“I regret being unable to say my final farewell. To the things that are already gone, to a time that has already passed, I want to say a belated farewell.” (Reply 1988)

Just like Deok-sun once looked back on her youth through the K-drama “Reply 1988”, I imagine that one day I will look back at 2025 with a softer heart than the one I have now. But speaking from where I stand today, 2025 is not a year I am ready to remember fondly yet.

I thought 2025 would be a year where I said “welcome” to many things. Instead, it became a year where I had to say “goodbye” over and over again. I remember entering 2025 in a tired, hopeful way, believing that after everything I carried through 2024, this would finally be a gentler year. I truly believed life would loosen its grip on me.

Just when I thought the hardest part was over, 2025 broke my heart in ways I didn’t see coming.

It became the year of my biggest heartbreaks: the kinds that instantly drain the color out of my days. The kinds that leave me functioning, but not really living. There were moments when I genuinely didn’t know how to continue life, not because I wanted to give up, but because I no longer recognized the path I was on. The future I thought I was walking toward abruptly disappeared, leaving me standing still, holding questions with no answers. I felt lost. Disoriented. Like someone who missed their stop and didn’t know where to get off next.

And yet, life didn’t pause. I still had to show up. I still had to do my work. I still had to smile when needed. So I learned how to cry silently, to grieve privately, and to keep functioning outside while crumbling inside. Everything that has happened that year humbled me deeply. It stripped away my confidence and sense of control until I felt small and fragile.

Through my lens, 2025 felt like a season where everyone else seemed to know where they were going, while I stood still, unsure of my next step. The world kept moving: technology advanced, careers progressed, people fell in love, and people moved on. And there I was, trying to gather the scattered pieces of myself with my powerless hands.

Yet 2025 taught me that survival does not always look brave. Sometimes it seems like getting through the day without collapsing. Sometimes it looks like crying in silence and still choosing not to disappear. Sometimes it looks like trusting Allah even when I don’t understand His plan at all. Sometimes it simply means whispering: “I don’t get this… but I’m still here.”

If 2024 was about endurance, then 2025 was about vulnerability. About admitting that I was hurt. About accepting that healing is not linear. About realizing that being “strong” doesn’t mean being unaffected: it means choosing to hope, even when the road is dark. I decided to embrace fate with trust, even when sadness buried me. 

I don’t yet know what meaning this year will hold in the future. Maybe one day I’ll look back and see how this heartbreak redirected me. Maybe one day it will all make sense. Or maybe it won’t, and that’s okay too. For now, all I know is this: I survived a year I thought I wouldn’t. And maybe that is enough.

A quiet goodbye to 2025. The year I lost the most important people in my life. The year I felt the most lost. The year my heart hurt the most. The year I learned that even when my heart felt unbearably heavy, Allah never left me alone with it. And if happiness cannot come yet, at least He accompanies me.

And as I step forward, carrying everything 2025 has left me with, I allow myself one small hope. That in 2026, I will see myself smile again: not the kind of smile I wear out of obligation, politeness, or strength, but a smile that rises genuinely from within. A smile born from a heart that has finally felt peace again. 

This year is the time to heal, Im. It's time for the long-overdue smile to bloom. 

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Read also: Reply 2024
image source: Lisa Maria via pinterest

(Inspired by “Second Chance” episode by Pancatera)

    Now when I look back, I realize that for the past ten years, I was almost always sad. It’s a strange thing to admit because if you were to look at me back then, you’d see someone who smiled often and carried herself as if everything was fine. But deep inside, even in moments that looked like happiness, there was always a quiet sadness that never truly left me.

    It felt like I was living in a constant state of waiting: waiting for the day all the pain would finally make sense. I kept believing that if I was suffering this much, then surely, something extraordinary must be waiting for me ahead. That one day, I’d be able to say, “Ah, this is why I had to go through all of that.”. I imagined some kind of poetic fate: that I would rise from all the hardships with a heart full of smiles, stepping into days that finally felt beautiful.

    But life didn’t unfold that way. There was no fairy tale-like plot, no grand revelation, no sudden rescue, no miracle ending. Instead, unexpectedly, I fell even deeper. It was as if I kept walking through a tunnel that only grew darker and narrower. Until one day, I couldn’t see any light at all. It felt endless, as though the sun had simply forgotten I existed.

