Little Stories 328: Still Singing Along

It goes back more than twenty years, to a time when I listened to their songs on my MP3 player on repeat while walking to kuliah.

The internet was still a luxury then. If I wanted to go online, I had to queue for a computer at the campus computer centre or the library and wait for my turn. New music was not something I could summon instantly with a tap of a screen. I only got to refresh my playlist when I went home and asked my then "friend" to help me hunt down songs on LimeWire.

Then I entered Uniten and became an IT student, so the internet became the norm. I had access to the world, and I also had a relationship with an Indonesian boy who helped me explore more of that realm (not sure whether it was official; we would probably call it a situationship these days). So my love for Indonesian bands grew during my university years, much to the confusion of my siblings. They felt it did not suit my personality. Then again, a lot of my playlist probably does not match people's perception of me. But I do speak in music, and I love the beauty of words in songs.

So, a lot of my young adult life was accompanied by their songs. 

They were there through various phases: situationships, drama, heartbreak, yearning, and love. This was "personal", personal.

When I saw the poster for the concert, I shared it with my sister immediately. I had to go this time; I missed the last one. We bought the tickets early and I waited for months. Last weekend, we spent four hours there, being entertained by these middle-aged men, way past my normal bedtime. I was excited, to say the least. I'm still not sure whether it was right to drag my sister along. She had gone to the previous concert and was not nearly as excited as I was, but she came along anyway. Kesian kot.

And it made me wonder: if I went to a concert alone, how would I feel?

I'm dragging my other sister to see another concert later end of year. I imagine myself sitting there alone, enjoying the music without worrying whether anyone else is having a good time. Maybe I would enjoy it being by myself in a crowd. Maybe then I would not have to drag anyone along anymore. Maybe it would be my thing. 

Like the running, you know. 

Little Thing 344: Who Would I Tell?

I read a good book recently. It came to me by surprise, and I knew nothing about it going in. Some people have said it reminds them of Piranesi, but I disagree. It never made me feel as suffocated as Piranesi did. I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman is a 1995 sci-fi dystopian novel:

It follows thirty-nine adult women and a young, unnamed narrator who have no memory of their past and are kept imprisoned in an underground cage by silent male guards. When the guards suddenly abandon them, the women escape into a desolate, lifeless world. From there, the novel shifts into an existential exploration of isolation, freedom, and what it means to be human, as the women—and eventually only the narrator—try to survive in this barren wasteland.

Not as sprawling or messy as Dostoevsky, this book gave me the same feeling as The Road by Cormac McCarthy or Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It quietly dismantles your assumptions and leaves you staring at the ceiling, wondering what remains when everything else has been stripped away.

It made me question my existence on a Saturday afternoon, which is perhaps the highest compliment I can give a book. I am still thinking about it days later. 

If I can no longer share anything with anyone, what is the point of my existence?

I have always taken pride in my ability to embrace solitude. Over time, I have accepted that my difficulty in connecting with others is simply part of how I am wired. But the book left me wondering: if there were no one to share my thoughts with, through conversation, writing, art, or any other medium, would those thoughts still matter?

Would a poem still be a poem if no one ever read it? Would a story still have meaning if it remained untold? Would love, grief, joy, or curiosity carry the same weight if they existed only within the boundaries of a single mind?

Part of me wants to believe that meaning can exist independently, that a life can be worthwhile simply because it is lived. Yet another part wonders whether meaning is something we create together, whether our thoughts become real only when they are witnessed, received, or echoed back by another person.

Perhaps that is what unsettled me most about this novel. It is not merely about isolation. It asks what remains of our humanity when there is no audience, no community, and no one left to remember us. And whether meaning is something we possess, or something we give to one another.

-

As someone who has spent most of her life writing, I found myself carrying that question long after I finished the book. We often say that we write for ourselves, but do we really? If there is no reader, no witness, no possibility of being understood, does the act still hold the same meaning?

When I write, who am I writing to?

Tu lah, writers are funny in that sense, we call it solitude bagai, then spend hundreds of pages trying to reach someone. Kemooon sisterr. 

Little Thing 343: The Things We Endure

Last night before bed, Sofi asked me to massage her legs.

“Mami, today I sakit kaki. But I tahan. I did not cry.”

