Is it also the case for you that the beginning of the year comes like a heavy dream from which you don't really want to wake up?

I learned to be strong before anyone asked if I even wanted to be. Life pushed me against the wall a few times, so I leaned against it and stood tall. Alone. With my head held high. People say I'm doing great. I smile then because it's easier than explaining how much each day costs me.I can shoulder responsibilities, make decisions, and be a support to others. I know how to act when things are falling apart. I know how not to cry in front of people. I know how to pull myself together and keep going, even when everything inside is shaking. This has become my armor. Invisible, but heavy.Sometimes I'm silent. Not because I have nothing to say. I'm silent because I don't want to be a burden. Because everyone has their own issues, their own fatigue, their own problems. I'm learning to contain my emotions in silence, fold them neatly like clothes in a closet and close the door. On the outside, a smile remains. Calm, composed, convincing.

Today is the first day of the new year. I wake up with a sense of silence that isn't emptiness, but promise. As if the world had held its breath with me for a moment. A new nine-year cycle is beginning, and I feel it not only in my thoughts but deep beneath my skin—like a subtle shifting of inner boundaries.

The old year is slowly coming to an end, and I pause for a moment. Not to count the days or settle accounts with the calendar, but to look back with calm and mindfulness.I stand at the edge of time, in a quiet and safe place where memories don't scream, but only gently knock on my heart.I look back at the days gone by the bright ones and those that taught me the most precisely because they hurt. I see moments as short as a breath and those long, stretching on into infinity. Each of them has left something within me. Lessons I hadn't planned, experiences I would never have asked for, and yet today I know they were necessary. They have shaped me into who I am nowcalmer, more mindful, more present.Only one day separates me from the new year. I ask myself quietly: am I making any resolutions? Am I creating a list of new tasks, goals to check off, plans to fulfill?

My transformation process began quietly, almost in a whisper. With Kardec's books. They appeared in my life at a time when I was tired of searching externally for answers, and at the same time, I felt increasingly clear that the truth I desired resided deep within me. I opened them without expectations, allowing them to guide me and then space began.Reading, I felt as if I wasn't learning new ideas, but rather recalling what the Soul had always known. As if each sentence peeled away layers of forgetfulness, beneath which a call had long smoldered, begging to finally be heard. The universe ceased to be a distant concept it became a living presence in which I found meaning, continuity, and a profound unity with all that exists. The spiritual world opened up to me like a space full of light and order, based on simple yet profound values. I understood that we come to Earth to learn to become better Souls through experience, choice, and responsibility. That love and goodness are not abstract ideas, but laws that give meaning to every existence. I felt increasingly clear that the Soul is immortal. That life does not end with the departure of the body, but changes its form, moving into the next stage of development. This awareness brought me profound peace. Fear gave way to trust, and chaos to inner order. I began to look at my life differently. I saw joy and pain, mistakes and trials as lessons that shape my Soul. Nothing was random anymore. Every encounter, every experience had its meaning, even if I couldn't immediately name it. Today I know that those books werethe beginning of a journey, not its destination. A quiet impulse that helped me trust what I had long felt without words: that I wasin a process, that love was the way, goodness was the direction, and the Soul was eternal, in constant movement towards the light.

The end of the year always comes to me more quietly than I expect. As if it didn't want to disturb what was still unfinished within me. Then I sit down with myself—without rushing, without a plan—and let my thoughts flow. It was a difficult year. At times, so much so that I was breathless. And yet, today, I see that every bit of it taught me something.I am grateful. For the lessons that hurt. For the sadness that taught me tenderness towards myself. For the difficulties that exposed my strength. For the smiles, the joy, for the care and human closeness, but also for rejection—because it showed me where my home isn't. I am grateful for the smallest things: for a morning without tears, for the warmth of tea in my hands, for the moments of silence where I could finally hear myself.I breathe.With each inhale, I embrace peace.With each exhale, I release tension.I feel my body slowly letting go of what held too tightly. I let go of what I no longer need. I let go of the thoughts that held me back, that told me I wasn't enough, that I needed more, faster, different. They weren't me.I release the burden I've carried for too long.I give up everything that's no longer mine.My heart becomes lighter. I really feel it—as if someone had lifted a cloak that was too tight. And life... life becomes more beautiful again. Not perfect. Real. Soft where it was rough before.I accept what I can't change. I stop fighting what has already happened. With love, I loosen my grip on control and allow life to flow as it will—naturally, without tugging. I move forward with trust. Slowly. I already know I don't have to run.I choose peace over fear.I choose lightness over weight.I choose freedom over attachment.At the end of the year, I don't ask for more. What is true is enough for me. What is quiet. What is mine.I let go.I release.I love.

That special day comes. Once a year. A day when time slows down for a moment, as if to give me space to breathe and look back. A day when I feel like I've been born again—not in body, but in consciousness. A tear wells in my eye, not from regret, but from excess. From memory. From gratitude. From the quiet emotion of still being here.