    So, I stopped walking. I stopped trying to find my way out. Maybe, I thought, this is just how my life is meant to be: an unending stretch of endurance. Perhaps the happiness stock in my life had simply run out. Maybe I had used up all the joy I was ever meant to have. The older I got, the more I believed it so I just learned to live with pain quietly.

    At my lowest point, when everything inside me felt too heavy to bear, I decided to go to the one place where my heart might finally find rest: the house of Allah. I thought, if there’s anywhere on earth where I am the most seen, heard, and understood, it must be there. So I packed my things, and with a weary soul, I went to perform umroh.

    I still remember telling my friend at the airport, with teary eyes, “My life feels so bitter. I hope I’ll come back feeling better.”. But, deep down I didn’t even go with big expectations. I only wanted to tell Him everything: the sorrows that had been sitting inside me for years, too deep to explain to anyone else. In front of the Ka’bah, I cried in a way I hadn’t cried before, out of surrender. I told Him how tired I was of being strong. How I no longer knew how to be hopeful after a series of pitiful life events. How I wanted to believe that I could still have a gentle life, even if I couldn’t see it yet.

    And then, something heartwarming appeared before my eyes. My roommates were three women in their 50s and 60s, best friends who came together to perform umroh. They were devoted in their worship, yet they also carried such lightness in their hearts. They prayed with tears, but also laughed with joy. They teased each other, shared snacks, and told stories about their families and lives with warmth that filled the room.

    Watching them, something soft flickered inside me. Seeing their happiness, it was the first time in a long while that I thought, “Maybe I can be like that someday.” Maybe I can also grow older and still find reasons to smile. Maybe my life’s happiness hasn’t run out after all. Maybe there are still things to look forward to: moments yet to come, people yet to meet, memories yet to be made.

    Maybe my happiness isn’t the bright sun constantly shining over me, but a collection of small candles along the way: the heart that slowly accepts Allah's decree, the people I encounter, the little kindnesses I receive, the warm words that breaks through a tired heart. They are the lights from Allah that reminds me that even in darkness, there are still reasons to keep walking.

    So now, I want to give myself a second chance: a second chance to live. To stop merely surviving and start feeling again. To stop blaming myself for everything happened in my life. To stop rushing toward a future that must “make sense,” and start appreciating the small pieces of joy that already surround me.

    Also a second chance to forgive myself, for my failures to make my late parents happy, for being heavily lacking, for not healing fast enough, for feeling lost, for being sad almost all the time. A second chance to believe that Allah has never forgotten me, even in the moments I thought He did. While others might walk under the bright sun and enjoy the scenery effortlessly, I’ll learn to cherish the small candles I find along the way in this tunnel.

    I will heal insyaAllah. With time, with patience, with faith, and with every small step forward, I will heal. Someday I will find myself smiling from the heart again. Someday, I will perform umroh again, with a better condition, with a heart full of gratitude insyaAllah.

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    I remember a reel by Putri Ratu Balqist that appeared on my Instagram’s explore tab. She narrated: When I talk “I don’t want to get married. Besides, I never deserved to be loved by anyone.”...... but I cry in Madinah.

    And I felt that deeply. Not necessarily just about marriage, but I also often told myself I didn’t expect anything anymore. I found it hard to stay hopeful with this broken-into-pieces heart of mine. But I cried in Madinah because deep down, I realized it's not I don't want to hope. I just think I don't deserve it. I think Allah is extremely kind but I just don't deserve it.

(Inspired by “Sore: Istri Dari Masa Depan” (Sore, Wife from The Future), a movie by Yandy Laurens)

If one day I wake up and find someone next to me claiming to be my husband from the future, I think I would be stunned into silence. Not because I don’t want to believe it, but because deep down, I’ve never been so sure that I would actually find him. And yet, if he did appear, my first words would probably be: “Are you really my husband from the future?”

I would want to know what made him decide to come back to this very moment. Did he want to bring me a message? A warning? A glimpse of what’s waiting ahead? Or perhaps a gentle guidance on the things I should change, so that one day, I will carry fewer regrets.

But first of all, let me ask about the dark cloud that is hanging over me.

