Not Everything Difficult Is Worth Enduring

If you could go back in time and give your younger self advice, what would it be?
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There are many things I could tell my younger self, but writing them all down would make this post lengthy. So, I will pick only one: leave sooner when something keeps shrinking you.

When I say “leave sooner”, I don’t mean leave the moment something gets hard. That would be stupid because you would just be avoiding the issue. Sometimes it’s good to stay through the hard stuff because it can teach you a thing or two. We should learn to tell the difference between difficulty and the damage caused by shrinking. They are not the same thing. There are things that are worth having, like marriage, motherhood, creative work, growth, and responsibility. These things often stretch us past what we thought we could endure. These are the things that demand more from us than we think we have, and somehow we find more.

I can say all these things now because I have gone through things in life. But when I was young, I was just groping around, trying to find my way like everyone else.

Difficulty can be good for us because stretching asks us to become more of ourselves. It builds our endurance and character. It forces us to grow. We can become more patient, more honest, more capable. Oh, it is hard. I am not going to lie to you and say the process is smooth. Not at all. But I can say that the experience is expansive. You might cry in private after a hard day of parenting and still not disappear. You might struggle with work and not feel smaller for it.

Shrinking is different. Shrinking looks like this: you make yourself smaller to keep the peace. You censor yourself before you speak. You distrust your instincts even when they have been right before. You feel watched or judged even when no one is watching. You feel relief only when you are away.

The difference between the two is that difficulty builds you, whereas shrinking erases you. And the worst thing is how long it takes to tell the difference.

I used to believe that staying was always the right thing to do. To me, endurance was the hallmark of a wise and mature person. I believed that loyalty to people, institutions, or commitments was a form of holiness and that adjusting myself to conform was simply being spiritually strong.

However, in each of those beliefs, there was a grain of truth. Sometimes staying can be genuinely the right thing to do. Endurance can be genuinely a mark of a mature person. Loyalty can be a virtue, and adjusting for the sake of others can truly be generous. The tricky thing is that shrinking knows how to wear all of them. It often calls itself being the bigger person. It gaslights you. It convinces you that leaving is selfish, that your discomfort is weakness, and that if you were more patient, prayerful, or spiritual, things would be different. So you stay and convince yourself that this is growth, a trial by fire, so to speak.

No one wakes up one morning and realises they have become smaller. Shrinking is insidious. It happens gradually through small compromises that seem reasonable at the time.

What do those “small” compromises look like? I can’t speak for others, but here are the things I noticed: you become careful about what you say. You rehearse conversations in your head before they happen. You stop asking certain questions because the answers may create tension. You learn which version of yourself to offer in which room. You become afraid of disappointing people, so you give in more often than you should. You stop trusting what you feel because your feelings always seem to be the problem.

Then one day, I realised that I had become irritable for no apparent reason. I felt stressed, worried, and angry almost all the time.

This year, I left a high-control evangelical church I had attended for nearly two decades. The decision to leave was probably shocking to others, but for me, it was something I had been thinking about for many years. I simply lacked the courage to do it. By the time I left, I had developed an efficient system of self-monitoring that was deeply damaging to me. I had learned to distrust my own questions. I had filtered my spiritual instincts through what would be acceptable, what would be approved, and what wouldn’t raise concern. I didn’t know the extent of that damage until I was no longer in that environment.

It felt so strange after I left. It was a mix of feelings: anger, relief, grief, and joy. I was so exhausted and didn’t know how to process the experience. What I did know was that I was tired of the constant internal audit and the need to ask permission to think or feel. I was tired of shrink-wrapping my soul to fit spaces that were never designed for its full dimensions.

Church was not the only place I left. I left some online spaces too. Social media often made me anxious and reactive. There were too many posts that made me feel as though I had to prepare for battle. The internet is a wonderful invention and it offers many benefits. However, there are sections of the internet that can train you to be perpetually braced, and I don’t think that is healthy for our mental well-being.

