Little sparks glowing under the muted lights.

As the cold winter comes in, I find myself recalling the old memories we once shared, together with all the unknowns that quietly lived between us.

Today, things have changed. Everything feels calmer, almost like a subway station on an off day. Quiet, still, and strangely comforting. I feel snowflakes falling somewhere in my heart, missing the ones I love with a more serene mind. A lovely cup of hot chocolate in my hands, watching the world outside. Raindrops resting on the window, as I gaze through the warm, light blue of the sky.

Hi again, winter. Here comes another moment of peaceful Christmas.

I have been pretending to forget, yet this year has taught me so harshly about the depths of love and the depths of hate. I came out of it feeling numb. And yet, how lovely it is to know that I am still standing straight, with people around me who love me deeply and believe in me wholeheartedly.

From the surface to the deepest corner of my heart, I have grown cold, almost numb. Losing a person bit by bit. But I can still walk, with my coat on, finding little ways to keep my heart warm each time the cold comes through. Perhaps I may not reach for joy just yet, but it is enough to live another hour, and then another day. We go with it. Somewhere deep inside, we know what it is all for.

And here I am, knowing that if someone decides to close the door again, I will be ready to walk away once more. Not because I have become fearless, nor because I no longer feel, but because I am still just a new little girl wandering through this unfamiliar phase of life. Collecting my days of experience, learning to hold the weight of things, while still tasting the beautiful depth of loving someone without needing to hold on too tightly.

We just love. We taste love. We give love.

And perhaps, that is already a beautiful life, plus a cup of hot chocolate on my right hand.

Feeling grateful just as it is. To the love that God still graces me with, to the people who remain around me, to those who hold faith in me even when I struggle to find it in myself, and to the life I am still fortunate enough to be living.

Little did I know, I may not need everything to shine so brightly anymore. Perhaps little sparks are enough. A little warmth, a little faith, a little love. Enough to guide me through another winter, another quiet evening, another day of becoming.

May tonight be gentle. May the winter be cold. 

And may I never lose the tenderness in my heart, no matter how many winters I have to walk through. May the little sparks keep glowing beneath the muted lights, reminding me that even in the quietest seasons, life is still beautiful.

I love you, deeply, from my most sincere heart.

That is the saddest kind of regret.

It is a beautiful afternoon. 

A little grey hangs in the sky, but the heat of summer is still lingering, stubbornly refusing to leave. We are almost ready to say goodbye to it, almost ready to welcome autumn. I cannot see any birds crossing the sky, yet the red lights keep buzzing, blinking on and off as if the world has somewhere to go.

And I find myself wondering whether I have ever regretted any of this.

Sometimes I question whether all the good that came after was only a façade; whether all the things I learned were simply another form of denial; whether every new hope was only a distraction I placed carefully in front of an old wound.

I taught myself not to regret. I told myself that everything had meaning, that every loss had a lesson, that the only direction worth looking was forward.

But today, beneath this almost-autumn sky, I suddenly feel how small I am, a tiny piece of a world far greater than anything I could ever understand. 

How could I possibly know the larger mystery of what happened to me? How could I be certain that everything was necessary simply because I survived it?

So perhaps it is true. I think I do regret it sometimes.

And yet, does that really matter?

Maybe regret is not the question. Maybe what matters is whether I keep walking, or spend the rest of my life turning my head toward a road that has already disappeared behind me.

I once asked the other side whether being together had ever become a regret. The truth never came. Perhaps some truths are deliberately left in silence, because saying them aloud would only give another life to something already gone.

But there is one truth I know for myself.

If time ever folded backward and placed me at that beginning again, none of this would happen.

I would not dare to take even the smallest peek. I would not say hello. I would let you pass through my life like a stranger crossing the other side of the street, close enough to notice, distant enough to remain untouched.

Perhaps that is the saddest kind of regret.

Not wishing the ending had been different, but wishing there had never been a beginning. 

Still, the traffic lights keep changing. Summer is leaving whether I am ready or not.

And maybe courage is nothing grander than this. Carrying the memory without returning to it, admitting that I would choose differently while still choosing to continue.

So let it remain a passing by.

A brief crossing of two lives that should never have stopped for one another.

And someday, when another summer fades into another autumn, I hope I will look at the same grey sky and realize that I no longer remember exactly how much it once hurt.

I hope, by then, I will have moved on.

A little reminder that after all this, I want to go home.

A little girl once wandered through the world believing she could find a single green leaf, one that could grow into an entire tree. She explored with an open heart, welcoming people, places, and every unfamiliar path. But as time passed, she realized that none of the leaves were green anymore. Every breath became heavier than the last. Every wound promised to heal, yet somehow grew deeper instead. Eventually, she found herself lost in a forest on a lonely hill.

She never told anyone. She carried the silence alone.

One day, she found a bear. 

Instead of running, she provoked it. Instead of fearing it, she tamed it. Perhaps it was because she had become just as fierce as the creature itself. The bear stayed by her side, driving away every beast that came too close whether they meant her harm or kindness. With the bear beside her, no one could reach her anymore.

For the first time in a long while, she felt safe.

