To be honest, I have never carried a strong anticipation when it comes to the new year. The whole “new year, new me” spirit and the ritual of setting resolutions never really touched my heart that deeply. Instead, somewhere along the way, my sense of reflection quietly shifted.
Rather than January, I found myself doing that ritual in October instead.
Yes, October. No typo, no misreading. It is the month where the starting line of life seems to rest for me. It replaces January and all the familiar rituals like evaluation, recalibration, and planning. There is something about it that makes time feel both fragile and loud. Especially when you notice how fast it moves, how suddenly the year changes its name.
But never mind. That shift means nothing particular in this post. It only means my reflection starts two months earlier in habit, while December still stands as the official cutoff for this recap.
So, how has this year humbled you?
I stumbled. I was hurt. I was crushed. Yet, I am safe. I managed to survive.
I do not quite know how to begin explaining it, but I learned a lot. Too much, perhaps. More than I could hold in my hands, and somehow, more than I could fully keep. Some lessons slipped through my fingers before I even understood their shape. Another part of me whispered that nothing really slipped away. I simply refused to keep everything, secretly wishing for a refund if such a thing were possible.
Frankly speaking, that is life.
I could not skip the pill.
This year, I felt overwhelmed, as if everything suddenly grew too heavy. Too heavy to process, even though I believed I understood how it all began. I did not blame where I was, nor did I complain about the stage I was standing in. Instead, I found myself questioning something quieter: did I really need to go through all of this?
I understand that the road laid before me is one that others have dreamed of, a road many would still choose despite its rocks and turns. I also understand, and there is no need to argue with this, that I may be blessed with more flowers along the way than many others ever receive. I know this. I truly do. And I do not wish to compare.
So why the question?
Whenever I tried to look for the answer, I found it much harder to simply accept things as they were. People often say to focus on the good, because bad things are unavoidable anyway. I understood that, but somewhere along the way, I started to feel afraid of good things too, afraid to meet them, or even to ask for them to come my way. In 2025, this fear reached its peak. I found myself thinking that every wish granted came with a price I would eventually have to pay.
That fear did not come from nowhere. There was a reason this year felt so unforgiving, heavier than I expected, harder to soften around the edges.
In 2025, I learned what absence really means. A presence I had always known became a memory.
I am not writing this from a place of being healed. Some days still feel unreal. Yet in the middle of it all, I can see that this year has been revealing lessons that fall into two very different places. Some are things I have been grateful for. Others are things I wish I could undo.
There is no sense of closure yet, only a growing list of things 2025 has been quietly trying to show me.
#1 Nothing Was Ever Mine
The essence of owning and belonging was never a simple lesson, not just for me, but for many of us.
Each time I achieved something, my ego stepped in quickly, almost instinctively. It claimed everything as mine, something I had earned, something no one could ever take from me. Over time, that sense of ownership stretched beyond what my hands could ever hold. It reached into areas I believed were secure: stability, status, even the people I loved.
I grew comfortable in that illusion. Perhaps a little arrogant. I forgot that everything is a fleeting enjoyment, a temporary deposit I never truly owned.
Loss has a cruel way of correcting that belief. Nothing shatters the illusion of ownership more brutally than absence, than witnessing a presence turn into a memory. It was not only the loss that hurt, but the quiet collapse of every future I had once imagined with that presence still beside me. What followed was not acceptance, but a storm of emotions I could barely name: grief, anger, disbelief, all arriving at once. Nothing felt steady.
How do you prepare for grief you never dare to imagine?
I did not.
Until one ayat found its way to me:
“Indeed, we belong to Allah, and indeed, to Him we will return.”
Belonging and owning were never mine to claim so tightly. That ayat did not simply comfort me, it corrected me. A quiet but undeniable reminder that everything I love, everything I hold, even my own breath, was never truly mine to begin with.
Everything in this world is entrusted, never possessed. Perhaps the pain was never only about losing, but about confronting how fragile my sense of ownership had always been.
#2 Not Everything Good Feels Safe
At some point, I started to feel afraid of good things, especially the kind that made me pause and question where they came from and why they found their way to me. Somewhere along the way, I began to associate them with something else, something that would eventually be taken away, or something I would later have to pay for.
It made me hesitate, even in moments I should have felt grateful for, as if allowing myself to feel too much would only make the loss heavier later. I know that, as someone who holds a spiritual belief, this sounds like I am questioning what God has given me. But that was never truly about doubt. It was fear, quiet, persistent fear, shaped by moments where good things seemed to come with something to lose. Perhaps the problem was never the good things themselves, but the way I began to hold them, cautiously at first, as if expecting their absence before they even had the chance to stay, then too tightly, as if they were rare, as if I would not be given the same again.
I thought I was protecting myself from disappointment. But somewhere along the way, I made it harder to fully receive what was already there. I became blind to what was present, overlooking the quieter forms of goodness, the ones I dismissed as too small to count, even though they were still there all along. And perhaps, that was a quiet form of arrogance.
#3. Not Everything Follows the Shape We Create
I did not realize how many expectations I had quietly built in my head until reality began unfolding differently from them.
Somewhere along the way, I had already imagined how certain people would respond, who would understand without needing to be told, who would reach out when things became difficult. None of it was ever said out loud, yet in my mind, those expectations had already taken shape.
But life rarely follows the shape we create for it, right? People remain people, carrying their own thoughts, timing, limitations, and ways of showing care. Some arrived quietly, some remained distant, and some simply stayed as they were.
And perhaps that was the lesson I keep returning to: expectation has a way of writing stories before reality even begins speaking for itself. The funny thing is, this was never a completely new lesson for me. Somewhere deep down, I already knew how expectation often works, how easily it grows into imagined certainty, and how painful it becomes when reality unfolds differently from it. And yet somehow, I still find myself repeating it, quietly building shapes in my head and hoping reality will follow them this time.
...
Looking back, I realize that many of the things that hurt me this year were not only the events themselves, but also the certainty I quietly attached to them. The certainty that things would stay, that good things would feel safe, that people would respond in the ways I had imagined.
But life rarely moves according to what I manage to shape inside my head. It unfolds in its own ways, sometimes gently, sometimes painfully, and often without asking whether I am ready for it or not.
Maybe that is what 2025 has been trying to teach me all along.
Not how to control life better, but how to stop holding onto certainty so tightly.
I do not think I have fully learned that lesson yet. Perhaps I am still somewhere in the middle of it, still learning how to let things arrive as they are, without immediately turning them into fear, expectation, or imagined permanence.
And maybe, for now, that is enough.
Warm regard,
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