I Persist, Therefore I Am.

excerpt from my diary.

Dearest,

Today, I find myself adrift, tethered to a body that seems less my own. My skin prickles with an unspoken irritation, headaches come and go like uninvited guests, and this quiet, inner soul of mine has been cruelly confined within four walls, a prisoner of circumstance. But by some mercy of fate or providence, my fingers still dance across these keys and I have chosen to write you this letter.

The Aroma of Nostalgia.

I was eight, and the horizon was wide and golden with possibility. I remember whispering to myself in the dim light of my bedroom, What must it be like, to be twenty? The world then was vast, every day unfolding with the thrill of newness. Now, the past few days have filled Twitter with bittersweet nostalgia, voices wrapped in lament for the lost clarity of things that have passed away. Is life, then, merely a slow, inevitable drift from innocence to bewilderment, a quiet unraveling of things once taken for granted?

There were days when the smell of Indomie noodles drifting from the kitchen could lift the weight of the world from your shoulders, when cold cups of Milo after P.E. were the sweetest nectar. Okin biscuits were only N5. E reach my turn to be adult, everything con hard.

We were lighter then, weren’t we? Not because the world was kinder or our burdens smaller, but because we hadn't yet learned to claim them as ours. No one told us of the falcon that lies in wait—the one made of deadlines, bills, and expectations, wings dark with responsibility and talons sharp with purpose. And now, as we stand here, a little bruised, a little weary, we can only wonder—were we ever truly ready to embrace what it means to be grown? Or was it, as it always is, a promise too fragile to hold?

There will be no philosophical account from any old thinker today, gone are the days when sages could recline marble halls, and unfurl their thoughts towards the light. Those ancients had the luxury of time—to contemplate the dance of shadows on their cavern walls, to parse the perfect forms while slaves brought wine in earthen vessels, sweet with contemplation's ease. You must excuse my purposeful digression.

But here, now, in this fevered age and country of haste and low abundance, philosophy or deep thinking is a luxury we trade for bread and breath and bandwidth. Our streets swarm with modern zombies, faces lit by screens, all stumbling forward in their hungry dance. We've become survivors in concrete caves, our wisdom measured not in treatises but in the art of staying alive. To simply be—to fill the hollow hours with food enough to quiet growling need, to drape our bodies in whatever shields against the elements—becomes itself a manifesto. Every breath declares: I persist, therefore I am.

And isn’t it astonishing? In the midst of it all, we’re still expected to keep companionship afloat, to reach out through the fog and hold on to something, someone. After all—who can fend off the encroaching shadows alone? Even then, even in this strange and crumbling world, that wild, inexplicable urge remains, doesn’t it? The need to love—irrationally, recklessly—still rests quietly in the deepest corners of our hearts, as if untouched by time’s brutal hand. Not me though, y’all be safe.

It’s easier these days to surrender to the quiet seduction of cynicism, the kind that comes when you’ve seen too much, felt too much, and yet, not nearly enough. After all, we are but shattered fragments, held together by some fragile adhesive—God knows what. The choices, if there are any, seem laughably limited. Life in this part of the world could be a summer camp or some grim competition, depending on which side of the glass you peer through, depending on the privileges fate tossed your way.

Mine is a life spun with plot twists, tangled threads of expectation unraveled by the unpredictable. It’s almost amusing how I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a memoir, despite the creeping suspicion that I’ve only skimmed the surface of what life intends to hurl at me. Just few days ago, there was a glimmer of hope—I was supposed to go on a date soon, a moment to feel alive again, to play the part of someone charmed, and now? Now I find myself marked with the affliction of childhood, as if the universe couldn’t resist a cruel twist of the knife. Chickenpox. How utterly poetic, in that absurd, cosmic way. Even the Riddler himself would tip his hat in acknowledgment of this little irony.

Now, I am twenty three , I find myself gazing into the mirror, staring at a boy with blistered skin, his face marred by the quiet traces of something unfinished. I wonder, almost absently, if he's proud of me—this specter of youth, wide-eyed and unspeaking, watching me from behind the glass. Perhaps this, too, is grief—the kind you never quite anticipate, but that creeps in softly, like a half-forgotten dream you once whispered to yourself under a canopy of stars.

I see grief as a series of realizations. First comes the shock, a shroud of silence shattered, revealing a chasm so profound and haunting that every fiber of your being cries out, urging you to recoil from the precipice. “Do not venture there,” it whispers. Perhaps it was the weight of broken promises that shaped me into this, dulled the edges of what I once was. There was a time, you see, when I felt everything—the sharpness of joy, the sting of disappointment. But now, I’ve grown indifferent, as if my heart has been traded for something quieter, colder. And sometimes I wonder, in those late hours when regret is loudest, who I might pay off, what unseen hand I could bribe, to return me to the careless, unknowing innocence I so recklessly left behind.

Whatever you do, resist the pull of the abyss.

But soon, the second truth unfurls: you are not just a witness at the edge—you are ensnared within the pit itself. You watch the fearful you, frozen in terror, hesitant to confront this haunting depth. How do you reconcile that version of yourself, trembling at the brink, with the one who has long dwelled in shadow? You turn to face the tempest. The part of you poised to flee is fierce, but you remain resolute. You have to.

Facing the tempest involves more than mere acceptance; it often leads to unguarded cries that erupt from the depths of your soul. I once dubbed it throw-up crying—a raw, uncontrollable release, a catharsis that stretches across minutes, sometimes hours. In those early moments, it escapes your grasp entirely. Yet, as time passes, a shift emerges. You recognize that you’ve weathered many storms, and still, you stand. The version of you at the edge begins to notice the world beyond the pit.

To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to die one hundred deaths.

Eventually, you come to see the pit as part of your landscape—a project nestled in your backyard. You visit it occasionally, but it no longer consumes or suffocates you as it once did. It is merely a piece of your world, observed from a distance, manageable and familiar. This is what I hope for you, my friend. That this chasm transforms you. That you may catch a glimpse of it from a window and be swept by only a wave of emotion. That you refuse to sink to the ground, breathless, as tears flow and the memories surge through you.

You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.

That you may soar above it, view it from an aerial perspective, and think, “What a treacherous hole that was. I emerged from that darkness. I can conquer anything.”

It’s the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.

The essence of Grief is not in transcending it, but in learning to coexist with it.

With you, the show must go on.