fleurir

cancer doesn’t just kill. it unravels. it creeps. it eats in small, cruel bites. piece by piece. first the voice. then the appetite. then the laugh. then the little joys that make someone who they are.

i watched my mom fade like a candle burning down to its last glow. her voice, once sharp enough to command a room, became whispers you had to lean in to catch. her laughter, a sound that once filled our house, was replaced with silence. her favorite food turned into fear when sores lined her mouth. nights that used to mean kdramas on the couch became nights of whimpers, pain that morphine couldn’t soften, pain even fentanyl couldn’t silence. our last christmas was quiet. no noche buena, no noise. just bowls of mashed potatoes and porridge because that's the only thing her body could handle. that was the memory cancer left us with for the holidays.

but cancer doesn’t just hollow the body it lives in. it seeps out, draining everyone orbiting it too. i lived split down the middle: one half clinging, greedy for more time, the other half whispering please let it end, please set her free. it’s a cruel thing, isn't it? loving someone so much that you start begging for their freedom.

i saw what it did to my dad. every morning, he carried her down from the second floor to the living room so she could feel the sunlight on her face. i found him hunched over his phone late at night, googling ways to keep her alive, as if some secret cure might be hidden on a forgotten page. he knew better, of course. but hope makes you irrational. love makes you desperate.

and my brother, he’s a doctor, but when it came to our mom, he wasn’t. he was just a son who shook when asked how to ease her pain, a son learning that medicine can’t fix everything. like the rest of us in the family, cancer stripped away his rationality and left him lost and helpless.

that’s the cruelty no one prepares you for: cancer doesn’t stop at the body. it gnaws at love. it gnaws at hope. it forces you to grieve too soon, to mourn someone who’s still breathing. it turns homes heavy. it makes love exhausting. it makes hope feel dangerous.

there’s a strange kind of stillness that fills the room after losing a patient. it's abrupt and brief (a second or two?) but significant enough to notice. one moment, the resident is calling a code, nurses shouting for a pulse check, hands pressing down the chest. and then suddenly: it's quiet. it's over. you bid your condolences. someone calls out the time of death. sometimes, the family begs for one more round of compressions, for one more miracle...but it's already over.

in the ER, there are rarely final words. just the heavy weight of a life that slipped through our fingers too quickly. and every time it happens, i feel this unfamiliar ache resting on my chest. not the kind of grief that screams, but the kind that lingers. it's a quiet mourning for a life i never truly knew, and yet somehow feel responsible for. grief, i've learned, wears many names and this one doesn't have one yet.

yet, somewhere in between, i feel something else too: a subtle flicker of hope. a stubborn belief that death can't be the end. that there is something beyond the beeping machines that fell silent and a heart that stopped beating. it's in those silences after the chaos recedes and the room is still that i find myself believing even more deeply in an afterlife that waits like a warm light at the end of a very long tunnel.

every day, i am hopeful. hopeful that we don’t just vanish. hopeful that love does not just disappear. hopeful that there is something after all of this that is bigger, softer, and kinder. a place where every goodbye finds its echo back to the hearts of those we’ve lost, where every broken limb and heavy lungs are made whole and light again, where the people we’ve lost are already waiting.

i want to believe it. or at least i have to. not because it’s easy, but because i’ve seen too much not to. because i’ve seen families unravel and still somehow, choose love. and i’ve seen grief hollow people out and still, love persists.

there is no finish line. you can run for hours. you can sweat, restrict, sleep hungry, say no to cravings, and do everything “right,” but the scale will not move. not because you did not try hard enough. not because you lacked discipline. but because your body is wired differently and no one ever prepared you for how cruel that would feel.

i have polycystic ovarian syndrome or “pcos” for short. and simply put, weight loss is an ongoing, uphill battle for me: a hormonal tug-of-war in which my body often resists me. no matter how carefully i follow routines or how hard i push myself, progress is unpredictable. and it is not only a physical struggle, it is an emotional one. because how do you explain that hours of running yield no visible change? how do you remain motivated in the silence of a body that refuses to respond? how do you make peace with a process that feels rigged from the start?

