A cold winter morning, I woke up to the sound of nothingness. Empty silence filled every corner — it also filled my lungs. It was deafening. The cold, the silence — it made every part of me hurt. I wanted to scream, but my voice was stuck inside me. I couldn’t breathe. Everything felt as if it had stopped.The world had stopped.

But paradoxically, my thoughts wouldn’t stop. What was wrong with me? I didn’t know.Unfortunately, you never have the answer to everything — which is an issue for perfectionists like me.

I decided to drag myself out of bed, because if I lay there, I’d feel even more useless. I already felt like a burden. A burden to people in this world. I never opened the curtains, because all the white that covered everything made me think of graveyards and coffins.Weird, isn’t it? The dull sunlight didn’t help either. But that day, something pushed me to check outside. So I did. To my surprise, the grass was no longer covered in a white blanket. I could finally see the green earth beneath the white, beneath my feet. The wilted flower I was growing in the backyard had started blooming.

After weeks of feeling trapped, I put on my shoes, went outside, and admired everything around me. I had an epiphany: nothing lasts forever. Just like my sadness did not last forever. But that also meant… happiness wasn’t going to last forever? And I had another epiphany: sadness isn’t a curse. It just makes us who we are. It simply adds a beautiful perspective to our life. So instead of feeling sorry for myself, I decided to enjoy the newly bloomed flowers, the smell of dirt after rain, the feeling of the fresh, cool breeze hitting my cheek, and the sight of spring’s early days.

Because nothing lasts forever.