Yesterday, we spent four hours at Kiddytopia. She played the entire time. Afterwards, we went for lunch and bought groceries. Before we went, she had promised me she would not throw a tantrum from being too tired. I told her, “Remember that we are going to have fun today, ok?”.

The day before had been difficult. She had spent hours at the playground near our house in the evening after swimming earlier that morning. Maybe she was also overwhelmed from being in kampung for almost a week. That night, she cried and complained that her legs hurt so much from all the activities. She refused dinner, refused everything, and only wanted to sleep.

So when she said she wanted to go to Kiddytopia the next day, I was surprised. I thought she would want to stay home and recharge. But we went anyway, because she was being so nice about not wanting to ask me for anything. 

But 4 hours. 

She endured the pain and did not complain because she had promised she wouldn’t. Even though I knew how exhausted she must have been. Even though there were little lebam-lebam on her legs from falling while playing at the indoor playground. Even though I knew she was famished because we had delayed lunch far beyond her usual time. Even though she had to do more walking to buy groceries afterwards. 

Before we left, I told her, “This is your choice, so you kenot ngada2 afterwards, okay?”

And she did.

She endured the pain, hunger and exhaustion, by choice.  Not even one complaint.

At the end of the day, she looked at me and said, “I had so much fun today, Mami. Tq Mami,” before giving me sweet little kissus.

-

If they wanted to, they would.

And if you say you would do something, do it. Easy math, even a 6 year old understands that. 

Little Thing 342: Borrowed Time

 

Books:

Remember when I said I'd probably DNF some of these books? Well, because I apparently don’t even listen to my own advice, I told myself to sit with the boredom and endure the journey. I finished Must I Go (Yiyun Li) and The Idiot (Elif Batuman), probably after a year of slow reading. I’ve currently reached 27 books this year. Several others are still in progress, scattered around the house and across my Kindle like little unfinished lives.

The books I finished since the last March: 

• Here After by Amy Lin
• The Great Mental Models , V2
• The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami
• Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney (*reread)
• The Idiots by Elif Batuman
• Strangers by Belle Burden
• I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokpokki by Baek Se-hee
• Must I Go by Yiyun Li
• Ghost by Raina Telgemeier (novel graphic)
• Dept of Speculation by Jenny Offil

I still don't watch anything other than Gilmore Girls rerun. 

PBAKL is tempting, only sans humans.

-

The Eid Adha:

Sofi and I went back to my mom’s the weekend before Eid, and we had a good time together. Or at least, a version of a good time, if we pretend everything was rainbows and butterflies.

She wasn’t with me during Eid this year, and somewhere in the deepest corner of my heart, I was mopey and missed her terribly. But I promised myself I’d try not to become the party pooper this week. It wasn’t easy. I didn’t have Af to calm my triggered soul, or Sofi to distract me from what is usually one of the harder times for me. So I licked my wounds and sighed into the exhaustion.

Ma asked whether I'm going to cry myself out when I get back.

Of course, who wouldn't?

We own nothing, bb.

-

Going Half:

So, it's June. Almost halfway through 2026.

My pov has shifted since January. Somewhere along the way, I received clarity in a box. Answers to questions that had quietly accumulated over the years. The kind I once begged for. It took me a while to process everything. Perhaps I am still processing it. I told my sister, "this is me verbally processing the information", to that she answered, "I know".

But I think I’m getting there.

There is a full stop at the edge of the line.

Little Thing 341: The Architecture of Moving On

Af asked me what I do when I’m feeling stuck, and I’ve been reflecting on that question.

I’m impatient, goal-oriented, methodical. My instinct has always been to solve things. If something feels wrong, I go straight to the core and look for the real problem instead of treating the symptoms. I don't avoid things whenever something feels uncomfortable and I don’t really know how to do surface level. I tend to see several layers deep.

The problem is that some things cannot be solved immediately. Some problems require time, or grief, or experience. There are layers to move through, levels to graduate from. But for me to feel fully at ease, I need every loose thread tied up. My brain works like a spider web of information. Everything connects to everything else. Plan A links to Plan B, which depends on solving Plan C first. Every decision branches into ten possible consequences.

So I never really relax. Not completely anyway.