I don’t believe the church and the online spaces were all harmful. I think both have strengths and weaknesses. I won’t go into them here; I want to focus on who I became in those spaces. I had absorbed habits of self-surveillance that cost me greatly, and leaving gave me back some peace and room in my own chest.

I no longer believe that staying is automatically noble, but I also know that leaving is not always the answer. Sometimes leaving is necessary when something costs more of you than you are willing to surrender. I now strongly believe that no amount of loyalty, endurance, or maturity is worth the slow disappearance of who you are.

I wish I had understood that ambiguity earlier. I wish I had learnt sooner to tell the difference between a stretch and a shrink, and trusted myself enough to act on what I saw.

These are the questions I would ask my younger self:

Do I become more myself here?
Am I allowed to question?
Am I becoming more curious or more afraid?
Do I feel constantly monitored?
Do I feel lighter when I leave?

These may seem like simple questions, but the answers can be difficult. Sometimes we don’t want to ask them, but they are still worth asking early, often, and honestly.

If I could change anything in the past, would I rescue my younger self from every place that affected her negatively? The answer is NO. Some of those places taught me things I couldn’t have learned any other way. They taught me what shrinking felt like, how insidious it was, how it disguises itself as virtue, and how deeply it can embed itself in a person without her noticing.

Those experiences also taught me a valuable lesson: what expansion feels like. Expansion gives me confidence to be myself without apology. I don’t have to rehearse before giving my opinions. I can ask questions without fear. I can connect with others without wondering if I am too much or not enough.

I stayed too long in places that mistook my shrinking for loyalty. And now I know the difference between being stretched and being erased. Since leaving, I feel peaceful, content, and more like my true self. And that, I think, is what my younger self was looking for all along.

I write about Iban culture, ancestral rituals, creative life, emotional truths, and the quiet transformations of love, motherhood, and identity. If this speaks to you, subscribe and journey with me.

I Kept Creating and My Art Became a Mossery Cover

What’s something you’ve done that your past self would be proud of?
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I think my past self would be proud that I never gave up on writing and making art. I continued working despite not having a large audience, praise, or assurance that the work would go anywhere. I understand why people stop when their work receives little support. But for me, I never thought to quit. I did it because something in me still needed to make things, even when life seemed uncertain and I worried whether anyone was paying attention. I kept writing and making art because that invisible, persistent urge would not leave me alone.

Nothing glamorous or sexy about persistence. It meant making zines nobody asked for, experimenting with drawing when I didn’t even know I was any good at it, and picking up new skills just because a project needed them. Persistence required me to continue despite doubt, illness and the constant question: Does any of this matter? I had no answer and I simply kept going.

Perhaps that is why receiving an invitation to create a cover for the Mossery × KL Art Book Fair 2026 collaboration felt so special. It did not arrive because I had it all figured out. It arrived while I was still creating, learning and finding my way.

The cover is called Bejalai. Bejalai is an Iban word associated with journeying beyond the familiar in search of experience, knowledge and growth. The design features two bungai terung or eggplant flowers, traditionally recognised as the first tattoo an Iban young man receives. It marks his passage into a new stage of life.

At their centres are spirals called tali nyawa, the rope of life. The flowing forms connecting them suggest a river, representing movement and connection to home. I drew and coloured everything by hand using watercolour pencils, markers and black fineliners. The cover itself embodies, in many ways, the persistence that made it.

Pre-orders for the Mossery × KLABF 2026 cover run from 16–29 October. You can customise your name on the cover when you order. You can pre-order it here.

I don’t know where any piece of work will lead, and most may never lead anywhere measurable. But I think my past self would be happy that I kept producing them nonetheless.

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Who Gets to Choose Simple Living? A Reflection on The Abundance of Less

I finished The Abundance of Less today. I don’t think I’ll read this book from start to finish again. There are parts of the book that I might read again because some of the people in it have inspired me one way or another. Their lives were at peace and consistent over time. That has remained with me.

What I liked most was how some of them lived without separating things. There was no separation between work, art, and everyday life. Making meals, growing food, making art or writing, or carving wood all come from the same place. There was no clear line between survival and meaning and I can see why that might be appealing because it feels solid and complete.