Soon, she believed that peace meant never being touched by another soul. She convinced herself that standing beside the bear was enough. As the years passed, the bear grew wiser. It learned how to speak to the other beasts of the forest. It whispered into their ears, twisted their fears, and quietly bent them to its will. No one noticed its mind play, not even the strongest creatures. They believed they were following their own instincts, when in truth, they had begun listening to the bear. And little by little, the girl forgot where she ended and the bear began.

One day, when she is finally exhausted from surviving, she will choose to go home.

So she leaves herself a reminder...

When that day comes, the bear must stay behind. It belongs to the forest, the place where it was born from fear, pain, betrayal, and everything that taught her to survive.

It was never meant to follow her home.

Is there a law of diminishing love?

Recently, I found myself wandering back to a harbor I once left behind.

For the first few weeks, the waters were calm. We drifted carefully, neither of us raising full sails, content to let the tide carry us at its own pace. There was comfort in the familiarity, the same shoreline, the same quiet currents that once felt like home. But I am no longer the traveler who first arrived here. Time has taught me how to read the weather. I can see the storm clouds gathering long before the rain falls. And it made me wonder,

Does love follow a law of diminishing returns?

The first arrival feels like discovering a new continent. The second feels more like revisiting a map whose ending is already known. The warmth is still there, but so is the memory of every shipwreck hidden beneath the surface. So now I am standing at the edge of the deck wondering, 

Do I turn the ship around and leave behind the comfort of this harbor,
or do I keep sailing toward a horizon I suspect will never appear?

On another thought...

Perhaps every harbor serves a purpose.

Not for treasure or conquest, but simply for shelter on difficult nights. Yet I cannot help but wonder whether a refuge can remain just that. When comfort settles in and the walls begin to feel familiar, 

Can I truly keep my heart from building a home there again? 

Because what I fear is not the journey itself. What I fear is becoming an anchor someone borrows during rough seas, only to be cut loose once the waters grow calm. If there is such a thing as a law of diminishing love, perhaps it is not that love grows smaller with time. Perhaps it is that every return yields less certainty and costs a little more courage than the last. Here I am telling my little self inside my tiny heart,

Remember how it ended,
remember if that was the only amount of self-love I have for myself this time too.

Remember why I did it in the first place.

Wait, are you writing again?

Oh it is probably quite rare for me to write twice in a week. But here I am, still needing a space to pour out my biggest anxiety of the year. From broken personal relationship, to political professional relationship, and to the chaos of the work itself. All served together on one plate. Voila! I got out just fine now (well, progressing to being fine at least).

What did you say?

So last night I had a call with my mother, it was a very long call of reflection as usual. It happened right after I dare myself to step into the workplace again after being AFK for weeks (or maybe months) because of how cruel inside has been. It has been burning every inch of my skin and every bit of my mind. I knew that I sounded very negative, but it is for real. Super dreadful. 

At last, I did it! Yes, I did it!

I am more than proud of myself for going through such chaos, and I could finally wrap it up with a smile on my face. Now, I am leveling up to be a stronger me, way more than ever. What I found amazing is that I could still be me despite the broken environment there. Even when sometimes the thought of people might think of me doing something for a motive, or when people thought about reacting in any way they wanted, I only need to know why I did it. It all that matters.

___

Again after all this hardship, if I need to look back or someone asks me someday, 

"Why did you want to stay in that toxic workplace despite having other better offers to go back?" 

That question actually hit me hard because not only that I wished I could just walk out and move to a better heaven, I literally could and can. Yet I chose to stay. Then here I am, wanting to remind myself when someday I forgot why I did it in the first place.

1. In living a life of my own, it may only be once in a lifetime.
   I could choose to live calmly without chaos. Or, I could choose to live wildly with chaos. When I decided to come here, the reason was not to earn more. The reason was not to be happier. The reason was simply: I want to get out of my comfort zone and to challenge myself whom I believe can do more than what I was doing.
2. When I was imagining it, I did not have any precedent of what the outer life would be.
   What would it be to stay outside my comfort zone longer than expected. Then I come here, living a wilderness. Being a little puppy who was very naive. Then I fell down, as always because I am a stubborn little girl. Then I broke down into pieces. I was angry, I was pissed off, I blamed every single thing and person that I could. I became nobody.
3. One day I learnt to do something I have never done before.
   I read books, I learnt new things, I forced myself to be more daring than ever, I conflicted a lot with my previous version. I learnt to see things beyond mere black and white. The universe that is apparently calibrated every single second. I learnt that all this time, the comfort zone that I lived in was literally the definition of comfort. Then cheers to the hard life. But I knew I can. Even when this new area is not my place eventually, at least I have tried. I have to, I should not give up because if I give up, I go back to my comfort zone. And would anything has ever changed then?
4. So I have to remember why I did it in the first place.
   It is to shape myself. Like a rough diamond being shaped hard to be a beautiful shape of it. This has been my want from the beginning, what I wished for, not because of anybody or anything else. It is my own choice, and I shall live with it with bravery. Cheers to the new chapter of life, cheers to the new and better me! 

"Because I want to be better."