-

Right now, I’m dealing with some sort of heartbreak. So naturally, I’m trying to intellectualize everything that’s happening to me: waking up at 3:30 a.m., losing weight, the inability to eat, the mild depression, struggling to focus on work, the absurd amount of caffeine I’m consuming just to function, the crying. Oh my God, the crying. Full heartbreak starter pack.

And I don’t have the patience for it. That’s the thing.

I’m completely aware of what’s happening to me, almost clinically aware, but awareness and control are two very different things. I can explain the mechanisms behind every symptom and still be unable to stop any of it. That’s the part that annoys me the most. Not even the sadness itself anymore, but the loss of authority over my own mind and body. Like suddenly I’m no longer the architect of the system, just another person trapped inside it, watching alarms go off in every room. 

So, back to the question: what do I do when I’m feeling stuck?

I have a whole toolkit for surviving difficult things, and I don’t really want to list all the rituals required just to keep functioning. But one thing I’ve been doing lately is this: I do the things that scare me. The things that challenge me. The things I normally would have postponed until I felt more ready, more stable, or more certain.

For example:

• I bought a small space for me and Sofi.
• I submitted my short story for a contest.
• I applied for Japanese language classes. (Rejected - Full)
• I started going on solo dates.
• I submitted an application for something big. (I’ll talk about it if it happens)
• I shared the songs I wrote with singer-songwriters.
• I bought Joji tix !
• I reached out to this brand (still no reply)

Every week, I try to do things that scare me, partly to remind myself that I’m still alive, and partly because heartbreak has this strange effect where disappointment loses some of its power. Like once your nervous system has already declared a national emergency, rejection emails start feeling almost administrative. What do I have to loose, kan. Alang2, I'm in pain, let's use this efficiently. 

The idea behind it is that the more new things slotted into your brain, the more your mind starts believing that life is still moving, still expanding, still within your control. New experiences interrupt the depressive loop. Slowly, you begin teaching your brain to move on, telling it: “Hey, this is good. We can continue. We are expanding. We’re okay.”

That's the light of hope and that's your past dream

Some doors might eventually open, new opportunities, who knows.  

You should try it. It’s strangely refreshing. Almost funny, even.

Little Thing 340: Access Tickets

I came out from my deep well and looked outside for a bit. An old friend reached out, and I responded.

I had erased her whole existence for the past few years while I was in crisis, and she told me I had done it before. Once when my parents were separating and getting divorced. Once when I fell in love with someone I shouldn’t have. And then again these past few years. The same pattern repeating itself whenever I am faced with something too big for me to handle.

I can see my own red flag in how I handle crisis. When life becomes too much, I cave inward. It is not new. I feel safer inside my own box, protecting my heart while I try to process whatever enormous thing is happening in my head. I think the people close to me know this by now. The solitary confinement I retreat into just to survive my own thoughts.

The things that happen in my brain when there is “too much” sound like noise. Sometimes fast, sometimes unbearably slow, but always loud in their own way. In Inside Out 2, there is a scene where Anxiety becomes overwhelmed and starts doing everything at once. The mind moves frantically, but right in the middle of all that chaos, it becomes stuck. Frozen. Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things happening at once. I thought that was depicted beautifully.

When something like this happens, I usually turn everything else off and go into safe mode. I focus only on the things I can control. I stop making decisions. I find space to breathe and take things one step at a time. Usually, I shut everything else out because I need silence in order to listen. My brain can already be unbearably loud, so I do not let anyone else in.

I know it is not the best way to handle difficult phases in life, but it became my default survival method.

These days, though, I give smaller access tickets to my siblings so they can check in on me because I knowwwww they are concerned. (Okay, okay, fine.) I am also more aware of what is happening while it is happening, so sometimes I will say, “I’m overwhelmed, please give me space,” instead of disappearing completely. I try to ride the wave of emotion instead of avoiding it. Then I sit with it long enough until I can finally find a solution, or at least a decision.

-

Maybe this is not growth in the dramatic sense. Maybe it is just learning how to leave the door slightly open while I disappear for a while. Not everyone needs to enter. But at least now, someone knows where I went. 

Tiny improvement ✦

Go awayyyh

Note: I noticed that people that stay in my circle are orang2 degil in my life, because dorang tak bagi I chan lari jauh sorg2 🙄

Little Thing 339: The Life Grid

I got inspired after watching Beef a few weeks ago, and decided to design and code something I call The Life Grid. 