Some of the people in the book choose to live with less. They kept their needs minimal. They worked with their hands and they were aware of their surroundings. Living that way takes discipline but it brings clarity. You know what you need and what you don’t. However, a tension that was hard to ignore grew as I read on.

In the Afterword chapter, the author mentioned one of his book reading sessions when someone asked if these people were just surviving at a basic level of survival. That question lingered because it sounded familiar. Where I come from, many people already live that way. It’s not a philosophy or a decision made after reflecting on it. That’s just how life is.

I come from an Iban background. My grandparents were paddy farmers who lived in longhouses. They grew their own food and they depended on the land. Life in the longhouse community was close and practical. It wasn’t considered meaningful or spiritual. It was simply necessary and it wasn’t easy. Farming is hard work and the yield is sometimes uncertain. There are limits to what you can access, especially education and healthcare. Many people in these communities wish to have a stable income. They need money to send their kids to school or pay for healthcare. They want to repair their homes or build new ones. They want to help their elderly parents. These concerns are genuine and constant.

When I read about people who want to live a simpler life, I see two separate realities. Some people choose to live with less. And some people have always lived with less. The difference is in the choosing. Choice allows you to choose that life and leave whenever you want to. Choice lets you regard it as meaningful. If something goes wrong, it allows you to return to a system that supports you. But without that choice, that same life would look very different.

In the Afterword, the author asks if small “green” changes to one’s lifestyle are really meaningful. They say that these changes let people stay comfortable while calling it sustainability. The concern is real, especially when certain changes are made more for show than for a good reason. But this perspective doesn’t take into account that not everyone can make big adjustments to their lives. Some people can’t move away from the city, change jobs, or move closer to nature. They can’t make those kinds of adjustments because of their jobs, finances, and other circumstances in their lives.

For them, small changes let them do things within their limits. Making small changes like consuming less, being more mindful, or doing less harm to the environment can still reflect a genuine effort to live with awareness. These decisions may not seem like enough from the outside, but they are based on what a person can realistically change at that point in their life.

This doesn’t mean that the people in the book are wrong. I understand what they’re attempting to achieve. I can see the benefits of living with purpose and cutting back on things I don’t need. I can see they care about the land and their communities. But I can’t ignore the other side either. Moving to a city or looking for a job that pays cash does not mean giving up on values. People are just responding to their circumstances. They are trying to make their life more stable by making decisions based on what they need.

Both ways of living arise from different needs and situations and are shaped by different circumstances. One is often chosen and can be left behind. The other is lived without the option to leave. That difference should not be overlooked. To be frank, this book did not give me a model to follow. It just offered me another perspective to consider and it made me think more about my own life and what I already value. It also made me think about how some ways of living are described and seen in a higher regard.

I will remember certain chapters of this book. The chapters about Asha Amemiya, Akira Ito, Koichi Yamashita, and Wakako Oe are worth reading. They are not offering answers, but rather something that can fuel my inspiration. I will return to those chapters when I need a reminder of some kind of discipline or attention. I will also give my perspective the same weight because it also means something important to me.

The First Hour of My Day

The first hour of my day is quiet. The house is still asleep. I sit up in bed and reach for my phone. I tell myself I am just checking one thing. The time. Messages that arrived overnight. I hold the phone close to my face. The screen lights up the room. I scroll. I do not notice how long I stay there. It is already April. I turned 49 in February, and it has been almost two months. Lately I have been feeling like I am living in a fog.

I want to spend my time on meaningful things: reading, walking in nature, journaling, and reflecting. But somehow the hours slip away. I sit down to check one message, and then it is an hour later and I am watching a stranger argue about politics. I feel hollow afterward, as if I have given something away without intending to.

The word is “attention.” I am reading a book, Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. In one chapter it says attention is the beginning of devotion. Only with full focus can you truly love, care for, or experience something. I thought about my daughter telling me something sweet from her day while I nodded along, still scrolling. I let many such moments pass because I was too distracted. Am I even having these moments? The book asks: Can you have an experience you do not experience? That stopped me cold.

