Lost A

Author: lost A

  • Tutti Fruity

    Tutti Fruity

    A best friend is the person who makes life feel lighter just by being around. Not because they’re perfect or always wise, but because you can be your real self with them. A best friend is the one who sees you in every mood and still thinks you’re great. They know your silly moments, your serious moments, your tired days, your excited days. And they stay. It’s not about perfection. It’s about presence.

    With a best friend, you never feel like you have to act a certain way. You don’t choose your words carefully like you’re talking to a boss. You don’t pretend to be calm when you’re actually stressed. You just talk. You share your thoughts, your dreams, your fears, your hopes, your disappointments, your happy moments, your sad moments, your successes, your burdens. And they share theirs too. It’s honest. It’s simple. It’s real. No pretending. No hiding. No acting like someone you’re not.

    The best part is when you find a best friend who thinks like you. Someone who understands your way of seeing the world. Someone who reacts the same way you do. Someone who makes you say, I think we have the same brain. Sometimes you don’t even need to talk. You just sit together quietly, and somehow you still understand each other. It feels like a secret language that only the two of you know.

    Life gets busy. Families grow. Responsibilities take over. Days pass faster than you expect. And sometimes you don’t see each other as often as you want. But with a true best friend, it never matters. The moment you meet again, it feels like yesterday. The comfort is still there. The connection is still strong. It’s like your friendship has a built‑in reset button that always works.

    We don’t have to be exactly the same to be perfect together. We don’t share the same music taste. We don’t love all the same foods, although we do have a few favorites in common. We don’t match in every detail. But somehow, we fit. Nineteen years of friendship, almost twenty, and I still find myself appreciating her more every day. I love her. I value her. And honestly, she deserves a trophy for surviving me for this long.

    Friendship like this is a gift. A safe place. A warm place. A place where you can be fully yourself and know you are loved for it. And that is something worth celebrating.

  • Colors

    Colors

    There are people who move through life without ever seeing colors. Not in the literal sense, but in the quiet emotional way that makes everything feel pale. Days pass without texture. Moments feel thin. You learn to live inside a world that never surprises you. You convince yourself that this is what life is supposed to feel like. You do not know what you are missing, so you do not know how to long for anything different.

    Then someone arrives and everything shifts. They do not just show you colors. They show you the kind of beauty that makes your chest feel warm. Suddenly the world feels alive. You notice the way sunlight rests on their face. You hear softness in their voice that makes ordinary words feel like something precious. You feel colors in the way they laugh, in the way they look at you, in the way they make you feel seen. Life becomes bright in a way you never imagined. You start to understand what it means to feel awake.

    But colors do not stay when the person who brought them into your life walks away. When they leave, everything fades. You return to the old world of muted tones, but it is not the same as before. It hurts now. It aches. It feels unbearable because you know what colors look like. You know how beautiful life can be. You know what it feels like to have your heart open instead of guarded. You try to go back to the way things were, but you cannot unknow what you have seen.

    So you carry the memory of colors inside you. You carry the softness they brought. You carry the ache of losing it. Maybe one day colors will return in a different form. Maybe they will come from someone new or from a part of yourself you have not discovered yet. But for now, you live with the quiet truth that you once saw beauty, and you once felt alive, and you once knew what it meant to see the world in color.

  • A New Word I Learned Today: Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy

    A New Word I Learned Today: Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy

    Takotsubo cardiomyopathy is a medical term for something heartbreakingly simple. It happens when emotional shock becomes so unbearable that the heart physically breaks. Doctors call it stress‑induced cardiomyopathy. People call it dying of a broken heart. The heart weakens, its shape changes, and grief stops being just a feeling. It becomes a wound, a collapse, a quiet surrender.

    Heartbreak can kill. Not metaphorically, not poetically, but literally. Human emotions are heavier than bone. They press on the ribs, slow the breath, and change the way a person moves through life. Some heartbreaks don’t stop the body, but they extinguish the light inside it. They leave people walking around like shadows of who they used to be alive, but not really living.

    I once heard two stories that never left me. A pair of grandparents who had lived one long, shared life, when one died in the hospital, the other followed the next day, no illness, no warning, just a heart that refused to beat alone. And a woman who waited years for a baby, only to wake from anesthesia to learn her child had died. Her heart shattered instantly, and she died right after. Some losses are too heavy for the body to bear.

    Takotsubo cardiomyopathy taught me that heartbreak is not just emotion, but force. It crushes, reshapes, and leaves people changed forever. Some hearts break and never recover. Some keep beating anyway. But in both cases, the pain is real, the loss is real, and the human heart, fragile and brave, carries more than anyone ever sees.

