Reading · Adaeze’s Tales

It’s almost Spotify Wrapped season again.

Every year, Spotify finds a way to summarize twelve months of sound, the artists who carried us, the songs that stitched our days together, the moments we didn’t even realize had a soundtrack(this happens to be a good marketing strategy because even if you didn’t use Spotify, for the fomo of Spotify wrapped, you’d join in)

And I’ve been thinking about mine, not in the usual “who topped the list” way (I already know it’s anendlessocean😭) but in a quieter, more personal way.

According to my Spotify Wrapped 2024, September 27th was the day I listened to music the most last year. But here’s the strange thing: I don’t even remember what happened that day.

It was the day after my mom’s birthday, somewhere in the middle of exam season, a blur of reading, noise, and half-slept nights. I tried checking my gallery, hoping to find something from that day, a selfie, a screenshot, a meme, a short video. Something. Anything. But there was nothing. Just silence. Just proof that I lived that day, but didn’t keep any piece of it.

And somehow, I came to a realization.

Life feels like that lately, lived, but not remembered. Felt, but not held.

Most of my friends are in their final year now. They’ll be graduating soon. The rest will follow next year. And me? I’m in the medical hostel now. Different space, different rhythm. I don’t see them as often anymore. And that’s when it sank in, that we might only have one or two years left together. One or two years before we scatter, to new cities, new lives, new versions of ourselves.

And that’s such a sobering thought, isn’t it?

That we could be in the middle of the “good old days” and not even know it.

So, I made a quiet resolution to not let these years slip by unnoticed. To say every compliment, even the small ones that sound silly.

To crack the dry jokes that only make sense to us. To share food, inside jokes, secrets, playlists.

To gift things. To dance like no one’s watching, even if someone is. To take too many selfies.

To hug longer. To hold hands. Sing wrong lyrics at the top of our voices.

Because one day, we won’t share the same space again. We’ll become the people who used to live together, laugh together, cry together. Life might send new faces, new stories, but it won’t send these ones again.

And I don’t ever want to wake up one day and realize I didn’t fully live these years because I was too busy, too guarded, or too tired.

You only live once, yes. But more than that, you only live this version of your life once. The version where you’re young and figuring it out. The version where your friends are just a door away. The version where laughter echoes down hostel corridors, and night talks stretch till dawn.

Someday, I’ll be older, hopefully wiser, maybe in a new city, maybe chasing different dreams, but I want to look back and remember. Not just the big milestones, but the quiet, in-between moments too.

Because these years, these messy, beautiful, confusing years, won’t come back.

You’ll never be twenty again.

You’ll never be here again, in this exact way, with these exact people.

So live it. All of it. Even the boring parts.

All my love,

Adaeze 💌

Gallery Dump: December 2024 - October 2025