I knew social media was harmful. I knew I was the product being sold. But I did not fully understand that I am losing time. I am being systematically manipulated. The platforms use slot-machine psychology, variable rewards, and persuasive design. The author called it the “attention economy,” and we are the products, not the users. Their profits come from seizing our attention and selling it to advertisers. They track what I pay attention to, what makes me angry or afraid, and they feed me more of it. The author says we’re not even products anymore. We’re fuel like logs thrown on a fire and used up until there’s nothing left. They benefit from our resources, time, energy, and attention.

What struck me most is that the damage extends beyond the hour I lose on social media. It changes how I see the world. The book says social media distorts what we think matters, what threats we face, and how we see others. I have noticed I am more anxious now. More cynical. I catch myself assuming the worst about people, even friends whose politics I disagree with. The fear carries over to real life. And then I wonder: is this really me? Or has my attention been hijacked for so long that I’ve forgotten what I actually care about?

There is a line in the book about how attention cannot easily monitor itself. The only tool you have to see what is happening to your attention is your attention. If that is already captured, you may not notice anything is wrong. That was difficult to ignore. I have told myself for years that I am fine, that I am in control, and that scrolling is harmless. But what if that’s exactly what captured attention would say?

I also appreciated the honesty about our own role in this mess. The book says we give in willingly. Something in us wants distraction. I notice this when I sit down to write or draw. I feel restless. I often feel the urge to check my phone and deeply feel the need to do research on a topic. It feels like avoidance: avoiding solitude or being alone with myself. The distractions come from within, not outside.

There is also the political side. I see how outrage is rewarded. One scandal replaces the last, from the Epstein case to the US-Israel-Iran war. It feels difficult to have a grounded conversation. The book emphasizes this is part of the business model. I feel that deeply with steady exhaustion, yet I keep returning to it. I am tired of feeling like this. I am tired of feeling fractured. I would rather not look back in ten years and realize I spent my finite life scrolling through things I did not care about.

The chapter ends by saying political crises need political solutions, and we also need to understand our own role in this. I do not have a clear answer yet. But I can begin with admitting this: I am distracted and frustrated. I want to care about what matters to me. I want to want what I actually care about. And maybe by admitting it, it can be a perfect place to begin.

I Still Remember Him

I still remember him.

The first time I saw him, it was raining. I was sitting in the corner of a small, quiet cafe that smells of burnt beans and old wood. I was busy with my notebook, trying to finish a thought, when the bell above the door rang. He looked like he had wandered in by mistake. His hair was damp, sticking to his forehead in uneven clumps, and his jacket was slightly oversized and hung off his shoulders. He looked like he had not slept in days. He didn’t stand out. He felt out of place in that cafe. I noticed him, then returned to my notebook.

The shift happened months later on a Tuesday evening. We were walking toward a bus stop, and the wind was biting. I was complaining about a lost pen, and he stopped walking. He did not look at me. He peered at a little crack in the sidewalk where a weed was growing. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of candy, and placed the wrapper carefully back. He said, “Most people look at the sky when they’re lost, but the answers are usually stuck to the bottom of your shoe.”

After that, I began to notice him more closely.

He notices things that other people ignore. He can tell when someone is lying by the way their hand shakes or how the barista hides chipped mugs at the back of the shelf. In conversation, he does not speak in a conventional way. He observes. He waits for the silence to become uncomfortable, then asks a question that lands where it is difficult to respond. He says things casually, like “Life is just a series of things we survive until we don’t,” while chewing on a lollipop.

He often has something in his hand. A lollipop, a toothpick, a plastic stick. He keeps his mouth occupied so he does not need to smile. When he thinks no one is looking, he rubs his temples and stares into space with an expression of concentration. He looks worn in those moments, an exhaustion that sleep does not resolve.

He once told me, “Don’t bother remembering the things that don’t want to be found.” I return to that moment often because of how still he was when he said it. His eyes were distant, yet he seemed aware of everything around him. It felt like he was giving me permission to stop looking for parts of him he had chosen to keep hidden.