for me, the most difficult part of living with pcos is not the irregular cycles, the persistent fatigue, or the skin flare-ups. it is the way this condition distorts my relationship with my own body. how it transforms every workout into an obligation. even on the days when i feel strong, when i am consistent, when i manage to feel proud, it rarely feels enough.

here is the truth no one told me: being skinny will not make you happy. and with pcos, you might never even reach that version of skinny you were told to aim for.

the lie of transformation

we are raised to believe that our bodies are problems we should solve. that if we shrink ourselves just enough, the world will finally open its arms. that thinness will bring confidence, respect, and peace. that transformation will fix everything. sadly, this is a lie: one that is repeated so often, it begins to feel like truth.

what they fail to tell you is that transformation does not always bring resolution. you can lose weight and still hate your reflection. you can arrive at your goal and find that nothing inside has changed. because shrinking your body does not guarantee healing your relationship with it. and when you have pcos, the pursuit of transformation becomes even more elusive. you are essentially running a marathon with sandbags tied to your ankles.

eventually, you realize: the promise was not only empty: it was never designed with you in mind. and when the transformation never comes, what you’re left with is grief.

the grief of it all

there is a quiet, invisible grief that comes with living in a body that refuses to cooperate with you. you grieve the energy you have poured into the process. the plans you canceled because of how you felt in your own skin. the meals you skipped. the clothes you returned. the joy you postponed.

you grieve the person you could have been if your relationship with your body had not been shaped by so much calculation and self-surveillance. someone who ate freely. who ran for fun. who didn’t have to earn rest or love or softness.

you grieve how deeply your sense of identity has become intertwined with how you look, how much space you take up, how much control you appear to have.

and the hardest part is how invisible that grief remains. because pcos often hides in plain sight. because others don’t see that every day, you are grieving a version of your life that never had the chance to be lived, simply.

so what now?

there is no final message of self-love to wrap this in a bow. just the quiet truth: you will never feel skinny enough.

and that’s not a reason to give up — it’s a reason to stop chasing, and to start forgiving.

i don’t like the taste of coffee, but i drink it every day anyway.

every morning, i drink at least a cup. half dark roast, half 3-in-1, always lukewarm. because that’s the only way it can sit quietly on my stomach. it tastes like burnt grass with stomach acid, like something that’s been left too long in the oven. i hate it.

and yet, without it, the headache creeps in—slow and loud, like the world is collapsing in soft motion. without it, my brain feels like it’s underwater, like someone dimmed the lights and never flipped the switch back. without it, everything is hazy. words slip. time stops. i forget how to move through the world like i belong in it.

so i drink it anyway.

some days, i think coffee is a little like growing up. bitter, a little too strong, something you never really liked but eventually learned to accept. not because it tasted better with time, but because you got used to needing it. because one day, you stopped choosing comfort and started choosing whatever got you through.

and little by little, i walked through them anyway.

i think we often underestimate the quiet bravery it takes to keep going. to wake up, again and again, and choose life in all its uncertainty.

i recently came across an old journal entry buried in my tumblr drafts. it read, “i am afraid of a lot of things.” and it made me realize how true it is. but also, how many of them i’ve already lived past.

i am afraid of losing my parents.

and i did lose my mom. almost three years ago now. for a while, it was the end of my world like someone cracked my chest open and hollowed it out. sadly, that piece of me she filled will never grow back the same way but i’ve learned to hold space for small joys. a warm pandesal on a monday morning, a bus ride home with a nostalgic radio playlist, a 6-month-old baby who reached out their chubby hand. of course, the hole never closes neatly: it's jagged and unpredictable. but it's softer now, with some moss and wild flowers growing around the edge, and honestly? there's a kind of quiet, resilient beauty in that.

i am afraid of failing.

