Roses& Wildfires

I have been away from home since October, with the exception of a few days. I flew back to work, to pack my belongings, to find another new apartment, and turned right back around (If you know me, you know how much I’ve moved. It's a joke). I like to think of myself as a hopeful person. Living in Los Angeles can make you superstitious about “putting out negative energy” but in all honesty, 2025 was not kind to me. Without giving away too much, I went through a lot of grieving and heartbreak. Things didn’t go according to plan. I watched dreams of mine drift away. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fix or control anything. In the end, there was no choice left but to surrender to life.

2025 is the year of the snake in the Chinese Zodiac. It’s the year that began with wildfires in Los Angeles. The year Trump came back into office. And a year that broke my heart. I was born the year of the snake in 2001. When snakes shed their skin, they go blind. A tarot reader told me that earlier this year before all the fires in my personal life started happening. It didn’t resonate until a few months later. The world at large has felt really overwhelming and loud. 

It’s hard to feel present and balanced in a world when the news / social media goes : EPTEIN FILES, hopecore, GLOBAL WARMING, divine feminine energy, ELON MUSK BECOMES FIRST GAZILLIONAIRE, how you are failing to regulate your nervous system, PERSON WHO HURT YOU ON THE COVER OF A MAGAZINE, friends checking in, WAR AND FAMINE, wedding montage, ANGRY SONG, sad song, AI EVERYTHING, happy song¿, ICE RAID, old friend you forgot to text back, COMPARISON, how to gua shau your pain away, TRAD WIFERY, self-optimization…i mean growth! All in the palm of our hands, orbiting second long intervals, all. the. time.. It can make you feel crazy/confused— hopeful or hopeless, ugly or perfect, guilty or righteous, angry or eager, or all of the above…maybe even question who you are, where you belong in all of this mess, and why your soul decided to embark on this human experience during this time. 

The noise was too loud. I had to take a break. No social media, no texting, no luxurious moisturizer, no makeup, no Uber eats, no fancy coffee shops, no chit chat with friends, no nicotine, no alcohol, no California, no crushes, no headphones or familiar music, no clothes that felt like home, no shoes, no real contact with the outside world to really see my life more clearly. (I highly don’t recommend this unless you’re in a good place mentally btw). 

Despite the obvious blessings in my life, I knew I lost myself. I changed my hair several times to feel “different”…only to find that I couldn’t recognize the woman who gazed back at me in the mirror. I used to be so light, so free, moving like water, bright like fire, floating in the sky. I used to walk around on my tippy toes humming, but now I was mute with my feet flat on the ground. 

There was a lot I wasn’t ready to face until now, humming like a heartbeat. Surviving like a daisy in rotten soil. My flowers were wilting and no amount of water could put out all the small fires burning me up inside. And like the snakes, I felt blind. I didn’t know who or where to turn to, I wanted to just run away. Some place better that wasn’t here. My head hung like a rose, twisted with thorns, hoping for someone to admire them and say they didn’t sting too much to hold, or that they too shared my pain.

So I left the city I love. And dug, and dug, deeper, and deeper. I wrote a million letters I’ll never send. I tried to burn it all to the ground, gently. I meditated and prayed. I searched for hope in synchronicities and angel numbers. Looked around at all the pain and suffering around me and tried to find the through-lines. Hoping for justice, for balance, for answers, for the truth, for the source. I thought I found it, but didn’t realize the map was upside down the whole trip.

As hard as I tried, I couldn’t find all of “the truth”. I don’t know that I ever will. What I can understand is that life is like a garden. Each relationship or thing you value is like flowers. What brings me solace is tending to those things, gently. I wasn’t caring for myself enough, I had forgotten how. 

I learned that it’s okay to whistle in the wind, but also commit to something greater than yourself. Find real community, make art, call your mom, text your cousins, learn something new, but especially— take care of yourself mentally, physically, and spiritually so you have excess love to spread all over to others. I’ve sown some new seeds and hoping I’ll come up roses in the spring.