Lost A

  • A Million Dreams – Chapter Six: The Train I Saved For Love

    A Million Dreams – Chapter Six: The Train I Saved For Love

    Some dreams stay quiet for years. They sit in the background of your life, waiting for the right chapter. The Eastern and Oriental Express was one of mine. I used to look at photos of the green and gold carriages and imagine myself inside them, moving through Malaysia like a slow and gentle film.

    I never knew who would be sitting next to me. Sometimes I pictured a friend. Sometimes I pictured someone I loved. Life eventually answered the question in its own soft way. One day the right person simply became part of my story. Someone who already understood my jokes, my moods, my rituals, my quiet parts, my loud ones, and I understood his Someone who felt like home long before I ever said the word, and I felt like his.

    So the dream changed shape. It became a honeymoon dream. The kind that feels earned. The kind that feels like a reward for every year of waiting.

    On the first day, we would board in Singapore. The staff would welcome us with something refreshing to drink. I can already imagine the way we would look at each other, half laughing, half emotional, because we finally made it. Dinner would be our first dinner on a moving train. The chef would send out something beautiful and we would pretend to understand the menu while secretly just enjoying the moment.

    The second day would take us to Perlis. I love the idea of waking up to the gentle rocking of the train and seeing someone there who feels familiar in the best way. We would explore art and culture together, probably take too many photos, probably buy something we do not need. The celebrations at night would feel warm and joyful. A little chaotic in a sweet way.

    Morning on the train would feel like waking up inside a moving dream. The world outside would slide by in soft green and gold. The cabin would smell faintly of coffee and warm pastries. A tray would be waiting on the bed with croissants, jam, butter and a cup of coffee still steaming. The window would be open to the scenery. We would eat slowly, half watching the trees, half watching the reflection of someone beside me. The train would hum beneath us, steady and calm, and everything would feel suspended in time. It would be the kind of morning that makes you forget the world exists beyond this cabin. The kind that makes you think this is what peace looks like.

    Day three would be the heart of the trip. Penang. Peranakan cooking. Georgetown’s murals. The smell of spices. I imagine us walking through the streets like two characters in a soft movie. He would hold my hand. I would pretend I am not emotional. Back on the train, Music. Laughter. Fireworks blooming beyond the Petronas Towers. A sky celebrating us. A sky saying finally.

    The last morning would be the softest. Breakfast in the cabin. Johor passing by like watercolor. The train rocking as if it wants to keep us a little longer. I imagine looking at them and feeling that quiet gratitude. The kind that sits in your chest and stays there. The kind that says this is the life I waited for.

    Soon after, the train would cross into Singapore. The dream would end. But the story we built together would keep going.

    And maybe that is the real dream.

  • A little bubble of joy 

    A little bubble of joy 

    Hobbies are tiny lifelines we give ourselves during the chaos of everyday life. They are gentle rituals that remind us we are more than our routines and responsibilities. When you find the right one, it becomes a private pocket of joy, a little bubble where the world quiets down and your mood softens without effort. It is surprising how something so simple can shift the entire tone of a day and turn heaviness into something lighter and easier to carry.

    I have tried so many things over the years. Baking had its sweet charm, painting had its colorful moments, and every hobby had its own season. Pottery, however, felt different. Pottery felt like coming home. There is something magical about shaping clay and watching a lump of earth slowly become a bowl or a cup or a tiny imperfect masterpiece. It is grounding in a way nothing else is. You sit at the wheel and the world shrinks into a soft spinning circle that belongs only to you.

    And the best part is when you find people who love the same thing. A small community, a handful of humans who understand why clay under your nails feels like victory and who get excited over glaze colors and kiln results. Talking about a shared hobby becomes its own kind of happiness. The laughter, the tips, the little celebrations over what you made today, all of it creates a sense of belonging. It feels like your bubble of joy expands and becomes a shared space that is warm and welcoming.

    There is also a quiet joy in giving the pieces you make to the people around you. When you hand someone a mug or a bowl you shaped with love, it feels like giving them a small piece of your heart. Watching them use it, seeing it filled with coffee in the morning or soup on a rainy day, is a happiness that stays with you. It is proof that something you made with your own hands found a place in someone else’s everyday life. For now, pottery is on pause for me. Life sometimes nudges us away from the things we love, even if only for a while. But the beautiful thing about hobbies is that they wait for us. They do not disappear. They sit quietly until we are ready to return. I miss the wheel, the clay, the quiet concentration, but I hold onto the hope that I will find my way back to it. Once you discover a hobby that feels like home, it never truly leaves you.