and i did. i failed my first exam in med school. head and neck exam. 200 items. 58%. even with the curve, i didn’t pass. ten minutes before the time was up, i still had thirty questions blank staring back at me. but it wasn’t just the numbers that broke me. it was the timing: that same week, i was slowly losing my mom. and in the days that followed, i didn’t stop, crumble, or ask for space: i just kept moving. looking back now, of course i failed. the miracle was showing up at all. maybe that’s what surviving sometimes looks like: showing up with your broken heart and trying anyway.

i am afraid of missing opportunities.

and sometimes, i still am. choosing medicine meant letting go of all the other versions of me: the daphne who becomes a web designer in singapore, the daphne who illustrates book covers and makes digital art on café. some nights, those versions still haunt me. but i’ve come to realize that choosing one path doesn’t mean the others were wasted. they live in me still: in how i approach problems, how i find meaning in stories, how i see wonder in the human body. i believe the roads i have not taken aren’t completely gone, they have simply rerouted themselves within me.

i am afraid of loving someone more than they will ever love me.

and i remember how much it scared me: the thought of caring more, of giving my whole heart and only getting pieces in return. i thought love had to be fair. symmetrical. anything less would be a tragedy. but now, being here, i’ve learned something gentler: love isn't a transaction. not something to be earned or measured. to love at all—to feel this much, this deeply—is already to be full. what a quiet miracle it is, to love.

the truth is, this fear never really leaves. it lingers in quiet moments, in last-minute airport goodbyes, in unanswered messages, in the quiet before a new chapter begins.

but neither does the part of me that keeps moving forward anyway. i’m still scared. of failing again. of losing more. of not being enough. but i’ve lived through every fear that i once thought would break me. and i’m still here.

excerpt from a prose i wrote (12/31/2024):

i've realized that holidays hit differently after losing mommy. they're quieter and emptier, like someone stole the twinkle from our christmas lights and the warmth from our noche buena. the magic is still there, i think. but it feels sooo far away, like it belongs to another universe.

this year feels especially heavier—kuya left early for residency, and it's just me and daddy for new year's for the first time. ever. the house feels too big and i miss the noise, the laughter, the way mommy always made everything feel a little more like home.

but even in the quiet, i find myself holding onto gratitude. for the years that passed—a year of firsts, of growth, of healing. a year where i ran not just metaphorical marathons but an actual life-changing 42.2 kilometers in less than five hours and 45 minutes (first of many. for sure). a year of meeting patients who taught me more about life than textbooks ever could. a year of giving and receiving love in ways that filled the spaces loss left behind.

excerpt from a prose i wrote (01/01/2023):

inside me, there is inconsolable grief—a chronically infested wound, the shape of my love, that no amount of antibiotics can heal.

i am no longer the person i was two (2) months ago: grief has found its home in the solace of my heart chambers. the grief of unspoken love, of the world spinning with unpolished shoes, of empty spaces that is where you once were. people say, the bleeding stops eventually; maybe it will turn into scab over time. but there are days when i still feel it seeping through, gently gnawing on my flesh. when i am eating an ube cake you would have loved. when i see trailers of a tv show you were looking forward to. seemingly mundane things i could no longer do because you are no longer here. next thing i know, it’s bleeding again.

but don’t get me wrong, i do not expect the grief to end. or rather i do not want this grief to end. its obesity has already sat so tenderly on my chest, i feel it warmly deforming my heart cavity—peaking out of my ribcage, pectus carinatum. i cradle it with gentleness, singing lullabies until midnight. most days, it will be fast asleep but someday it will combust into emotional dynamites and i can only hope to wipe its tears away.

and that is okay because this is the only way i know how to perpetuate a love i don’t want to give up. grief is a souvenir for love with no cabinets to sit idly on—it looks messy, a little bit shiny, but always hearty. it is the echos of our beloved, muddying its way up with a million other moments and mundanities.

someday, maybe soon, everything will ache less. but even then, i do not want to forget how it felt to grieve.

but every day, i try not to be.

