sunday in her city.

And yet, in the softness of air, in the warmth of sun, in the quiet presence of everything she has touched and tended to, it feels like something whole.

5 May 2026

Turning thirty doesn't feel the way I thought it would.

There is no grand arrival. No sudden clarity. No moment where everything finally makes sense. Instead, it feels quieter than expected. Slower. A little unfinished, and yet, strangely full.

Lately, I’ve been sitting with this quiet sense of gratitude for being here, in this exact phase of life where things are still uncertain, but no longer unsettling in the same way. There is still chaos. Of course there is. But it feels softer now. More familiar. Like something I’ve learned to live alongside instead of something I need to escape.

The questions are still there. Where am I going. What am I doing. Who am I becoming.

But they don’t carry the same weight anymore.

Something shifts underneath all of it. You begin to feel more at home within yourself. Not because you have everything figured out, but because you stop expecting that you should.

Some time ago, I realized that the phrase “time is money” was never really about money. It is about time itself. The older we get, the more we understand how valuable it is. You start choosing differently. You would rather stay in your bed, in your own space, than go out and force conversations that don’t feel real. You no longer have the energy to fake smiles for people who only remember you when it is convenient. And for the first time, that choice does not feel like missing out. It feels like protecting something important.

Friendship still matters. Deeply. But your relationship with solitude changes too.

Being alone is no longer something to fix. It becomes something to return to. A place where you can breathe without performing, where you can exist without explaining yourself, where nothing is required of you except being there.

Something about the way you move through life begins to change. You grow more comfortable in what you do. Things start to fall into place quietly, without needing to be announced. You realize there is less to explain about yourself, because you already know who you are. And without even noticing, you stop struggling against life the way you used to. The constant urgency softens. Not everything feels like it has to happen all at once. You start noticing where your time and energy are going, and you become more careful with both.

And when life happens, as it always does, you don’t react the same way anymore. You pause. You sit with it. You try to understand it before letting it pull you in.

It does not mean life becomes easy.

There are still difficult days. Still uncertainties. Still moments that feel heavy and unresolved. Life does not suddenly become gentle. But it no longer feels as overwhelming as it once did. It feels like you have made a quiet agreement with it. Not a surrender, but an acceptance. A recognition that things may not always go the way you planned, and that you are still capable of continuing anyway.

At thirty,

I realize life is not perfect. It probably never will be.

But it is also not as heavy as I once feared.

1 May 2026

Dear Mr. Spaceman,

I used to think time would do something dramatic. That it would erase you, soften you, turn you into a distant version of a life I could barely remember. But instead, it did something quieter. It kept you in the background of everything, like a constant hum I have learned how to live with. And maybe that is the strangest part.

Because I am not the same person you knew. Not even close. Life kept moving, and I had to move with it. I’ve grown into someone a little steadier, a little sharper, a little more aware of what I can and cannot accept. And somehow, even without you being here, it still feels like you had a hand in that. Like you set something in me I didn’t even notice forming at the time.

You are no longer loud in my days, no longer the first thing I reach for in the morning or the last thing I hold onto at night. And yet, you are there, in the in-between moments, in the stillness that follows after everything else has settled. Not enough to undo me, but enough to remind me. There are days when you pass through my mind gently, almost kindly, like a memory that no longer needs to be questioned. And there are days when it catches me off guard, the way certain songs sound a little too familiar, or the way a quiet evening stretches just enough for me to notice what is no longer there.

Time did not take you away. It simply changed the way you exist in me.

You didn’t just show me love. You showed me how I should be loved. And now, two years later, I catch myself measuring everything against that quiet knowing. Not in a way that traps me, but in a way that guides me.

Still, there are moments. Small ones. Honest ones.

Sometimes I still think about the days when your name was the first one I would reach for over something as small as a mosquito bite, or when your hand was the first thing I searched for in the dark when I couldn’t sleep at night. I remember how you made everything feel easier. How even my worst breakdowns didn’t feel as heavy with you there. Like facing a new direction in life wasn’t something to be afraid of. Like living alone didn’t actually mean I was alone in this universe. Because somewhere, in my own way of understanding it, you were still there, walking beside me, just from another planet.