  • The day spring fell and Rose

    The day spring fell and Rose

    There’s a segment in Fantasia 2000 that I keep returning to, almost the way you revisit an old memory. It’s the one inspired by Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, a short piece, but it carries the weight of something ancient. Every time I watch it, I feel as if I’m witnessing a small myth unfold, one that doesn’t need words to explain itself.

    Clip from Disney’s Fantasia 2000 (1999), “The Firebird Suite” segment.
    Directed by Eric Goldberg and Susan Goldberg.
    Music by Igor Stravinsky.
    © Disney Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved.

    It begins with the Spring Sprite, waking up after winter like someone stretching slowly out of sleep. She’s made of water and light, curious in that innocent way that makes you smile a little. Wherever she walks, the world responds. Snow melts. Leaves uncurl. Flowers appear as if they’ve been waiting for her. There’s an elk beside her, calm and steady, guiding her through the forest like an old friend who knows the way.

    There’s something tender about her, the way she touches the earth, the way she looks around as if everything is new. It feels like watching hope take its first steps.

    But curiosity can be dangerous, even for spirits.
    And hers leads her up the side of a volcano.

    Inside the crater, she finds a small stone glowing under the ash. She touches it with the same gentle wonder she used on the flowers… and that’s when everything changes. The Firebird awakens, all molten fury and smoke, and the world shifts from green to burning red in an instant.

    The forest she just healed is destroyed again.
    Trees collapse. Lava pours down the mountainside.
    The sky turns black.

    And the Spring Sprite, who only wanted to bring life, is struck down by the Firebird’s final burst of rage. It’s a moment that feels heavier than animation should feel, like watching innocence break.

    When the fire finally dies, everything is quiet.
    Ash everywhere.
    A forest that looks like it forgot how to breathe.

    But the elk finds her. He lifts her gently, as if she’s the last fragile piece of spring left in the world. She cries, small, quiet tears, and from those tears, tiny green shoots push through the ash. Her grief becomes rain. Her rain becomes healing. And slowly, stubbornly, the forest rises again.

    It’s a simple story, but it stays with you.
    Life ending, life returning.
    Destruction, then renewal.
    The kind of cycle we all go through in our own ways.

    Maybe that’s why this segment lingers.
    Because at some point, we’ve all been the Spring Sprite, hopeful, hurt, and still capable of blooming again.

  • The People You Don’t Forget

    The People You Don’t Forget

    Tonight I’m thinking about the people life forces you to remember. Not because you want to, but because forgetting them would mean forgetting the parts of yourself that broke… and the parts that survived.

    I keep circling back to this truth: you never forget the ones who helped you. The ones who noticed the crack in your voice before you even admitted something was wrong. The ones who sat with you in silence because they didn’t know what to say, but they refused to leave. Their kindness wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. It was steady. And steady feels like a miracle when everything else is falling apart.

    And then there are the ones who left. God, that still stings. I didn’t expect their absence to hurt the way it did. It wasn’t just that they weren’t there, it was the realization that they could have been. They chose not to be. I think that’s what I’m still grieving: the choice. The quiet decision to step away when I needed someone to stay. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully make peace with that.

    But the hardest ones to write about, even here, even privately, are the ones who put you in difficult times. The ones who caused the mess you had to clean up. The ones who broke things inside you that you didn’t know were fragile. They taught me lessons I never asked for. They forced me to grow in ways I didn’t want to. And even now, even after healing, their shadows still show up in certain memories, certain fears, certain boundaries I didn’t used to have.

    It’s strange how all three types stay with you.

    The helpers soften you.
    The abandoners sharpen you.
    The ones who hurt you harden you, but they also teach you how to protect yourself.

    I guess that’s why I’m writing this tonight. Because remembering them feels like remembering the map of how I became who I am. Every person carved something into me, a wound, a warning, a strength.

    And maybe I don’t want to forget any of it.
    Maybe this is how I learn who deserves to stay in my life… and who only belonged to the chapter that nearly broke me.

  • What Pain Makes of Us

    What Pain Makes of Us

    There are truths about transformation that nobody teaches you gently. They arrive the hard way, through seasons that strip you down, through moments that don’t ask permission before they change you. And maybe the hardest truth of all is this: the things that shape us the most are rarely the things we wanted. They’re the things that hurt, the things that interrupted our lives, the things that forced us into becoming someone we didn’t yet recognize.

    Some wounds don’t disappear.
    Some wounds become something.