Do I still look the same: someone who hides misery behind her smile? Has the sadness that once weighed so heavily on my heart finally softened with time? Do tears still wait quietly in the corners of my eyes, ready to fall at the smallest trigger? Does my breathing still feel heavy from grief, or have I finally learned to breathe freely again? The deep pain I’ve carried for several months, tell me, has it healed?

And then, what about the life we’ll share? What kind of wedding will it be for someone like me, who has never been able to picture herself in a wedding dress? What kind of family will we build together?  What kind of home will we call ours? Will it have a small backyard garden, like the one I’ve always dreamed of?

Of course, I know he might not give me any answers. Maybe he would just smile, keeping the future a mystery. Maybe that’s how it’s meant to be, because some journeys are not meant to be spoiled in advance, but lived, step by step. And that’s okay. Because just knowing he exists, knowing that somewhere out there, someone is destined for me, would already be enough to make my heart a little lighter. I would carry that thought with me: that I am not walking toward nothing, but toward someone.

So thank you for existing. Thank you for letting the current me know that you exist. I have a lot of shortcomings, so please treat me with patience, understanding, and mercy. And I promise, when our paths finally cross, I will take good care of you, too. For now, let’s pray for each other until the day our prayers are answered in each other’s presence.

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(I write this today on my late mom’s birthday. Her last wish was to see me get married. I am deeply sorry that I couldn’t make it happen while you were still here. That regret still weighs on me every now and then. I pray that your wish, though delayed, still found its way to me. I will sincerely pray about it.)

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P.S.: It took me 5 months to finally be able to write again. Hello, everyone. I hope you and your loved ones are doing well. 

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image source: idntimes.com

“Please come home now. Your dad and mom faced a misfortune.”

My heart stopped. This is the moment every child living far from home fears the most: the call that asks you to come back, but not from the voices of your parents. The call that shatters the illusion that there will always be more time.

I rushed home in tears, my hands trembling as I clutched my ticket, my breath uneven as I boarded the train. The journey stretched endlessly, each mile carrying me closer to a reality I could not bear to face. I pressed my forehead against the cold window, silently pleading: please, let this be a mistake. Please Ya Allah, I beg you.

But it wasn’t.

I arrived home to find two lifeless bodies lying in the living room. My parents, who once filled this home with laughter and warmth, were now covered in white shrouds.

Time stopped. My world stopped. I wanted to wake up, but this nightmare was infuriatingly real. As I walked closer to their corpses, these thoughts ran through my mind: How am I supposed to continue life without their voices calling my name? Without their prayers in every step I take? Without their hands, once so strong, now forever still?

I tried to console myself with words meant to offer comfort:

“Someone’s fate, including their death, is already decided 50.000 years before the world was created. Please accept it.”

“Your parents were taken in such a beautiful way, you couldn’t ask for better. You should be patient.”

“No matter how much you cry, they will not come back. Please be strong.”

“Hold yourself together. Your younger brother needs you to be someone to comfort him.”

But nothing could reach me. Nothing could make this hurt less. All I thought was: I am supposed to continue life after this? Isn’t it too impossible with the heart that will carry great pain all my life? Also how? Someone should tell me how to continue life after something so heartbreaking like this.

I thought, maybe with time, the pain would dull. That grief would grow tired of tormenting me. But days passed, and I remained numb. I still cried even when I told myself to let it go because there was nothing I can’t do anymore to bring them back. I moved through life as if in a fog, my body present but my soul somewhere else, somewhere still clinging to the past, still reaching for hands that would never again hold mine.

As I couldn’t rewind time, I would try to do everything I could do, including saying the words I never said. Here are the words I’ve been wanting to tell you both, Mom and Dad. I regret that I couldn’t say them while staring at your eyes:

Mom and Dad, even if I could choose my fate, I would still choose to be your daughter a thousand times over. I asked Allah to make me yours not once, but twice: here in this world and in the hereafter. Forgive me for every time I failed you, for every hardship I unknowingly caused. Forgive me for being difficult when all you ever gave me was love. I regret every unspoken thank you, every moment I took for granted, every time I thought we had more time. Thank you for raising me, for giving me all that you had, for being my home. I witnessed that you two had done your best. I pray you both have a beautiful life there.  

Until we meet again in the hereafter. 

Love,

iim