When I think of him now, I remember the smell of sugar and cold rain. He made me pause because he was the first person I met who seemed to be living in the aftermath of something significant, yet he never asked for sympathy. He existed within it and occasionally pointed out something he thought was worth mentioning.

If someone met him briefly, they would miss the sharpness. They would see a messy, eccentric man who cannot keep his hair combed and seems slow to respond. They might think he is lazy. With time, it becomes clear that he is always aware of what is happening around him and that he often knows what you are about to say before you finish your sentence.

If I had to describe what makes him unique in one sentence, it would be this: he observes things that most people ignore and keeps facing them, even when it makes him uncomfortable.

A Word for Living Between Places

I came across The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows several years ago. I found the Youtube channel first. I remember watching one video late at night. It was called Sonder: The Realization That Everyone Has A Story. The narrator’s voice was calm and unhurried. He described the word “sonder,” and I knew I had felt that feeling before but I couldn’t describe it. Here’s an excerpt taken from the book that describes sonder:

SONDER (the awareness that everyone has a story):

You are the main character. The protagonist. The star at the center of your own unfolding story. You’re surrounded by your supporting cast: friends and family hanging in your immediate orbit. Scattered a little further out, a network of acquaintances who drift in and out of contact over the years.

But there in the background, faint and out of focus, are the extras. The random passersby. Each living a life as vivid and complex as your own. They carry on invisibly around you, bearing the accumulated weight of their own ambitions, friends, routines, mistakes, worries, triumphs, and inherited craziness.

When your life moves on to the next scene, theirs flickers in place, wrapped in a cloud of backstory and inside jokes and characters strung together with countless other stories you’ll never be able to see. That you’ll never know exist. In which you might appear only once. As an extra sipping coffee in the background. As a blur of traffic passing on the highway. As a lighted window at dusk.

That word stayed in my mind and every time I’m out in the crowd watching strangers passing by, I would think of sonder.

Just like sonder, the rest of the words in that book describe small and specific experiences. They do not refer to objects or actions. They name moments that are easy to overlook because they do not demand attention. Reading them made me more aware of how much I move through life without naming what I feel.

Today’s prompt asks what I would want named after me. I thought about it for a while. I could not think of any place or object that felt right. Those things feel distant from how I experience my life day to day. And I do not relate to them in a meaningful way.

And I thought about the book. I would love to be an entry in such a book. A word feels closer because it can hold something that is lived but not always spoken. It can remain small and still carry meaning. It does not need visibility to exist.

I have been writing about living between places. I am Iban. I grew up in Sarawak, and I have lived in Kuala Lumpur for many years now. My life is here and I am raising my family here. I know the places, the roads, the routines, and the pace of this city.

When I return to the longhouse, I notice the difference. I’m fluent in Iban, but sometimes I pause to find the right word. The rhythm is familiar, but I am not fully inside it anymore. I am received with warmth, but there is also a sense that I have come from somewhere else.

That experience has remained with me, but it does not belong to a single location. It moves with me wherever I go. It shows up in small, ordinary moments like in the food I cook. In the stories I tell my children. In the way I think about the place where I come from.

Over time, I have come to see this as a connection that continues across distance. It is not always visible, but it is present. If I were to name that experience, I would keep it simple.

livselaka (n.)
the quiet state of living between places, where connection remains even when belonging is incomplete

Living Between Places

Most people don’t understand what it feels like to live between places. It is not exactly sadness. That is what I would want people to understand first. When they hear “between places,” they think of a wound, like a hole in the heart that never heals. That description does not fit. A “stretching” is more accurate.

I am Iban. My bones know the red earth of Sarawak. That is what my body recognizes first. But I have now lived in Kuala Lumpur longer than I ever lived there. I have a husband who grew up in Penampang, Sabah, and children who have only ever known this city as home. I pay the condo rent and fees. I navigate the highway to Puchong. I visit the Pasar Borneo in Seri Kembangan, where vendors sell dabai that has been flown in from Sarawak. My life is here but “here” does not feel like home in a complete way.

