JUNE 3 — The summer solstice falls on June 21 this year.

I am told we should expect hotter weather as El Nino returns; saw someone saying that no South-east Asian can be trusted who says their favourite season is summer.

Yet as spring dissipates it feels as though I have come out of hibernation.

With the warmer season inching closer my body seems to welcome it even through the discomfort and the menopausal experience of always feeling as though my internal oven is stuck at “burning”.

The political temperature in the country is also rising.

State assemblies are dissolving, politicians are retiring, new political parties and coalitions are emerging or re-emerging.

Two years from my fiftieth decade, I understand now that we can only understand life through cycles. What lives must die, what starts must end and sometimes the same old things come back around.

Yet new cycles can still appear alongside new ideas, new hopes and new crisis. 

My dysfunctional left shoulder blade is slowly regaining mobility and I find myself reaching out with my left arm, no longer fearing sharp pain.

It seems like such a small thing to be able to just stretch for my water bottle with my left hand and yet each time it still feels like a miracle. 

Less than two months ago I would have to turn all the way to my left, picking things up with my right arm because my left side might as well have been made of stone.

Countless stretches and exercises seemed to have, to my eye, barely any effect but I tried them anyway even resorting to acupuncture which seemed to finally start the breaking of the glacier that was my arm.

There is still a lot of pain.

I wake up during the night feeling aches all over my arms, along my thighs, feel the stiffness of my ankles and the soreness of my hip joints.

Yet I do not take painkillers. It is no debilitating pain, just the aches of a body still learning to move again, and despite the constant discomfort it reminds me that I am alive.

Like the final day of my trip to Taipei when after days of constant rain without even the shortest break, the sun finally came out on that last morning.

I walked across the grounds of Huashan Creative Park and sat on the benches that were too wet for me a few days ago.

No coat was needed to shelter me from damp or raindrops, just the sun, the breeze and clouds that stretched across the blue, reminding me of Sabah’s cloud-painted skies.

Everything must end, I know, and now I am hopeful that includes my living as a stiff mannequin wrapped in flesh.

One day I will be able to dart down stairs quicker, not wince while I’m trying to zip up my dress, and be able to run without feeling like my thighs are made of horse jerky left out too long, stiff and unmalleable.

For now I am happy for every day where I feel or think about the pain a little bit less and welcome the sun even as it burns because if the phoenix can rise from the heat, from the fiercest of fires, so, I hope, will I.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.