2025 is ending soon, and I can hardly believe it. It feels like yesterday when my siblings and I would run into the house, shouting and laughing, our feet pounding the wooden floors as if the world outside didn’t exist. The house was alive then, filled with the echoes of our childish chaos. Now, others are married, most have left the hometown chasing work and opportunities in distant cities, and the house… the house is quiet. It doesn’t laugh anymore. It just holds the memories of a childhood that is gone- the corner where Dad used to sit and watch his chickens in the morning, the spot where we cried when he whipped us for things we barely understood. The walls remember everything, yet they do not speak.

It feels like yesterday when I graduated high school. I can still see myself counting my fingers and realizing it’s been thirteen years since that day, thirteen years since I was sitting in a room with my classmates, laughing about dreams bigger than our young hearts could hold. I remember running up the stairs to the canteen to escape the never-ending line-or cutting it sometimes because, honestly, with only two canteens for four entire year levels, patience was a luxury none of us could afford. Those days were innocent, reckless, and full of hope.

Then university came, and time seemed to pick up speed. Sleepless nights filled with research papers, literary debates about Zeus and his wives, and endless assignments. It felt like a storm, intense and unrelenting, but it was ours. I remember talking to classmates about everything and nothing, our conversations echoing in the dormitory halls, in libraries, and over cheap instant coffee that somehow fueled our dreams. Graduation came, like a soft whisper, and suddenly I was thrust into the world beyond those university gates.

I sent resumes, countless ones, trying to prove I was doing fine, trying to convince myself that I was ready. I remember the tension of waiting for board exam results, the quiet celebration when I passed in one take, and the awkward smiles when someone asked, “So, where did you apply?” or “What’s your job?” It was a time of building facades, of holding on to dignity while fumbling through uncertainty, and learning that adulthood is just the practice of making my heart brave every single day.

Then came COVID. Oh, how time paused and rushed all at once. The streets emptied, turned strange with people in masks and suits that looked like astronauts, quarantining those infected. We lived in a kind of horror we hadn’t seen before, a world that demanded silence, patience, and fear. Yet even then, time moved, quietly, unstoppable.

And now, I have moved too- places, cities, jobs, roles that seem familiar yet strange. Life feels like a river I’m constantly trying to swim in, but no matter how hard I paddle, the current always pulls me faster than I expect. Days slip into months, months into years, and just like that, 2025 is ending. I look back, and everything seems so close, yet impossibly far.

Time moves faster than an arrow, faster than I ever admit. It carries me from the noise of childhood laughter to the quiet of empty homes, from the reckless joy of high school to the chaos of university deadlines, from the fragile hope of job applications to the strange, collective pause of a world in lockdown. And here I am, a witness to my own life, trying to catch fragments of moments before they dissolve into memory.

Now, I stare at the wedding band on my finger, and it drags me back- pulls me into a time I can’t hold, into every second I thought I had forever. Now I’m married. The world has moved on, and I’ve moved with it, whether I was ready or not.

It’s not 2010 anymore, when life felt endless and mistakes were small. Not 2015, when laughter spilled over school hallways and dreams were reckless. Not 2020, when the world stopped and fear became a shadow in every street. Not 2024, when I thought I was finally catching up with myself. And the hardest part-in just a few days, it won’t even be 2025.

Time doesn’t pause. It doesn’t wait. And here I am, staring at this ring, realizing how much has passed and how little I ever really hold onto.

Life does not wait. It does not linger for me to be ready, to say the right words, or to fully grasp its meaning. It just moves, unstoppable, arrow-like, leaving me with stories, scars, and memories that feel like yesterday even when they belong to years ago.

2025 is ending, and I feel it.