I was looking at the strangely warm and orange hues that spread through my bedroom window when I opened the blackout curtains this afternoon. The sun was on its way to set for today, and I just woke up from an afternoon nap.

I don’t usually remember my dreams except in naps, but even in naps now I don’t have dreams anymore. Before, when I took naps, there always were tornadoes chasing after me until I’d wake up panting, feeling like I’ve run a few good and winding miles to get away from three cyclones getting ahead of each other trying to be the first one to catch me. I always win the chase by waking up. Now, it’s all just darkness in a snap. Like even my high-strung brain is tired of everything.

It’s been like that lately. And I don’t know how tired one person can or should get to be considered truly tired. Is there a joker card for it, that you can throw to the life table, in-game? Where somebody else picks up after you and plays your deck, while you just take a moment to breathe and collect yourself.

I guess there’s no such thing.

And the world (and your social media algorithm) is right to warn us about that relentless need to keep going, no matter how broken we are.

If it’s a trend then maybe we have finally gone black mirror. 😱 And the dystopian era has officially and insidiously taken over the universe.

I know.

I’ve been consuming a lot of weird content lately. Haha. And I guess we’re all just the same, asking what exactly it is we’re all doing this (and killing ourselves) for?

The past few months have been like this – a hazy vicious loop of I don’t know what. And I think it will be like this until God knows when. 😩

And it’s tiring, and there’s no guarantee that turning back or going someplace else will make things better. So you know, everything sometimes kinda feels like a trap. 😰

So you try to find ways to ground and connect, and make sense of things around, and somehow find humanity amid all the convolutedness.

I remember the line in that song The Anonymous Ones from the Dear Evan Hansen movie — The parts we can’t tell, we carry them well. But that doesn’t mean they’re not heavy.

It feels so much like that all the time. 🥺

And I wonder how worse it is for others. I mean, I struggle with everything, and try my best to survive, and offer all the things beyond me to God in my silent prayers every night. I do, I really do try hard.

I just wonder how long we all need to carry those parts we can’t (find the energy to) tell. 😭

So this week, in the middle of the crazy–

— And by crazy I mean, missing an international flight this May, which also means missing BTS J-Hope’s concert, and going back and forth to resolve a passport nightmare, and doing all sorts of projects all together, and then these projects get to have problems of their own, and it feels like all the crazy never ends. And I’m just being grown up enough to deal with everything without going crazy too–

–I remembered to go on vigil with the conclave. As a history nerd, and a fan of the popes in my lifetime- John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis, and a generally invested Catholic school girl, I like to be around, watching these sorts of things when they happen. And on conclave day 2, at almost 1am, when I was about to give up and sleep, and check out the results when I woke up, my friend messaged me that there was white smoke in the Sistine Chapel’s chimney already. I got up from bed and waited for the curtains to be drawn to see Pope Leo XIV for the first time and also hear his first blessing. It was weird that I stayed up for that, but it also felt so good I was crying the whole time. I guess these are the things you do to remind yourself of who you actually are (and used to be) when life makes you forget, at times.

Like today too. As I watched the orange light fill my bedroom when I drew the curtains, I had a strange, nagging feeling to write. Just write whatever, as long as you write. The nagger voice in my head said. Haha.

And the first thing that popped in the notifs is a happy anniversary today greeting. I forgot that it’s been 12 years since I started this blog. And although I feel a little guilty for taking this part of me for granted, I’m somehow relieved that there are still a lot of things that find their way to me in times when I need grounding the most. And they never fail to remind me why it matters to keep going.

It’s Mother’s Day today too.

Just thinking of my mama and her lifetime of witnessing, reminds me, quite strongly, of what love is capable of. That kind of quiet, patient, and ardent love that I should always aim to give to the world, every day, for as long as I can.

“Hah, I wrote today!” I told the nagger voice in my head. But there were no more orange hues when I looked up from my computer, after I finished a first draft.

Everything is transient, I realized.
But somehow, they are there to remind us that warmth or light or good is real. Like orange hues that fill your bedroom after a dreamless nap.

So yeah, I know that days or weeks or months or years can drag, and be quite unimaginable sometimes. And you can also often feel the whole world heave a deep and exhausted collective sigh at nine in the evening (or maybe that’s just me), but it’s something like that.

So please know that whether this is a dark-humored, cruel joke of the universe or this is AI secretly taking over the world, or this is a real-life black mirror series we’re in now, you are not alone.

You have a lot of things and people around (and there’s even KPop, if you ever run out of options) that will help ground you.

Maybe we all just have to draw the curtains and look, a little more closely, to see the hues.

Stay brave, and kind, and faithful, my friends. We’re all in this together. 💗

And oh, Happy Mother’s Day, Universe! 💕💐

P.S. Here’s a YT copy of the song, The Anonymous Ones.