02/01/2026
We’ve entered a new year, but it’s hard to celebrate.
It feels dishonest to pretend hope comes automatically with a change of date, when the year we’ve just left behind was marked by suffering, war, and normalized death.
We are expected to be happy, to post smiles and resolutions, as if the world didn’t just watch children die, as if violence hadn’t become routine, as if empathy hadn’t been drained from us in real time.
Politics no longer represents us; it manages us. We’re pushed into parties and identities that don’t protect us, placed against one another while those in power remain untouched. The poor are set against the poorer, and the ones responsible stand safely above it all.
Living inside this creates a constant feeling of being out of place. Survival is sold as success. But survival is not living.
This year feels like the last sprint toward the peace we keep searching for —
the final effort, the final refusal to accept this as normal.
All I want is to stay close to the people I love.
A simple life.
Without the rush. Without the chaos.
I don’t want to survive.
I want to live.
And if living now means stepping away from what is broken, then leaving isn’t escape.
It’s clarity.
#2026