i used to think becoming a doctor was just about knowing things: being able to name the muscles and bones in the body, memorizing the steps of a physical exam for OSCE, figuring out the cause of a constellation of symptoms. and i guess in many ways, that’s still true. med school gives you the brain for medicine: diagnostic frameworks, clinical guidelines, steady hands trained to know where to palpate and auscultate.

but what i've come to realize is that it doesn’t always teach you the heart.

empathy isn't part of the syllabus. i never got points for making my patient feel safe, heard, or understood. instead, it grows quietly, like a garden! each patient is a seed and every story is a drop of water. it takes time. it takes listening. and it takes getting sick yourself sometimes, just to remember what it feels like to sit on the other side of the table.

last week, i caught a terrible cold. the kind that rattles in your chest and echoes in quiet classrooms, the kind that makes you feel like an overworked jeepney with a busted muffler. i tried the usual: warm water, rest, paracetamol. classic. then it got worse. i was prescribed amoxicillin. reliable, trusty, broad enough to cover the usual suspects. and i thought that was that.

but a week later, and i still wasn’t better. not totally. so i went back and was prescribed azithromycin, to cover the atypicals. textbook move, it made sense.

then i went to the pharmacy and the cashier didn't even blink. “P98 per tablet,” she said so casually. generic—not even branded.

i blinked. maybe i misheard? but the receipt printed out: five tiny white tablets. total: P490. P490 for pills barely the size of my nail. pills that dissolve on my tongue and vanish forever.

i paid, of course. because i could. but as i walked out, it stayed with me. P490 is not even a full day’s minimum wage in many parts of the country. it's a family's grocery list for the week. a child's baon and jeepney fare. maybe the last folded bill in someone's wallet. and yet for me, it was just…five tablets. five tablets i didn’t even hesitate to prescribe to a patient months ago.

and that’s when it hit me—how easy it is to forget what it means to be on the other side. we say things like, “take this twice a day for five days,” or “follow up after a week,” like we’re ordering fast food. but we don’t always ask: do they have the fare to come back? do they have the money to buy the meds i just prescribed? do they even have the time to get sick?

because for a lot of people, getting by will always come before getting better.

so the next time i see a patient who hasn't returned in weeks, whose blood pressure remains uncontrolled, whose meds have long run out...

i won’t ask, “bakit ngayon ka lang bumalik?”

instead, i’ll ask: “kumusta ka na? anong nangyari?”

because maybe it’s not that they didn’t want to get better. maybe it’s just that life got in the way.

mine was sometime before 4th grade, before i got my first laptop—a white samsung notebook, chunky and glossy and heavier than most of my books in grade school. it was a birthday gift from my dad. i didn’t know what to do with it at first, but everyone in class thought i was so cool for having one. and that was enough to make me want to figure it out.

before that, life was…louder and softer at the same time. it was plastic toys scattered across the floor of our living room. it was my barbie dolls with tangled blonde hair, my toy cash register with chunky, clicky, colorful buttons, my mini stove that lit up if you pressed hard enough. it was the science kit my mom bought from Toy Kingdom. it was afternoons pretending to be the tindera or chef, while my cousins waited their turn to “order” plastic vegetables or pay me in fake coins. we’d fight over who gets to play customer or who gets to hold our fake plastic bags.

then came the laptop. and just like that, i stopped imagining.

i traded my barbies for online dress-up games where you could change outfits but not the story. my cooking set for a pixelated wine-mixing game on y8. instead of playing grocery store shopping with my cousins, i was hanging out in Club Penguin, waddling around as a little pink penguin named “wobbly54322,” trying to earn cash from the pizza game and sitting at the table with strangers. i didn’t know it then, but something in me, something soft and curious and playful, started to go quiet.

and then i found tumblr. and i wish i hadn’t. or maybe i wish i found it a little later. because suddenly, the internet stopped being playtime—it became a performance.