You didn’t just stay for the easy moments. You were there when everything felt like it was collapsing in slow motion. When getting out of bed felt like an achievement. When I didn’t know how to carry what I was going through. You never asked me to be okay before I was ready. You just stayed. You just listened. You just smiled.

And somehow, you became the voice that helped me begin again. Even on days when all I could manage was something small, you made it feel like enough. That is when I understood what love was supposed to feel like.

Sometimes, in the quiet, a thought still slips through before I can stop it.

But I don’t hold onto that the way I used to. It feels different now. Softer. Less desperate. More like a truth I have learned to sit with instead of fight. Because maybe the best was never meant to stay. Maybe it was meant to shape. You didn’t stay, but you built something in me that did. A quiet refusal to settle. A kind of love I now recognize, because I once had it with you.

I no longer look for you in the same way. I no longer wait, no longer expect, no longer build small hopes around things that will not come. But there is still something that remains. Not longing, not quite love, but something softer. Something that has learned how to stay without asking for anything in return.

And I think that is what surprised me the most.

Not that you stayed, but that remembering you no longer hurts the way it used to.

There was a time when everything felt louder. When missing you filled entire days and spilled into nights that were too long to carry alone. Now, it moves quietly, almost respectfully, like it understands that I have a life that no longer revolves around it.

And I do.

Life has continued, in all the ordinary ways. Mornings that arrive whether I am ready or not. Evenings that settle into their own kind of quiet. Days filled with things that have nothing to do with you, and yet, somehow, you exist gently within them. Not as something I need to return to, but as something that once mattered, and in some way, still does.

So this is not me holding on. Not really.

This is me accepting that we were never meant to last, but you were never meant to be meaningless either. Some people do not leave you. They just change form. From a person you once had, into something you carry.

And maybe that is what you are now.

Not mine. Not anymore.

Life has a strange sense of humor.

Not the loud, obvious kind that makes you burst out laughing, but the quiet kind. The kind you only notice when you slow down enough to really look.

For a long time, many of us move through life half asleep. We follow what seems logical, we do what is expected, and we silence the subtle voice inside us when it says something feels wrong. We call it overthinking, fear, or doubt. But often, it's simply instinct trying to get our attention.

And something interesting happens when you finally start paying attention.

When you begin opening your eyes a little wider, when you allow your heart to widen too, and when you start trusting your gut even when it cannot explain itself clearly, life begins to shift. Not dramatically. Not all at once. But slowly. You begin to notice the small signals you used to ignore, the situations that quietly drain you, the people who leave you feeling lighter, the paths that feel forced, and the ones that feel strangely natural.

Little by little, your instincts begin to guide you somewhere else. Somewhere calmer, somewhere clearer, maybe even somewhere happier. And that’s when life starts to feel mysteriously funny. Because the signs were always there. The patterns were always repeating. The quiet voice inside you was always speaking.

Life wasn’t hiding anything from you. It was simply waiting for you to start paying attention.

13 March 2026

Today, I found myself unexpectedly happy,

the kind that arrives quietly but settles in all the same.

I was sitting there, surrounded by paper bags and half-open boxes, receipts tucked somewhere between them, someone else’s wishlist still resting in my hand. And for a moment, I just looked at it all, realizing how strange it was that none of it belonged to me, and yet, it felt like it did.

I’ve always loved malls. The way they smell, a mix of polished floors, new fabric, and faint perfume in the air. The quiet hum of people moving from one store to another, the soft rustle of paper bags brushing against each other. There’s something about it that feels almost comforting. Familiar, in a way that doesn’t need explaining.

And then there’s that small, undeniable satisfaction, the pause before tapping your card, the subtle thrill when the payment goes through, the weight of a paper bag in your hand as you walk away, as if carrying proof of a moment you chose for yourself.