The idea is simple. On average, a human lives about 80 years.

So:

80 years = 960 months = 960 little boxes

Each box represents one month of your life:

When you open the file in your browser, you key in your birth year and month.

It then calculates how many months you’ve already lived, and how many boxes you have left.

• Filled boxes are your past.
• Empty boxes are your remaining time.

Yes, I know. It sounds a bit morbid, maybe it is a bit morbid. But for me, it creates clarity. A quiet reminder that time is finite and not all of us will even reach all 960 boxes. Every time I look at it, I find myself asking a simple question: Do I still have enough time? 

I also added a few small features:

• You can mark milestones using different colors for different phases of life
• Add notes to specific boxes as little memory anchors
• Drop in emojis (a ring for marriage, a star for accomplishments, etc.)
• Export a printable version
• Switch between color and black-and-white modes
• .html file (so data is locally saved in your browser until you reset it)

Ultimately, this started as a side quest on a random office day. I designed it, then prompted AI to help with the coding so I could interact with it. It’s fairly basic, I’ve been tweaking parts of the coding myself along the way. I didn’t make it to measure productivity or to optimize life into something efficient. I made it because I wanted to see time differently, perhaps visually. 

It makes me be a bit more intentional, and pay more attention to the passing time.

Note: Let me know if you want the .html file, I can email it to you. 

Little Thing 338: Pain is Pain, Kan

A week ago, I had a mini surgery on my right eyelid. I’ve been having repeated eye infections for over a month (ketumbit), so I went to a normal clinic for a consult, and they referred me to a specialist on Sunday. I went after work on Monday. The doctor said we should just do the minor surgery that day. I was not mentally ready, but suddenly I was lying down on a surgery bed being prepped. No one even knew I was there, because I didn’t plan on it.

The nurse covered me with those fabric things over my upper body, I couldn’t see anything, and the doctor started doing some uncomfortable stuff on my eye. Thank God I didn’t see anything, because he really just went in and did what he needed to do. I only heard and felt things. He made a small incision, took out the pus, cleaned everything. It was probably done in 20 minutes. I walked out with an eye bandage like a pirate, went home on a Grab, and got myself two days of medical leave. And another course of antibiotics, which just ended today as I’m writing this.

On the same day I had the surgery, I was also heartbroken over something quite major in my life. I was actually waiting to go home from work just so I could cry, so the surgery ended up being this very impromptu, unplanned thing on the worst day possible. And for the next two days, I had to stop myself from crying because the cut was still wet. That was probably the hardest part. Not being able to physically cry. Having to hold everything in.

Thankfully the cut healed quite fast. And I’ve been crying every day since.

Both my sisters knew I was having a hard time, but my brother didn’t. Or maybe he did, and he gave me the space. I’m going to be a bit stereotypical here and say men don’t always process emotions the same way we do. So I’ve been avoiding him because I don’t feel like explaining things that might not even land. He asked me how long I’ll be “closing” this blog. I just rolled my eyes and ignored him for a while.

I told my sisters not to worry. I’m okay. I’m eating. I’m not suicidal. I’m just heartbroken, and I will go through this. I always do. My sister has been texting me a lot these days because she’s “concerned” - I have a history with breaking down dramatically. So I’ve just been openly vulnerable with them. Because whatever, it’s just pain, and I’ve been in pain for the longest time anyway, kan. What difference does it make?

When she asked how am I doing: “I die every day. Tp every morning I bangun”.

At this point, I think I’ve become a bit nonchalant with my pain. Not because it doesn’t hurt, it does, it is amazing how much we can feel inside but because I’ve decided to just ride it out until God decides it’s time for me to move on to the next level. You might feel uncomfortable with how good I am in talking about my pain because we are living in a society that hides uncomfortable truth and I don't answer "how are you doing" with "I'm good". I hate to feel like a victim, so I choose to accept the truth whatever hard it might be because that is the reality of it.

And I’ve been thinking that maybe I should just use this ability I have, to articulate what’s happening in my mind into written words. I’ve been practising this for almost 20 years. I know a lot of people struggle to put their feelings into words. Maybe if they read how I process things, they’ll feel like it’s something they can learn too. Yesterday I saw Ocean Vuong's interview and I noticed he can write so beautifully because he let himself feel the emotions, he accepted them. 