  • Migraine: A Quiet Storm Inside the head

    Migraine: A Quiet Storm Inside the head

    Migraines are more than headaches. They are neurological storms that move through the body in ways that feel unreal. Some people get warnings. Some get nothing at all until the world begins to flicker. There are migraines that come with pain and migraines that come with aura, which can change vision for a short time.

    Living with them means learning to recognize the storm even when it arrives without a sound.

    My first migraine was the most frightening moment of my life. I had no idea what was happening. I was going through a normal day when flashes of lightning appeared at the edge of my eye. Then black and white spots showed up. They grew and moved until they covered everything.

    Within half an hour I was losing my vision. Then it disappeared completely.

    There was no headache. No pain. Only darkness.

    I thought I was going blind. I remember the panic. The way I tried to blink my sight back into place. Nothing changed. I was on the way to the hospital, terrified, trying to understand how vision could vanish so suddenly.

    Slowly, my sight returned. First shapes. Then shadows. Then the world again. The doctors ran tests and told me it was a migraine. I could not believe that something so terrifying had such a simple name.

    Many years have passed since that first attack. It still comes and goes two or three times a year. It is not complete blindness anymore. I lose part of my vision. Sometimes the right side. Sometimes the left.

    It begins the same way. Lightning at the corner of my eye. Black and white spots. A slow fade of the world.

    Lately there is pain with it. A headache that arrives after the vision loss. A pressure behind the eyes. A heaviness that makes everything feel slower.

    Living with migraines means accepting that they can appear without warning. One moment everything is normal. The next moment the world is flickering.

    I am writing this because I had no idea what was happening the first time. It was terrifying. I want people to know that sudden vision loss can be part of a migraine. I want them to know that it can pass. That sight can return. That the body can recover.

    If someone ever sees lightning at the edge of their eye or spots that grow and swallow their vision, I want them to remember this. I want them to know that they are not alone. I want them to know that it might be a migraine and that the fear they feel is something many people have lived through.

    Sometimes knowing the name of something makes it less frightening.

  • Tiny Breaks, Big Magic

    Tiny Breaks, Big Magic

    Some days we try to act like unstoppable productivity champions, but our brains know the truth. They get tired, they wander off, they start thinking about snacks at very suspicious times. That is exactly why tiny breaks exist. They are the little treats that keep us from turning into overcooked noodles.

    A ten minute espresso break with a tiny piece of chocolate feels like a secret getaway. The espresso wakes you up, the chocolate cheers you on, and your brain suddenly stops pretending it is on strike. It is basically a mini celebration disguised as a coffee moment.

    A five minute chat with a friend works wonders too. You talk about something completely random, laugh at something mildly ridiculous, and somehow your entire mood resets. Even doodling counts. You draw a flower that looks confused or a cat that looks judgmental, and your brain instantly feels lighter. It is like giving your thoughts a tiny playground.

    Power naps are another magical trick. You close your eyes for ten minutes and wake up feeling like you just returned from a luxurious vacation. Your brain loves these tiny pauses. They help it relax, reorganize, and get ready for whatever comes next.

    We are not machines. We need breaks. We need silly moments. We need chocolate. These tiny pauses help us stay human and keep going without melting halfway through the day.

  • When My Heart Finally Lets Go

    When My Heart Finally Lets Go

    One day my voice will fade from your life.
    It will happen quietly, the way evenings slip into night.
    If that moment ever comes, I hope you remember something simple. I loved you with everything I knew how to give.

    I chose you in a world full of other paths. I could have walked toward different people, different futures, different versions of myself, yet my heart kept turning back to you. You became the place I rested, the place I returned to even when I was tired or unsure or afraid.

    If I ever step away, I hope my absence brings you the calm my presence sometimes failed to offer. My love was never flawless, but it was honest. It lived in the way I looked at you when you were not paying attention. It lived in the laughter we shared and the quiet moments where we understood each other without speaking. Even when I struggled to show it, I was loving you in ways that were soft and sincere.

    If you think of me someday, I hope you remember the warmth. The gentle conversations. The small joys that felt like sunlight on ordinary days. I hope you remember that even in silence, I cared for you more deeply than I ever managed to say.

    And if life ever grows heavy, I hope you have someone who carries your heart with tenderness. Someone who understands your storms and stays close. Someone who gives you the kind of love that feels safe and steady.

    Because even as I let go, a part of me will always wish for your happiness. A quiet part of me will always hope you find the peace you deserve.

    Always.

  • 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.

  • 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.