    A pearl begins with an intrusion, a grain of sand slipping into an oyster, something foreign, something that doesn’t belong. It irritates, it wounds, it threatens. The oyster can’t spit it out, can’t escape it, can’t undo what’s been done. So it does the only thing it can: it begins to cover the pain, layer by layer, hoping that burying it will keep it from destroying what’s left.

    The wound doesn’t vanish.
    It transforms.

    And when I learned that, I saw my own story in it, the betrayals that cracked something inside me, the losses that made breathing feel like labor, the seasons that didn’t just bruise but rearranged me. None of it was meant to be there. None of it was gentle. But it forced me into a kind of healing that wasn’t soft. It was survival.

    Pearls take years to form.
    Years of irritation.
    Years of layering over what should have never happened.

    People admire the shine, the elegance, the quiet beauty. They never see the raw center. They never see the thing that caused the ache. They want the wisdom without the nights that carved it. They want the strength without the breaking.

    But that depth, that credibility, comes from surviving what should have ended you. That’s not a scar.
    That’s a pearl.

    If the pearl is a wound that healed beautifully,
    the diamond is pain that refused to stay ordinary.

    Diamonds aren’t born in calm places. They form miles beneath the earth’s surface, where pressure crushes and heat burns beyond imagination. Down there, carbon, the same element found in ashes and fragile things is trapped under thousands of tons of weight. It’s scorched by temperatures that could melt everything else. And it stays there not for years, not for centuries, but for millions of years.

    Under that relentless pressure, the carbon rearranges itself. Its atoms lock together so tightly that nothing can break them apart. That’s how the strongest material on earth is formed, not by comfort, but by compression. Not by ease, but by endurance.

    The pearl and the diamond are siblings.
    Both born from suffering.
    Both shaped by what tried to destroy them.

    The pearl teaches softness, the art of layering over pain until it gleams.
    The diamond teaches strength, the art of becoming unbreakable through pressure.

    Both are transformations that take time. Both are stories of survival written in material.

    Maybe healing isn’t about erasing what happened. Maybe it’s about letting it change your structure. Letting it make you rare. Letting it make you someone who carries both softness and strength, the pearl and the diamond.

    So if life feels heavy, if the pressure feels unbearable, if the wound feels like it will never stop aching, remember:
    pearls are made from irritation,
    diamonds from pressure,
    and you from everything you survived.

    You’re not being crushed.
    You’re being formed.

  • The pomegranate seeds

    The pomegranate seeds

    In Greek mythology the story begins long before the pomegranate.

    Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess who made the earth bloom and fed humanity through her power over harvest and growth. One day, while Persephone was gathering flowers in a sunlit meadow, the ground split open beneath her feet. From that crack rose Hades, the god of the underworld. He seized her and carried her into the shadows below. Her cry echoed across the world, but no one reached her in time.

    Demeter searched for her daughter with burning torches. She wandered the earth in grief so deep that crops refused to grow. Famine spread. The world dimmed. Even the gods felt the consequences of her sorrow.

    Zeus finally intervened and sent Hermes to retrieve Persephone. Hades agreed to let her go, but before she left, he offered her a pomegranate. A small, gleaming fruit. A gesture that looked gentle and almost tender.

    But the underworld has rules. Anyone who tastes its food becomes bound to it.

    Persephone ate the seeds, and her fate was sealed.

    The Persephone myth begins with a moment that feels almost innocent, a pomegranate offered in the stillness of the underworld.
    Not a grand act of violence, not a thunderous shift in fate, but a small, deliberate gesture that sealed her life with a sweetness she never asked for.
    A bite that tasted harmless, yet carried the quiet cruelty of a future she could never outrun.

    Her tragedy isn’t only in being taken, it’s in being claimed.
    Bound by a fruit she didn’t understand, tied to a darkness she never chose.
    She gets her brief seasons of sunlight, yes, but they are borrowed. Temporary.
    Every bloom she touches already knows she will leave it behind.
    Every warm day is a countdown.
    Every return to her mother is shadowed by the knowledge that she will be pulled back underground, back to Hades, back to the life that waits for her like a sentence.

    And I think about how many people live like that.

    Not in myth.
    In marriages.

    Some people eat their own version of the pomegranate without realizing it.
    A promise made in a moment of fear.
    A compromise that felt small but carried teeth.
    A decision made because silence was easier than truth.

    And suddenly, they’re tied to a life that feels colder every year.
    A house where the air never warms.
    A partner who becomes a weight instead of a refuge.

    They get moments of escape, a night with friends, a quiet walk alone, a fleeting reminder of who they once were.
    But like Persephone, they can’t stay in the world that feels like theirs.
    There is always something dragging them back: duty, guilt, culture, the fear of being judged, the fear of being alone, the fear of breaking everything just to save themselves.

