02/16/2026
I took a vow on my 38th birthday. For the first time, I wanted to try living, rather than just being an elite expert at not dying.
As the sun return for another year, I looked back on 2025 and realized it was the year I finally resigned from the war.
I have always thought healing meant becoming more capable of handling pain. I was obsessed with resilience. I thought if I could just get stronger, tougher, and more “healed,” the pain would finally stop. But I was trapped in a devastating loop: there is no end to the pursuit of handling pain, because life will always provide it, because pain is a part of life.
The shock was realizing I didn’t have a pain problem.
I had a bliss problem.
I was world-class at enduring, but I was completely incapable of letting myself exist in pure happiness. I could handle a crisis, but I couldn’t handle a rest. I didn’t know how to let my system just… land. I was so busy “doing” my healing that I forgot that rest is the doing.
So, at the start of last year, I made a choice. I didn’t “find” a new identity; I purposely chose one.
I chose to step entirely outside the loop of my old patterns. I moved toward a version of myself that was completely uncertain and unknown. I had no idea where it would lead, but I had no hesitation and no expectations. I just knew that if I didn’t start looking at the world differently, nothing in my life would ever change.
I realized I’d had enough of the survival bunker.
I stopped trying to be useful and started being authentic.
I stopped fixing and started inhabiting.
I realized that my existence is the value, and the world began to reflect that back to me the moment I stopped trying to earn it.
This is what I’ve learned in the first year of finally choosing to stay. It isn’t a destination; it’s a daily registration in my own skin.
My name is Mai, an anatomy nerd whom kinda rebuilt a life all over again in a new country with just me myself and I and I just officially turned 39.
What’s your story?