i learned things i shouldn’t have learned that young. i saw people post things they should’ve never shared, things my 11-year-old brain wasn’t ready for: unsolicited bazoongas, thirst traps disguised as art, trauma being dressed up in aesthetics and grunge filters. i learned how fast kindness turns to cruelty when someone is chasing reblogs and like. i saw how easily people lied. and more than that, i learned how easy it was to believe them.

tumblr taught me about beauty standards—sharp collarbones, sad girls with perfect eyeliner, thigh gaps, and clear skin. it made me look at my body like a problem to be fixed. since then, i stopped liking my reflection and started curating it.

but it wasn’t all bad, of course.

tumblr also taught me about injustice—about racism, sexism, homophobia, colonialism, and everything else. i saw strangers come together to fight, to cry, to educate. it taught me how to be angry in the right direction. it made me brave. it made me want to write and paint. it gave me words i didn’t know i was allowed to say out loud.

it gave me…well, me.

but sometimes, i still find myself missing the girl who didn’t need anything more than a box of toys and a little space to pretend. the one who thought a plastic fried chicken was jollibee, who made fake catalogues of her furniture “designs,” who believed that water kisses are living, breathing things. i wonder if she’d recognize me now, or if she’d be a little sad that i stopped talking to the world i built for us.

i don’t blame the internet, not entirely. it gave me things too. language, perspective, a sense of connection i couldn’t find elsewhere.

what a terrifying, oddly comforting thought.

it spins even when your shoes are still unpolished. even when you’re barely crawling out of its magnetic core. even when you’re on your knees, screaming into the sky, begging for just one quiet minute to breathe.

it doesn't flinch. doesn’t wait. maybe it doesn’t discriminate—the rich mourn the passing of time, while the poor grieve a life that keeps moving before it’s fully lived.

this is just how the universe works. cold. indifferent. endlessly in motion.

and in accepting its quiet cruelty, we uncover something else: we’ve survived it anyway.

maybe we always have.

maybe we always will.

maybe—despite everything—i can finally learn to treat my own heart with gentleness.

not in a dreamy, magical way. more like i’m merely a grain in a world i don’t fully understand yet. kind of anxious. kind of wide-eyed. figuring things out one feeling at a time.

but at the same time…isn’t it beautiful, this softness? this whole unknown thing blooming quietly in my chest?

love, i’ve come to realize, is not the movie scene fireworks or the theatrical chaos i thought it would be. it’s smaller than that, softer than that, gentler.

love, is sounding out someone’s soul for the first time—getting it wrong, stumbling over the syllables. but they don’t laugh. they smile, and help you try again.

love, is finding comfort in a mundane saturday after hell week. you’re eating fried donuts and sipping iced coffee at your favorite cafe. they sit beside you quietly, listening to you yap about your dreams, your panic, your 2am thoughts about the moon. and somehow, that moment is sacred. like being picked first during play time, like being seen without having to raise your hand.

love, is the unspeakable pride when their name shows up in lights—on a screen, in a lineup, in the background of something huge. you clap too hard and you tell everyone. you feel like the kid holding a gold star that isn’t even yours, but you beam with it anyway.

love, is a cup of coffee that’s half 3-in-1, half black, lukewarm, just the way you like it. you never taught them. they just remembered. sitting on the desk, like a packed lunch you didn’t know you needed.

love, is them asking, “how are you feeling today?” every 22nd of the month. even when the calendar’s otherwise empty. even when you forget what the date means. just because they remember the way some dates press on your ribs a little harder than others. just because they care quietly, consistently.

love, i’ve learned, is the softest kind of noticing—switching places when we’re walking too close to traffic. a 9pm alarm called “meds time.” fixing your collar before you leave.

unfortunately, i’m still new to this. i’m still small and soft and figuring out where to put my hands. i worry i’m loving wrong—too loudly, or not enough. fortunately—i’m learning. and they are, too. slowly, kindly, hand-in-hand.

how lucky am i to be loved like this: gently, earnestly, in real time. by someone who’s never done it before either, but still chooses to try. who still shows up every day, making space for me to be exactly where i am.