    It doesn’t always look dramatic from the outside.
    Sometimes it’s just a slow dimming, a person fading in plain sight.

    People imagine the underworld as a place of torment, but myths rarely shout.
    Hades wasn’t monstrous.
    He was steady.
    Predictable.
    A presence that didn’t change and that’s its own kind of prison.

    Some marriages feel like that.
    Not violent, not catastrophic, just… heavy.
    A life that is easier to endure than to escape.
    A routine that becomes a quiet suffocation disguised as stability.

    You learn to navigate the shadows.
    You learn to keep your voice low.
    You learn to carry your own torch the way Demeter did, searching for pieces of yourself in places where you never should have had to look.

    Persephone’s tragedy isn’t that she lives in the underworld.
    It’s that she lives between worlds.

    Never fully alive in the light.
    Never fully dead in the dark.
    Never entirely herself anywhere.

    And that’s the quiet heartbreak of being stuck in a marriage you cannot leave:
    you become a seasonal version of yourself.
    A person who blooms only in stolen moments.
    A person who learns to ration their hope.

    You get glimpses of who you could be, but you can’t stay long enough to become her.

    Persephone didn’t stay the maiden forever.
    She became a queen.

    Not because she wanted the underworld, but because she learned to claim power inside a life she didn’t choose.

    And maybe that’s the part of the story that matters for anyone who feels bound by their own pomegranate seeds:
    you may not be able to leave yet,
    you may not be able to rewrite everything,
    but you can still reclaim pieces of yourself.

    You can still rise in the places that tried to bury you.

    You can still become something stronger than the fate you were handed.

  • I Didn’t Handle It, I Just Drowned Quietly

    I Didn’t Handle It, I Just Drowned Quietly

    I was told that I handled it so well. People adore the illusion of resilience, it makes them feel better about not noticing the collapse happening right in front of them.

    But let’s be honest.

    I didn’t handle it.
    I didn’t rise above anything. I didn’t “stay strong.” I didn’t “push through.” I went under. Slowly. Quietly. The kind of drowning where you’re still answering messages and showing up to things, so everyone assumes you’re fine.

    I lost my spark, not in a poetic, candle‑flicker way, but in the way a light bulb dies: one sharp pop, then darkness. And I didn’t ask for help, because asking requires believing someone might actually care enough to stay. I didn’t have that kind of faith.

    So I did the usual performance:
    Suffered in silence.
    Shattered where no one could see.
    Wore a smile that lied better than I ever could.

    People saw the smile.
    They congratulated the smile.
    They never wondered why it looked like it hurt.

    They say I handled it well, but what they really mean is:
    “I didn’t notice your suffering, so I assumed it didn’t exist.” And to be honest, I think they do notice, but acknowledging it is acknowledging that they are the reason. so they look the other way and pretend everything is fine.

    I didn’t handle it.
    I survived it, not because I was brave, but because life doesn’t pause for your breaking. It just drags you forward, whether you’re walking or being pulled by the hair.

    Some days I was strong.
    Most days I was a hollow version of myself, moving out of habit rather than hope. But I kept going because stopping wasn’t an option. Survival isn’t always heroic; sometimes it’s just mechanical.

    And here’s the part no one likes to admit:
    Sometimes endurance is just the absence of escape.
    Sometimes you keep breathing simply because your body hasn’t figured out how to quit.

    So no, I didn’t handle it.
    I endured it.
    And endurance is a dark, uncelebrated thing, but it’s real.

  • A blast from the past

    A blast from the past

    I think I time traveled to the 90s last night. I’m not exaggerating, I genuinely stepped into a tiny shopping center that looked like it had been sealed shut sometime around 1996 and only reopened yesterday just for me. The moment I walked in, I felt that familiar 90s glow: the slightly faded signs, the old‑school decorations, the shelves arranged in that charming “we tried our best” style every shop used to have.

    And then came the real nostalgia punch, a little shop selling petit four, Arabic sweets, and “Botha”Arabic ice cream. The kind of place that instantly makes you feel like a kid again, even before you taste anything. I walked in and it was like my childhood had been laid out neatly on trays. I tried the petit four first, and it was exactly the kind of buttery, delicate sweetness that used to make every family gathering feel magical. One bite and I was basically six years old again, standing next to a table full of desserts I wasn’t supposed to touch yet.

