“You’re the pretty sunshine of my life.” is a line from My Sunshine, the OST of a Chinese drama adapted from Gu Man’s novel “Silent Separation”. The story revolves around Zhao Mo Sheng, a girl with a bright and cheerful way of looking at the world, and He Yi Chen, an aloof man who eventually finds himself surrendering to her persistent efforts to win his heart. To him, unknowingly, she becomes his sunshine. Even years after their silent separation due to a misunderstanding, he still keeps her in mind as “my sunshine”.

Seven years later, they meet again by chance in a crowded supermarket. The girl he remembers is no longer quite the same. The sunshine that once seemed to follow her everywhere has become covered by somber clouds. The woman in front of him looked like someone whose light had dimmed, carrying a gigantic uncertainty and scars from things she had survived along the way.

Perhaps that is why I have always felt a strange connection to Zhao Mo Sheng. Somewhere along the way, I think I became a little less like the girl I used to be. Life happened, one thing after another. And then, one day, I noticed that the person looking back at me in the mirror was carrying a burden she was barely able to bear. There was a permanent sadness lingering in her eyes. I slowly became someone I barely recognized: duller, as if life had placed a grayscale filter over my life; quieter, as if the world no longer needed to hear from me; and less confident, like a soldier who had lost every battle she had ever fought.

Therefore, I think I lived as though I were waiting to be saved. I imagined that perhaps one day, someone would come into my life and make everything feel lighter. Someone who would understand the parts of me I could not explain. Someone who would bring warmth into the places that had become cold. Someone who would become my sunshine.

There is something comforting about that idea. It gives me permission to believe that my life is still incomplete for a reason. That my heart feels hollow because the hero of the story simply hasn’t arrived yet. That happiness is somewhere ahead of me, waiting in the shape of another person. That one day, when the right person finally comes along, everything that feels difficult now will somehow become easier.

But somewhere in all that waiting, I forgot something important. I was still here. I was the person who had been with me through every difficult season. The one who picked myself up every time life knocked me down was me. The one who kept going even when I did not know how things would turn out was me. I was the one who had carried all my dreams, disappointments, mistakes, grief, hopes, and little joys this far.

So perhaps I did not need someone to rescue me from the life I was living.  Of course, we all need love, companionship, friendship, family, and the beautiful feeling of being known, but no one else should have to be responsible for bringing the light back into my life. I am someone I am waiting for.

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And so, these days, I am trying to be kinder to myself. This might be one of the hardest things I have ever had to learn. For years, I was very good at pushing myself, at questioning and criticizing myself, at wondering whether I was doing enough, achieving enough, becoming enough. I also treated myself as though love were something I had to earn.

I don't want to live like that anymore. I want to become a softer place for myself to land. I want to speak to myself the way I speak to the people I love. I want to stop making happiness something I have to deserve before I am allowed to feel it. I want to finally live.

***

Today, I want to say something to myself, to the girl who was once so effortlessly cheerful, to the current woman I am, and to the person I am still becoming: you have spent so much of your life trying to become worthy of the things you wanted. You tried to be good enough, strong enough, lovable enough. You have spent all of your life thinking about other people first while neglecting yourself. Perhaps you don't have to do that anymore.

On this birthday, I want to make you a promise: I will love you unconditionally. I will take care of you, be gentler with you, let you rest, let you grow. I will let you be happy without asking whether you have earned it first.

And also, please don’t wait for the sunshine anymore. You are the sunshine. And it may have taken me far too long to realize it, but I want you to know this now: You’re the pretty sunshine of my life. You always have been. And I hope, from today onward, you finally believe it, too.

I wish you all the best things in the world, my sunshine.

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Image source: Ruslan Sikunov via pexels

  

Olivia Rodrigo will release her upcoming album You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love next month, and that title has stayed in my head lately. If I had to rename it into something that feels closer to my own life, mine would probably be: “You seem pretty sad for a woman living pretty well.”

Because my life is pretty good, Alhamdulillah. My personal life is quite stable and grounded. I have a career and education I worked very hard for. I get invited into rooms I once only dreamed of entering. I teach, volunteer, mentor, create content, and get to meet brilliant people along the way. Sometimes I still pause and think, “How did I even get here?” because a part of me still feels like the young girl from a small village who used to doubt herself so much.

And yet, despite all of that, there are nights when I still go home feeling unbearably empty. That contradiction is difficult to explain.

People usually see the visible parts of my life: the achievements, the confidence, the public presence, and the responsibilities. Then, they kept setting high expectations for me, like I must always deliver the highest standards. When I deliver less than expected, people would think I didn't do my best, even when it is already enough. They do not always see how exhausting it can be to constantly become “the high achiever” when I am just a normal human. They ignored the fact that in those moments, I was in so much pain that even functioning was already an achievement for me. 

Recently, I realized why it was even more tiring for me: becoming useful is probably my survival mechanism since I was a kid. Useful people are appreciated, needed, and remembered. So I spent years trying to become competent enough, dependable enough, valuable enough. I became the person who handles things, who solves problems, who cleans the mess, who checks whether everyone else is okay first. And after doing that for so long, it gradually becomes my identity.

There is also a strange confusion in constantly being needed. Because when people know you mostly for what you can provide, a small part of you begins to wonder: “If one day I stop being useful, would people still stay?” And maybe that question hurts me more than I usually admit.

Not because the people around me are bad people. Most of them are genuinely kind. But I think when you spend years earning validation through competence, you slowly become afraid that your worth only exists in your ability to give. When you start noticing the disappointment in people’s eyes whenever you fail to meet their expectations, you slowly arrive at a conclusion: maybe people only truly see you when you are useful to them.