or in my case, my first patients—plural. scattered across like fragments of a memory i'm still trying to hold gently.

today is my last day of ICC! that sentence doesn't quite sit right on my tongue yet. how do you wrap something that unraveled you in all the right and wrong ways?

when i was answering our comprehensive exam this year, somewhere between the first circle i shaded and the last one i erased three times before settling, i felt a soft unfamiliar ache: nostalgia, the kind that hums softly when you realize that you're standing at the edge of something—not an ending, just the super slow turning of a page.

my usual ritual? answer everything in one go. mark the tough ones. double-check. only then do i start shading the scantron.

but this time, every question felt like a doorway pulling me back to bedside somewhere. to faces. names. voices. like i was flipping through a secret diary i didn't know i was writing these past three years.

Entry #1: the smiliest 6-month-old baby with a metabolic condition caught early through EINC. asymptomatic. soft cheeks. no teeth. eyes that didn’t understand the gravity of the diagnosis but smiled anyway. he’d grab our fingers with that unexpectedly strong baby grip. and somehow, that made the world feel softer.

Entry #2: the boy in the wheelchair. hemiplegic cerebral palsy, but louder joy than any textbook definition of his condition. he couldn’t speak in full sentences, but he spoke in laughter. in sounds that filled the opd like music.

Entry #3: the tito with psoriasis. talked like we were long-lost friends, cracked jokes as if humor could soothe the flare-ups. and i laughed—genuinely, not out of politeness but because he reminded me that life doesn’t pause after a diagnosis, it just rewrites itself, a little differently.

Entry #4: the teenage boy with hemophilia: he needed a knee surgery, but couldn’t get the transfusions. not because of money alone, but because the treatment simply didn’t "exist" here. while we were doing our history and pe, he was playing on his phone—the “only way he could have fun,” he said and i remember thinking, how do you carry so much pain and still sit so still?

Entry #5: the lola in her nineties: sharper, warmer, stronger than me on most days. she’d call us “anak” even if we was just standing near her. “mas malakas pa siya sa inyo,” our blockmate joked once, and funnily enough, i believed her. she reminded me that aging isn’t the opposite of youth. it’s proof of survival. of choosing to wake up again and again, no matter what.

and so many more.

faces i may never see again but whose names are tucked somewhere inside my chest. stories i kept quietly, not out of duty, but out of reverence. not all moments were big, of course. some were just silent nods, quick chats with the mommies in the pedia ward. but for me, they mattered and they changed me.

my last rotation this year was pedia and it drained the hell out of me. every round of monits made me feel like a malfunctioning checklist machine. tick. tick. tick. repeat. then came the exams. the grand OSCE. i was tired. uncertain. i kept asking myself: is this still what i want?

but now that it’s over, now that the noise has quieted a little, i hear it again: the small voice that always brings me back to my why. the reasons i started. the reasons i stayed. the love that kept finding me—even when i forgot to look for it.

i hope that love continues to find me: in busy wards and quiet call rooms, in morning endorsements and late-night monits, in the warmth of shared meals with my blockmates. may it find me in the middle of chaos, and make a home in me again.

i’m scared, yes. nothing will ever truly prepare me for clerkship. but for me, fear is not the absence of readiness: it’s the echo of hope. and i am hopeful!! for new names, new faces, new lessons. hopeful that my hands will grow steadier, my eyes sharper, and my heart wider.

and i know i’m not alone. i have people who will walk beside me, who will hold my hand when i hesitate, who will help me with my prox and fix me breakfast when i forget to eat, who will remind me that i am not my grades, not my failures, not the one mistake that still haunts me. people who will say: you’re doing okay, and mean it.

i think that's what makes this all bearable, so far. not the prestige, not the glamorized lifestyle. but the people. always the people.

so here’s to remembering. to forgetting and remembering again (hehe). to turning the page, gently. and realizing on the next one, that i still want to keep writing.