    I didn’t try the Arabic ice cream this time, I’m saving that for my next visit, because some joys deserve their own dedicated moment. But I did buy a box of sweets to take home, because happiness is always better when it comes in a small box tied with nostalgia.

    Walking out, I felt ridiculously happy. Like I had discovered a tiny portal to the past hidden inside a regular shopping center. A place where everything is simple, familiar, and wrapped in the soft glow of childhood memories.

    Last night wasn’t just a visit. It was a sweet little reunion with the 90s, and I’m already planning my next trip back.

  • Mishomisho Part Two: The Day She Became a Princess

    Mishomisho Part Two: The Day She Became a Princess

    Ever since my niece watched The Little Mermaid, something shifted in her tiny world. She’s been twirling around the house, trying singing Ariel’s songs with full confidence, as if she’s part of the movie. And when she looks at me and says “mishomisho,” I know exactly what she means now, princess. It’s her own little word for everything magical and royal.

    So we decided to make her princess dreams a little more real. We went to the mall, and our first stop was the small petting zoo inside. She loved looking at the animals, but touching them was a big no. She kept her hands tucked close to her body, watching them with wide eyes, half curious, half cautious. Still, she enjoyed every minute of it, as long as nobody asked her to pet anything.

    Then came the highlight of the day: the Disney shop. The moment we stepped inside, her eyes lit up. Rows of glittering dresses, tiny shoes, and sparkly accessories, it was like walking straight into her imagination. She chose two costumes: the shimmering turquoise Little Mermaid outfit and the soft pink‑lavender Rapunzel gown.

    In the fitting room, she tried them on one by one. When she saw herself in the mirror, she whispered “mishomisho” with this proud little smile, like she finally saw the princess she’s been pretending to be. She twirled, admired herself, and I swear the whole room felt brighter.

    After that, we went for lunch and dessert, because every princess outing needs something sweet. She sat there in her tiny dress, eating ice cream like it was part of the royal routine.

    When we got home, she ran straight to her mother to show off her new dresses. Her mom’s reaction was pure joy, and the way my niece stood there waiting for approval was the cutest thing. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day, full of laughter, tiny memories, and the soft magic of childhood.

  • Grief

    Grief

    There is a particular kind of grief that doesn’t get talked about enough, the grief of losing someone who is still alive. Someone who still walks through the world, laughs somewhere, breathes somewhere, exists somewhere… just not with you. It’s a strange kind of heartbreak, one that feels both invisible and unbearable. How do you mourn a person who hasn’t died, only disappeared from the part of the world that used to be yours?

    It starts quietly. A small ache. A shift. A distance. And then one day, you realize you’re standing alone in a place where you once stood together. The silence becomes louder than any goodbye. You look around and everything feels slightly off‑center, as if the world tilted when they left and never bothered to straighten itself again.

    Loneliness hits differently when the person you miss is still out there. It’s not the finality of death, it’s the haunting possibility of presence. You imagine them living a life where your name is no longer spoken, where your memory is a faint shadow, where you are not chosen, not remembered, not wanted. And that hurts in a way that is hard to explain. It’s the pain of being erased without being buried.

    There are days when the longing feels physical. A hollow space in your chest. A heaviness behind your ribs. You wake up with a quiet ache, go through your day with a tightness in your throat, and fall asleep with a weight that refuses to lift. You try to fill the emptiness with noise, with people, with tasks, with anything, but the emptiness remains. It’s shaped like them. It fits only them.

    And then there’s the lost feeling, the disorientation of having to rebuild a life around an absence. You catch yourself reaching for your phone, remembering something you would’ve told them, hearing a song that once belonged to both of you. You become a broken map with missing landmarks. You don’t know where to go, because the person who once guided you through the world is no longer walking beside you.

    Grief like this is quiet. It doesn’t scream. It doesn’t announce itself. It just sits inside you, heavy and patient. You learn to carry it the way people carry old injuries, gently, carefully, with the understanding that some wounds never fully heal, they only soften.

    But even in the breaking, there is a strange kind of strength. You gather the pieces of yourself, the ones left behind, the ones cracked, the ones still whole, and you begin again. Not because you’re ready, but because life doesn’t pause for heartbreak. You move forward with the knowledge that some people are meant to be chapters, not lifetimes. And that letting go of someone who is still alive is one of the hardest forms of courage.

    You survive it by breathing.
    By waking up.
    By continuing.
    By choosing yourself in the quiet moments when the ache feels unbearable.

    And slowly, painfully, honestly, you learn that grief doesn’t mean you failed. It means you loved deeply. It means you cared enough to hurt. It means your heart was brave enough to open, even if it was broken in the end.