I fell in love with Satoshi Yagisawa's books, quietly, like a rainy morning that suddenly feels like home. First there was one story, then another, until I finally realized I wasn't just reading stories anymore. I was entering them. I'd take off my shoes at the threshold of sentences, sit on the floor between paragraphs, and stay there longer than I planned.Like his heroines, I could live in a small room above a second-hand bookstore. I could see it clearly: the narrow stairs creaking underfoot, the smell of old paper wafting like a promise, the window overlooking a street that never seems to rush. The room would be modest - a bed, a desk, a bookshelf that's always too small but perfectly adequate. Because true space would only begin when I opened a book.I would travel every day. Without a suitcase, without a map. One moment I'd be in a small town where people speak in half-words, another in a café where someone is making the most important decision of their life. Sometimes I'd come back tired, with a heart heavy from the fates of others, and sometimes light, as if someone had left me hope between the pages.In the evenings, I'd sit on the floor of the second-hand bookstore, helping to organize books, even though I knew that books couldn't be completely organized. They choose when they wanted to be found. I'd cherish that moment when someone entered hesitantly, said, "I'll just look around," and left with a volume under their arm and a thought that haunted them.I think that in such a life, I would learn patience. And mindfulness. That loneliness isn't always emptiness, and that silence can speak louder than conversations. Books would also teach me that everyone has a story even me, sitting in the small room above the second-hand bookstore, with tea cooling on the windowsill.I fell in love with these books because they showed me that you don't have to go far to travel. All you have to do is open a door. Or a cover.

Dating these days is an extreme sport. The kind without a helmet, without instructions, and with rules written in small print that no one has ever read-and then everyone pretends to be surprised.

When I fall asleep, I feel something inside me quiet, and something else begins to speak. Not in words at least not words I can speak aloud. My answers come as a shiver beneath my skin, like a warmth spreading in my chest, like a whisper I can't hear with my ears, but I know is real. Sometimes they are images-sharp, suddenly projected like photos on old film, frozen in mid-motion, imbued with a meaning I'm only just learning to touch.It's then, in these nocturnal passages, that I feel my intuition is my teacher. That it learns with me, along with my body and what I've experienced. It's not something fleeting or alien. It's like a deep current that has flowed within me forever, but only in dreams do I have the courage to plunge my hands into it.When my ego sleeps, it doesn't try to control the images, doesn't reach out to me with a warning finger. It doesn't say, "It's impossible," "It's just my imagination." Then intuition emerges like light from beneath the surface of the water. It shows me things I pass by unnoticed during the day, too busy functioning, acting, understanding. But at night, I see what is usually hidden: truths that lurked in the corners of my consciousness, thin threads connecting events, emotions, and memories.

I feel a familiar tension within me, that hot throbbing beneath my ribs as anger tries to take over. There's something seductive about anger-it feeds on my pride, whispering that I have the right to turn away, slam the door, build a wall high enough so that no one can reach my wounded heart. But for some time now, I've known it was just an illusion.Standing by the window, watching the day gently fade into evening, I suddenly felt all that anger melt inside me like snow on my hand. It's passing. Everything is passing. And in that one quiet moment, a realization came-so clear I had to close my eyes.Why waste time turning my back? Why lock myself away when just a moment ago I'd longed for closeness so desperately?Why give my strength to emotions that fade faster than I could name them? I took a deep breath. In that breath, I felt myself-the real me, not the one swept away by anger, but the quiet, peaceful me that has always been somewhere deeper. My soul… it's beyond all this. It knows it's not worth waging war where even a single seed of good can be planted.Even if my heart is a little broken-maybe that's why I should be gentler. For myself first and foremost. Because in harmony with myself, I am stronger than all the anger in the world.I smiled at my reflection in the window. Instead of closing the door, I open it a crack. Instead of turning my back, I look up.Instead of nurturing anger, I choose goodness-so quiet, yet stubborn. Because I already know that what I give comes back.And I want to return to myself-whole, peaceful, true.

As I write these words, I still feel the warmth of tears on my cheeks. I'm not proud or ashamed of it-I simply allow myself to be. Because I now know that every challenge, even the one that tightens my throat and tears the most delicate threads within me, carries more than pain. Deep within me, I discover a hidden wisdom I couldn't see before.Sometimes I feel like life places obstacles before me specifically to test my limits. And yet-every time I begin to falter, something inside me quietly whispers, "Stop. See what you can learn." And then, even though the tears press in like an unwelcome tide, I begin to see more.I see meaning where once I saw only chaos. I see a path where there was only fog. I see myself-a little wounded, but stronger than ever.It's in these moments, when it hurts the most, that I feel myself growing. Not like a flower growing in the sun, but like a tree that must dig deeper to survive the wind. Every hardship teaches me something I couldn't find in books or in other people's words. It teaches me about myself.