2025 reflection

"On the Last Night of Earth, What Is It I Want to Tell You?"

I was talking with a friend about year-end reflections, mentioning that before '24, I used to write them—and write a lot. Books, films, music, painting, life, work... I'd cover it all.

But in '24, I stopped.

Reading my summaries from '22 and '23 now brings a wave of embarrassment. The wording and writing seem so much more naive compared to now. I'm sure next year's me will feel the same about this piece.

Yet the emotions were real. The political despair of '22, the fresh start of '23.

And '24?For a moment, I can't remember.

Of course, many things must have happened. Too many things, perhaps, to easily put into words. It seems like a kind of psychological self-preservation—when the density and intensity of experience exceed what language can lightly carry, silence itself becomes another form of expression.

'25 was like that too.

I let out a dull, disdainful sound echoing in my chest, aimed at the very act of writing year-end summaries.

—

Near the end of '25, I told a friend I had thought about hosting a small zine workshop to look back on the year, but then felt I didn't really want to reminisce. Everyone's been writing their summaries these days, but I just didn't know how to start.

They asked me, "Why did you want to do this theme?"

I said, "I thought people might need it. I thought it would be a good chance for everyone to connect."

"Then do it."

"This year, you could draw yourself a map of the world."

"See which places collected your tears."

"Which places you dropped accessories." (Without ear piercings, I often clatter down the street, 'exploding' my gear.)

—

So what did happen in 2025?

There are things I don't want to look back on—I've finally come to understand this—I ran and ran without stopping, trying to keep certain pains from catching up to me.

I couldn't tell anyone—well, that's not entirely true. I've actually said it many, many times already. I recounted what happened over and over, making myself sound rational, restrained—graceful.

What else was I supposed to do?

—

2025...

In 2024, I set out anew. I quit my job, started working on things I cared about with partners, and began exploring new possibilities in relationships.

In 2025, what I didn't realize—or gradually began to realize—was that I needed to say a complete and thorough goodbye to the past.

To those who couldn't support me, who couldn't appreciate me; those who wished to use me; those who consciously or unconsciously exploited my kindness.

I am waving them goodbye.

All year, I charged ahead blindly, slamming my body hard against walls only to find the way blocked. Along the path, the walls and ground are marked with my dried blood and tiny flesh. But it was precisely in the dizziness from running and the clarity from pain that I completed a crucial process of sifting and recognition.

In 2025, I was betrayed multiple times by close companions. Once was a sharp, vicious break; the other happened slowly, over months, like a frog boiling in water. Both pointed to a similar extreme cowardice. They may have had good intentions, but could not bear the cost of that goodness. They fulfilled their desire to be a "good person" by feeding on and sacrificing others.

And so I finally learned to distinguish that genuine kindness comes from a stable self, from a clear awareness of one's own boundaries. After all, if you don't even know where your own limits as a person lie, how can you talk about helping others?

And those hands of true kindness that reached out to me, the hugs, the people who held doors open for me.

Those who pulled me back when I was deep in the mire.

The real kindness they radiated, the unconditional way they showed me their bright worlds, let me know that "maybe there are still some things in this awful world worth living well for."

And now I have climbed out of the mire.

—

I am gradually finding my stable core, knowing what gives me strength and what does not.

Accepting weaknesses and shortcomings, yet also knowing where my own light lies.

So, '25 was the year I began to realize, and slowly started tearing away the things obscuring my light.

Bit by bit, fiercely, tearing off what was stuck to my skin, my sinews and bones, what was consuming my spirit and flesh.

The process inevitably left a bloody mess; sometimes I was even rendered shapeless. Look at that amorphous blur, still running down the road.

Of course, some spots still hurt unbearably at the slightest touch. I don't yet know how to heal them, so I just turn my head away, refusing to look at the festering wounds.

—

So I still want to record. For the future, and for the past.

—

In 2025, after several upheavals, I managed to pluck from the mire a glowing seed—it is the public life I've been cultivating in the world's soil. I know what I must do now is help it put down roots, draw nourishment from community, and hope it will eventually produce oxygen for everyone. I think it's already starting to do that.

And here I am, kneeling on this land that rejects me, holding this seed.I feel it growing, and not entirely by my will, which is precisely its beauty.

I just know this seed still needs me, for now.

And I keep groping along, following flight schedules for book fairs, trying to understand the shape of the world, my own place in it.

I do many, many things, and from them, I feel for what I truly love—setting up a risograph studio, finding a direction for creation.

Running fiercely to book fairs, encountering all sorts of creations, feeling ashamed of my own work but also sprouting real fighting spirit. Time is limited, so I write and paint in the cracks between time zones, using words and scattered lines to capture the truth I'm pursuing. I'm only 1 year in, baby. I see myself growing at an incredible speed. I look forward to seeing what I will create.

—

I also desperately went to see people.I dropped everything and crossed the Pacific multiple times. You could call it for love; I think perhaps it was for survival. To escape pain, to grope for the meaning of my existence, to find a direction for the future.

At year's end, I wandered within Asia, immensely fulfilled and happy yet immensely alone.

I continued to understand my own shape through collisions. Hometown felt like gentle honey, sweet enough to sink into. Too comfortable, as if staying one more day would drown me in that land of illusion.

And so I returned, unwavering, to this land that rejects me. I told my friends that for now, my journey, my creations, my topics are inseparable from this land that causes me pain. I had to come back. I still need to find more comrades to fight alongside.

Of course, regrettably, after all this, I am utterly exhausted. My body gave out before my will. I think in '26, I might need to recuperate first.

Fortunately, I've found my direction.

I'm in no hurry.

The future is there. I'm on my way.