When I go back to the longhouse, I notice it in my cousins’ expressions. I am “the one from KL.” I speak the language, but sometimes the rhythm is slightly off. I have to pause to remember the right word for something I haven’t touched in years. I am welcomed, always, with warmth, food, and laughter, but there is a politeness to it. It’s a subtle sense that I am now a guest. My children, when they come with me, are treated with affection, but also with a gentle bewilderment. They are Iban, but they do not know how to be Iban in the way that is expected. I am no longer fully at home there either.

This leaves me in a scattered position. My identity is not a single point on a map. It is a thread that runs back and forth across the South China Sea. My children are the living proof of this stretch. Their identity extends across even more layers than mine. They are Iban-Kadazan by blood and suburban KL-ites by every lived experience. They eat nasi lemak for breakfast and request ayam pansoh or hinava for their birthday dinner. They speak English and Malay with a city accent and only understand a word or two of Iban or Kadazan. They are not disconnected from their heritage, I make sure of that, but they are also not rooted in it the way I once was. I see them working through their sense of being between places at school when asked where they’re “from.”

I used to feel guilty about this. As if I had not given them a single, stable foundation. I do not feel that way anymore. I have come to understand that geographical distance often reflects a connection, not a lack of it. I remain connected to my family through WhatsApp or Facebook.

Living between places means I am constantly translating language, meaning, belonging, and self. To my KL friends, I am the “exotic” one from Borneo, with the tattoos, living atop the trees, and the stories of the headhunter ancestors. To my family back home, I am the modern one, the city-dweller, and the one who left. Neither captures the full picture. The full truth is that I am both. People who have never left their home place might see this as a tragedy of loss. This misses something important. Staying in one place would have limited what I could carry with me.

I am not fully home in one place. The result is that I have made small homes in many. My identity is scattered like seeds. I am watching them grow, in my children and in the friendships I have built across this country.

It is a complicated way to live, but it is mine. It has made me capable of understanding something essential: that you can love a place deeply and still not belong to it entirely. That belonging can be a choice, a meal you cook, a story you tell, or a journey you make again and again. Many people do not understand what it feels like to live between places. But I do. And in that stretching I have found a form of wholeness I did not expect.

How Often Do I Say No?

Daily writing prompt

How often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?

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According to Oliver Burkeman, the average human lifespan is about 4,000 weeks. It sounds like a large number at first glance, but as I reflect, it starts to feel limited. I will not have time to do everything I want. Every “yes” comes at the expense of something else. The real issue is how often I fail to say no. I admit I don’t say no as often as I should.

I notice these patterns in small moments. For example, I sit at my computer with a task open in front of me. The work is clear and I know what I need to achieve. After a while, I reach for my phone without thinking. I open Instagram and start doomscrolling cat videos. A few minutes pass and sometimes it stretches to half an hour. When I finally look at the clock on the corner of my screen, I feel a small shock. Nothing important happened, but time is gone. This kind of “yes” feels harmless at the time and it happens more often than I realize. Over time, it detracts from the things I claim to care about.

When I was younger, I said yes more easily. I followed whatever felt more interesting at the time and left things unfinished. These were not always big decisions. Sometimes it was something small, like wanting to revise for an upcoming exam but I ended up reading a magazine instead. Repeated often enough, they eventually shaped how I used my time. But back then, I did not recognize them as choices.

Part of the difficulty is how easily my attention shifts. Technology makes distraction easy. But the pull is not only external. There is also an internal urge to avoid discomfort because it is easier to reach for something light than to stay with something that requires effort.

For a long time, I tried to do too many things at once. I thought being efficient meant I could fit more into my time. Instead, I felt stretched thin. I became exhausted, and over time, I felt anxious. I was trying to move everything forward without accepting that my time and energy are limited. It’s a paradox: that pattern created more pressure and not less.

When things didn’t work, I felt frustrated. That frustration sometimes turned into resentment. I blamed my lack of time on external things like my responsibilities, my family, and the situation around me. However, that was not the full picture. Things changed when I began to accept my limits more honestly. I can only do so much; moreover, most of what I do will not be significant on a larger scale.