Sometimes, I think what I truly want is actually very simple: to be seen as a human, with her flaws and weaknesses. To be understood and accepted as deeply as I try to understand other people. I spend so much time paying attention to other people’s feelings, trying not to hurt them, trying to make them feel seen, trying to love them gently. And sometimes I wonder whether someone will ever love me with that same depth and care, too. Not because I want grand gestures. But because after spending so much of my life becoming emotionally attentive to others, a part of me longs to finally feel carefully held, too.

***

Life has humbled me enough to realize that achievements do not automatically heal my longing for genuine acceptance. Recognition does not automatically create understanding. And being surrounded by many people does not always remove the feeling of being emotionally unseen.

For a long time, I thought becoming more successful would finally make me feel emotionally secure. But healing, apparently, has very little to do with external validation.

Lately, I have been trying to understand myself more gently. Maybe I am not sad because my life is bad. Maybe I am simply emotionally tired from spending too much of my life trying to earn love through usefulness.

And maybe healing is learning that I deserve softness even when I am not performing. Learning that my worth is not tied to productivity. Learning that the people who truly love me will still stay, even when I have nothing to offer except my honest, human self.

I still do not fully know how to solve this feeling yet. But perhaps this is the first honest step: admitting that beneath all the accomplishments and expectations, I am still just a human being who wants to be loved not for what she can provide, but simply for who she is.

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Image source: White Noiise via Pexels

“I have so much love in me that I would like to cry;” — Simone de Beauvoir, Diary of a Philosophy Student: Volume 1, 1926–27

Hi, a certain name.

 
I don’t really know how to begin this, so I’ll just start with the secret I have been hiding for the past three years. I’m writing this knowing there may never be a moment in my life where I get to say even a single word to you: no conversation, no accidental meeting, not even a passing greeting. Though we live in the same city, I calculated that the possibility that we become acquaintances is like squaring a circle. And maybe that’s exactly why I feel the need to write this. So that at least, somewhere in this world, these unspoken words exist.

I first heard your name in passing. It was a normal, ordinary, brief introduction. Just a friend mentioning you casually, “I have a friend named .....(your full name) who I think you’d have a good conversation with,” and then the conversation moved on, like names always do.

But yours didn’t.

It lingered in a way I couldn’t quite explain, as if something inside me recognized it. Your existence was almost like a fantasy I hadn’t realized I was holding. It's like coming across a character in a fictional story and knowing that this is someone you would root for until the very end.

Curiosity led me to learn more about you. I searched your name, pieced together fragments of your thoughts, your perspectives, the way you express yourself, the way you treat people, and the way you carry your presence. And the more I came to know, the more something settled deeper in me: it wasn’t just admiration.

I let myself wonder about our compatibility: the kind that feels like two people could meet in the middle and understand each other without trying too hard. But that thought didn’t stay long. Reality reminded me of something obvious: for someone like you, there are a bunch of women who hope for that possibility and imagine that version of a story.

So I will remain here, in my small corner of this town, imagining the simplest things. What it would feel like to sit across from you and have a deep conversation. What it would feel like to meet in the middle of the Karet Pinisi Bridge, where our days might have already passed each other as our offices are just across. Let me imagine that after a long, tiring day, your calm smile is there waiting for us to come home together.

In my imagination, I can see the glow of the city billboards across the bridge reflecting on your face. Your eyes curving into crescents as you smile, as if for a brief moment, the world becomes lighter around you. And in that imagined stillness, we simply exist, side by side. That feels like enough. That's more than enough.

It’s funny, isn’t it?

You don’t know me. Not even a little. And yet, I find myself wanting to tell you stories. About the secrets I wouldn't tell a soul but you. About the quiet battles no one sees. About the mundane, ordinary details of everyday life, but promise you I will learn storytelling skills so they don't sound boring. About the things that don’t sound important, but I know you would smile/laugh at, so I will tell you anyway. 

And I find myself wondering about yours, too. What did you do today? What makes you laugh without holding back? What occupies your mind on days when everything feels too heavy to carry? What moments in your life have ever brought you to tears? If I ever had the chance, I would want to listen without rushing, interrupting, or trying to fix anything. I'm there just to understand you, little by little.

But again, I understand where I should stand. I understand myself well enough that I come with the weight of a life that has been broken and rebuilt too many times. Meanwhile, you seem like someone who carries light with ease, someone who deserves someone just as bright. I am sure you don't want to spend your exciting and joyful life with someone so pitiful like me*.

I would never want to be the one who dims your light. Let this be a one-sided kind of adoration that doesn’t demand, doesn’t expect, doesn’t even try to reach. Let it exist as a secret between me and Allah. Let you be a name I mention with tears of gratitude as you exist in the same world with this pathetic self. I'm happy that you were born and grew up to be a magnificent man. That's all.

I wish you all the beauty this world has to offer, every kind of happiness to find you effortlessly, and every kind of peace choosing to stay.

And lastly, as Sapardi once wrote: “Aku mencintaimu, itu sebabnya aku tak akan pernah selesai mendoakan keselamatanmu.” You are loved more than you will ever know**. Meski kau tak akan pernah tahu.

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(labeled fiction because it is a fiction)

*Inspired by a letter in the Thai drama "My Cherie Amour". In the letter, the main character wrote, "I'm not sure if you would want to spend your exciting and joyful life with such a boring person like me."

**Inspired by “One of the biggest tragedies in life is that you will always be loved more than you will ever know.”  – Alan Watts

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Image source: Ayşenaz Bilgin via Pexels