So I’m just going to say it out loud now. I’m a writer and I'll write.

Because I write as honestly as I can and if I die tomorrow, at least I know I’ve been doing this consistently for the past 20 years. So, maybe closing this blog isn't the right choice because I don't want to make myself much smaller than how I already feel. 

Let my words take a space. 

And you shouldn't be here. This is a space for people who are not afraid to feel. 

Little Thing 337: In Between Opinions

I had a conversation with someone recently, and it’s been sitting with me ever since.

We talked about relationships; trust, emotional maturity, boundaries. The kind of topics that sound simple until you actually try to define them. It wasn’t a debate and it wasn’t an agreement either. Just a back-and-forth of opinions, hypotheticals, and quiet disagreements. Nothing was resolved, but something stayed.

Human emotion is a complicated terrain. We like to believe we can understand others, but we’re always looking through the lens of our own experiences, our own biases, our own wounds. True neutrality is rare and maybe even impossible. At some point, we choose what we stand for; our values, our beliefs, the things that shape us into who we are. And if we don’t choose, we just drift.

But before that choice, there’s a phase I’m starting to appreciate more. The in-between. The space where you don’t take a side yet; where you let ideas sit, where you examine patterns, question assumptions, and allow new inputs to exist without immediately filtering them through what you already believe. That’s what those conversations felt like. Not arguments to win, but controlled collisions. A way of thinking out loud. The intention wasn’t to prove a point, but to understand the structure of someone else’s.

I’ve always believed communication is one of the most important skills you can have. But lately, I think there’s something just as important, maybe even more honest: the ability to see patterns. Because words are easy but consistency is not. If you want to understand someone, don’t just listen to what they say. Watch what they repeat because people don’t change as easily as we like to think. They can try, they can improve, they can make an effort, but the core of who they are tends to stay. I know this because I see it in myself. Every version of “better” me is still, me, just more intentional. 

So listen to what they say, but more importantly, observe their action. 

At the end of that conversation, she said something simple.

“Stop and ask why people do what they do. If you were in their position, what reasons would make it make sense?”

And that stayed with me. Because when you actually try to step into someone else’s perspective, something shifts. Not always. Sometimes you still disagree but sometimes, your certainty softens. Your judgment loosens its grip. Slowly, things that felt black and white start to blur. 

Mmm.

Maybe understanding isn’t there to change my mind, maybe it’s there to slow me down before I decide.

That's Howl, true self hidden in his own curse

Little Stories 327: The Shortcut Mind

I have a confession to make: I love hot showers.

I can’t do cold water. Since I moved a couple of years ago, my rented apartment has a hot shower, and I’ve been using it ever since. My electric bill has never even reached RM40, so don’t judge me. This is the one luxury I give myself, unapologetically, every single day. Until last weekend.

Every time I turned on the switch, the hot shower didn’t work. So for the past four days, I had to use cold water. Automatically, I was reminded of the first week I moved in. The hot shower didn’t work back then either, the technician came and fixed the switch. So for the past four days, I kept telling myself I needed to call the technician again. It must be the same problem. Until this morning.

While showering, I lingered on the problem and asked myself: What if it’s not the switch for the shower, but something else? What if a switch on the main board tripped? So I checked the main electrical board. And lo and behold, one of the switches was off. I pushed it back up, hot water again.

-

 

I read about the Least Effort Principle yesterday, and about Thought Experiments this morning. Both oddly relate to this whole hot shower incident.

• First, I assumed the hot water wasn’t working because it had happened before. My brain defaulted to the same solution: call the technician. Least effort, fastest route, familiar pattern.
• Second, I sat with the problem, I questioned it: what ifs. I ran a quiet little thought experiment without even realizing it.

And I found the solution without having to call anyone.

What I’m trying to say is this: our default mode is to reach for the fastest way out of a problem. But being an overthinker means I don’t always do that. I linger, I sit in it. I swim around in the problem until I find something. There are pros and cons to this. The good part is that sometimes, I find better solutions. The bad part is when I stay too long and spiral. 

Right now, I think I’m just trying to figure out how to manage that middle space; how long to stay, and when to step out.