to cook your favorite meal,

to play a slow game of scrabble,

to chitchat about life lately—

what’s bloomed, what’s bruised, what we’ve missed?

to pray the rosary together,

to eat even when meat feels like barbed wire,

to walk on floor tiles that burn your feet,

and to feast on days that sound more like whimpers and pleas?

is it selfish

to ask for a little more time

to hold your hand,

even when you were already begging God for release?

just one more day—

so i could finally say

the three words that took me years

to learn how to set on fire:

i love you,

days when restaurants aren’t battlegrounds. when numbers on laminated menus don’t feel like a knife. when calories aren’t the loudest voice at the table. when spoons don’t feel like frozen nails balanced on trembling scales.

i long for mornings that don’t arrive so hollow. where hunger doesn’t feel like a threat. where mirrors don’t dictate the weather of my day. where mirrors don’t stare back with accusation.

i long for dinners that aren’t survived. for laughter to spill out between bites, not measured in numbers of spoon and sips. for a meal to be just a meal. for fullness to not feel like failure.

i long for midnights that don’t ache with insatiable shame—where the hunger isn’t echoing through my bones, where i’m not calling myself cruel things in the dark

to eat without explaining. to exist without apologizing.

i long for a body that feels like home. not a punishment, not a number, never a shame.

being in my 20s feels like wanting everything and nothing at the same time. like i’m caught between revolution and retreat.

i want to change the world—burn it down, build it better, fix what feels unfixable. but i also dream of living in a quiet little cottage with creaky floors and sleepy mornings. i want to grow vegetables, bake my own bread, name my cat chewy or something. is that peace or is it giving up? sometimes i can’t tell.

i want to dismantle injustice, challenge power, speak truth—but some days, i can’t even ask the barista to remake my drink when it’s wrong. i laugh instead, maybe give a tip, and say thank you. then i’ll walk away wondering why my voice falters so easily, why i keep choosing my own discomfort just to keep the peace.

i want to travel the world and leave a mark on every city, but i get anxious just booking a flight. i love running, but i’m always so tired. i crave momentum, but i’m stuck in stillness. there’s a fire in me, and some mornings i just...sleep through it.

i think i’m beginning to understand my parents more. how adulthood isn't about having answers but instead just finding ways to survive the questions. the grocery lists. the 9-5s. the unspoken grief of dreams that get shelved quietly every day.

but yesterday, i caught myself wanting to leave home just to prove i could. no destination. no plan. just the ache of needing somewhere else. but today, i feel too old for spontaneous road trips, yet too young to have it all figured out. too dreamy to be taken seriously, yet too exhausted to fight for a seat at the table.

god, i want to be everything. i want to write books, and fall in love, and heal every version of me that never felt enough. i want to be extraordinary.

most days it feels like nothing really matters in the grand scheme of the universe. but somehow, i still want to do something that makes people remember my name. i keep oscillating between urgency and apathy. between wanting to leave a legacy and just wanting to be okay.

despite these uncertainties, i woke up today, still. i got dressed. then i tried again. and maybe that’s something. maybe growing up isn't about having it all figured out, but learning to sit with the in-betweens. to carry the longing without letting it hollow you out. to dream big, even on days you feel small.

missing sundays that meant whispering secret prayers to God—not for salvation, but for the bigger share in halfsies. dipping peach mango pies into chocolate sundaes like it was sacred ritual. puzzling over the eternal mystery of which stationery set to pick: sanrio or sparkly stars? wearing queen anne, bubblegum blouse, teal pleated skirt, hair braided tight with pink elastic bands that left dents in my school. giddy conversations during the in-betweens of peace-be-with-you. holding hands with cute boys and gifts, inappropriately getting butterflies as we sing the Lord's Prayer.

back then, life felt as warm as hot cocoa in cold december evenings—cradling me on its arms like a miracle child of the universe.

and i keep wondering when did it stop being so kind? when did joy become something we had to earn? when did prayers start sounding like apologies?