That realization changed how I use my time. I started to value smaller, ordinary things more: cooking for my family, taking care of the home, and being present in simple moments. No matter how mundane these things are, they are part of my life. It also clarified what matters to me.

When my priorities are unclear, everything starts to feel urgent. It becomes harder to say no because everything feels important. When I know what I want to focus on, it is easier to step away from what does not support it. I still do not say no as often as I should but I notice it more now. I see it in the small decisions that do not seem important at first but if I pause, I can see where they lead.

I Stay a Little Longer

I am on a morning train in Japan, traveling from Tokyo to Kyoto without any hurry to get there. The shinkansen is quiet. There are empty seats on both sides of the aisle. I am seated by the window on the left. The glass is slightly blurred, with thin streaks of dried rain. The air conditioning hums overhead. I take out my tablet and try to read, but I am not really following the words. The train moves quickly past factories, houses, schools, and open fields.

Mount Fuji appears in the distance. Clouds cover parts of it, but the top is still visible, white against a pale blue sky. At its base, the forest is dark and still. We pass rows of apartments. Laundry hangs outside, moving gently in the morning air. An ojisan adjusts his plants on a balcony. A woman walks slowly with a toddler, a shopping bag in her hand. Inside, a staff member pushes a cart down the aisle. The smell of food lingers faintly, a mix of sweet and savory. I reach into my bag for my notebook and pen. I pause and swallow.

I tend to stay with these small scenes longer than I need to. The man on the balcony. The woman and her child. The laundry moving in the same direction. I do not know them, but my mind fills in details without effort. Who they might be. What their days look like. How their lives move within these spaces I only pass through. This has been true for as long as I can remember.

People sometimes say I have a good memory. I can recall certain moments from a distant past with more detail than expected. I have always treated it as ordinary, something I do not pay much attention to. But it is not only memory. When I pass places I have never been before, I find myself imagining the lives inside them. A row of houses is no longer just a row of houses. It becomes a set of possible lives, each one carrying its routines and concerns and small moments no one else sees.

I do not do this intentionally. It happens without effort. The same way I noticed the man moving his plants, or the way the laundry shifts in the wind. I do not stop to question it. I stay with what is in front of me a little longer than I need to.

Because of this, I remember more than I expect to. Not everything. Just certain details that remain clear. A place. A movement. Something small that stays when I return to it later.

The train continues forward. Outside, the scenery changes without pause. Inside, I sit by the window, watching, and then writing it down before it fades.

The Heat Stayed

Daily writing prompt

What is your favorite type of weather?

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I’m not very good at cooking.

I usually keep my meals simple. I prepare food that is easy and does not need a lot of time or attention. Cooking has never been something I enjoy. I find the act tiresome. The heat, the standing, and the continual movement in a hot kitchen. It wears me out quickly.

But today was different. I decided to prepare something special for the family. It was more than just a meal this time, a little more considered. I took my time, slicing the vegetables: eggplant, okra, and long beans. I observed the knife’s path, the way it transformed the surfaces as it went. Usually, I don’t focus on such details. Today I did.

The kitchen was hot. The heat was not only coming from the stove but also from the long, hot day. The sun was dazzling. The air felt still. As I stirred the pot, I could feel the heat descended on my skin and stay there. It made me feel sluggish.

I dislike this weather. If I could, I would always pick something cooler. Rain or a cloudy afternoon with gentle light and lighter air. My body moves more effortlessly on such days. Less clutter in my head.

Today was not one of those days. It was bright and sunny outside, and I was preparing something spicy in a warm kitchen. The combination felt strange. The heat from the stove, the heat from the weather, and the heat from the food layered on top of each other. I stirred the curry and watched it thicken. The aroma and the warmth mixed as they spread through the room.

The heat persisted when I finally sat down to eat. In the air, on my skin, and in my food. The curry was delicious. A little spicy, but not too much. The veggies kept their form. The broth wasn’t overly thick.

I took my time eating. The spiciness stayed on my tongue. The warmth remained in my chest. Outside, the light had not softened yet.