I used to think that was the best part. Buying something. Owning it. Bringing it home.

But somewhere along the way, something shifted. It started casually, almost accidentally, back in Malaysia. A message here, another there. “If you see this, can you grab it for me?” “Can you help me find that? I’ve been looking everywhere.” At first, it felt like a favor, something small, something easy. But then I found myself walking through stores differently. Not looking for what I wanted, but what someone else had been hoping for. Holding their wishlist instead of mine, searching shelves a little more carefully, picking things up and imagining their reaction before even reaching the cashier.

And somehow, it became even better. The same thrill of shopping was still there, the same quiet excitement, the same satisfaction of walking out with full hands. Except now, it wasn’t just about the things. It was about the people waiting for them. About being part of that small moment of happiness that would arrive later, somewhere else, in someone else’s hands.

And the irony of it all is that I forgot to buy anything for myself.

Somewhere between their lists and my own tired feet, my plans slipped quietly out of my mind. By the time I returned to the hotel, surrounded by all those bags, I realized not a single thing in there belonged to me, and yet, I felt full.

Because now, I still get the smell of the mall, the feeling of walking out with paper bags in both hands, the quiet thrill of a purchase going through. But this time, I’m not spending. I’m earning. And somehow, that makes it even sweeter.

Maybe happiness is like that sometimes. Not loud, not extravagant, just a quiet kind of satisfaction, found in the rhythm of something you didn’t expect to love, in carrying what isn’t yours and still feeling like it is. So now, whenever another message comes in, another list, another "can you find this?”, I don’t hesitate. 

I smile, and I think,

let’s fill another cart with happy!

March 3, 2025.

Hearing the song did not just let me remember things. It also made me realize how much I miss my mother. It has been 3 weeks since she left me, but I still have so many questions that I know I will never find the answers to. Some people probably have it figured out, but I still have not. Maybe because sometimes, it is easier to just throw stupid questions out in the air than face the answers right in front of us. 

How much of your character is taken away from you when your mother dies?

I am pretty sure that I am never going to be the same person as I was when my mother was still alive. I am not certain if it is a good thing or a bad thing. Honestly, I do not care. But I want to know how much of my whole thing did she take with her and how much is left with me now. I read once that us — the children — were inside our mother's tummies only for nine months, but their hearts forever. I think it is true because I felt it. But if she kept me in heart for so long, what happened when she died? When she left this lonely cruel world, did she take a part of me that she loved the most? And if yes, does that make her happy up there? Does being allowed to take something from the earth — from the people she loved — make dying worth it?

I also ask sometimes, how exactly can you move on and live a life with that gaping hole in your chest?

They say you cannot really get over a loss of a loved one — that you just get used to it. But do you, really? Do you really just get the hang of not ever talking to the person who witnessed how you achieved your greatest successes and made the most unforgivable mistakes but loved you all the same? Then why do I feel so terrible when something great happens, and I just realize that I can no longer call my mother to tell her about it? I can tell other people, yes. But no one can replace my mother. Her words of encouragement and pure adoration. The assurance that she is proud of me no matter what. The hugs and kisses translating that everything is going to be okay — that it only gets better. Even if it really does not.

How is it possible to finally accept that you are going to spend the rest of your life without her?

Growing up, my mother was no nonsense, and all about raising me to be exceptional woman. I was always expected to be above standard, even with whatever chaos that surrounded me at any given time. It was no secret that she loved me more than anything in this world and as I got older, my mother suddenly shifted to be a friend; someone I could call and she was always there. The loyalty was unmatched. She was my best friend.

A parent's death is never easy. But this one, was definitely hard to swallow. It doesn't get easier to process.

You won't feel like you can relate to anyone anymore. This may come across as a bit selfish, but after an unexpected death — especially both of your parents — you become a shell of yourself. And you start to subconsciously not want to deal with anyone. Unless they've been through it. No one understands how you feel, so you sort of file everyone in a category as just someone being kind during your current hardship. And in a weird, completely unselfish way, you do not want them to. You even start to think of ways that you can get "Thank you, I really appreciate it," stamped for automatic reply.

But the fact is, everyone feels sad for you and they all want to support you. But because the situation isn't exclusive to them as it is to you, you find yourself uncomfortable with the comfort and feeling alone. I remember chatting with Neeraj and telling him:

"The hardest part of this whole ordeal, is that you've been ripped apart, and you can't breathe, and your whole world is falling apart. And to everyone around you, it's just another day."

Particularly, I remember receiving group chat messages of the usual memes or videos we'd often share and looking on social media and seeing my entire feed being completely normal. And it's hard. Because to you, nothing is normal anymore.

On the day my mom died, the community came out of the woodwork. And I mean that in the most literal form. We had people come from all over the country, some asking how they can contribute to anything, food was coming from every corner of the city, and flowers and cards and messages and calls. You never know how much you are loved and valued until this moment. I even had friends I hadn't seen since high school to come to my mother's funeral service. All the love is incredible and it got me through for sure. I had friends and family who were there for me and checked on me everyday, no matter how much I didn't want to talk. But I also had friends and family that I would have been that supportive person for, that I never heard from — some even to this day. My mother had 11 brothers and sisters, 7 of them passed away, and the whole 4 came to her funeral. But no matter what, family drama will come to the surface that people cling to. Jobs will wonder when you're coming back because you just have to get those emails out. And companies will apologize for the death, but still want their money no matter what kind of situation you've just got into. Some people who claim to be your best friends might not be there to hug you in person because they're busy with their lives, some of them might also busy complaining and comparing your sadness to theirs — that will make you look very very selfish if you get upset. They'll text me sending long messages saying "You are not alone," or "I will hug you soon," at the end of paragraph but fuck it. Who cares? The fact is you are sitting on your bed, alone, and not a single soul is there with you because it is your life anyway. It is not theirs. And you'll be very grateful because you have someone who truly understands you, who's really putting your comfort above anything. By all means, you still want hugs, but his presence even if it's only through video calls every night until you fall asleep; it means so much to you.

Friends will become question marks, family will become strangers, and situations become accentuated. But in a time where you need all the support, you have to not let that disrupt your energy. You are not obligated to comfort anyone, no matter how strong you are. And you do not have to take on anything that doesn't help you heal. All you can do is focus on the people who supported you and loved you. Let any disappointment be background noise.

Yet, the support you receive will be a direct reflection of you and your parents.

"Hold me close, hug me tight. In the moment when I'm not there, I am there."

The door is always open.

Every day I expect you to walk out that door and never come back. Each morning I wake up in bed next to you, wondering if, by nightmare, I'll have to sleep alone without the comfort of your embrace. I listen to the words "I miss you," holding on to them if ever each time will be the last. I want to capture every detail of your face. I want them ingrained in my memory because someday, those will be all I have. I place my hand on the lines of your jaw, and lay a kiss on your lips, laced with a goodbye just in case.

I know we aren't forever and I've accepted that as a fact. I am easily replaceable by somebody better who deserves you more. You're too good and I'm just bad for you. You will get that perfect life and a future where all your dreams come true, even if I won't be in the picture. I'm alright. This isn't paranoia, but being at peace with inevitability. You don't need to worry at all because I'm nothing but grateful for you. You were the best thing that happened to me. A piece of you will always remain within me, and I hope I'll be ready when it's time to let you go.

For now, I'm making the most of these moments we have together. While I can put that smile on your face, I'll take every chance I can. You still look at me like I'm your most favorite person, and I will always wonder how I could have been so lucky to get a chance to see you. You were on the way toward a whole life ahead you, but somehow, you came and joined me on this little detour. You've still got a bit of time to live the rest of your life, so for now, come dance with me and relish in the temporary. Let's see as much as we can until you don't want to see me anymore.

Let's be happy together until you're happier apart.

July 21, 2023.