Category: Personal

  • The Frequency of Love

    Last year, a song got blissfully stuck in my head. I hummed the melody, enjoyed it, and didn’t think twice about the words.

    Fast forward a year, I play it again. And suddenly, the lyrics hit me in a way I didn’t even know I was ready for. The words I skimmed over before, the ones that once felt like background noise, turned out to be a blueprint for my journey.

    “The frequency of love. Feels like rivers to the seas, I’m trying not to drown, feel those currents over me, keep both feet on the ground, feels like electricity, this is the frequency of love. Can you feel it, you gotta feel it, you feel it all around, it’s in your heart, in your soul.”

    Love isn’t just a feeling. It’s a frequency. A pulse that runs through everything; in the way rivers meet the seas, in the charge that tingles through your body, in the quiet grounding of two feet on the earth, how the sun feels on your skin, floating on water…

    In a world where chaos seems constant, where comparison is the default mode and perfection is demanded in one form or another, love becomes the rarest skill. Not just romantic love, but love for yourself, for the messy humanity, for the mirrors you meet along the way.

    I’ve seen it in my past relationships with imperfect people. They were all imperfect, yet perfectly imperfect. Some mirrored pieces of me. Some mirrored all of me. In family, friends, work, I’ve met reflections of myself, and in showing them compassion, I learned to show it to myself.

    The frequency of love is unity. So above, so below. It’s patience, forgiveness, joy, stillness, electricity, surrender, and fire… all at once. It’s the pulse that reminds you that even when life feels heavy, even when the world feels cruel, your heart can still beat in alignment with everything beautiful.

    And maybe, just maybe, that frequency isn’t something you find. It’s something you carry, something you radiate, something you become with a little help along the way.

  • “Maybe this part of your healing is about facing yourself.”

    Someone told me that in a dream.

    He looked happy. Enlightened.

    That effortless kind of peace people write books about.

    He looked like he believed in me.

    And in that surreal, slippery space between sleep and truth, the words echoed like something I already knew, and didn’t want to admit.

    Maybe this part of my healing was about facing myself.

    The parts I’d been expertly avoiding.

    The parts I wrapped in distractions, in plans, in motion.

    But sometimes life – in its brutal brilliance – removes the exit signs.

    You stop running, not because you’re done, but because you can’t.

    I couldn’t even walk without pain.

    So what was left?

    Just me.

    And the uncomfortable realization that maybe I wasn’t escaping anything, except myself.

    That’s when surrender knocked.

    Not softly, more like a SWAT team breaking down the door.

    Surrender is funny that way.

    It doesn’t arrive with incense and affirmations.

    It drags you by the hair out of your old identity, while you’re still screaming “Wait, I wasn’t ready yet!”

    And somewhere in the mess, in the ache, in the disillusionment, I stopped screaming.

    I started listening.

    To my body.

    To my shadows.

    To the version of me that wasn’t performing for anyone.

    And I started talking to her.

    She was scared, yes, but she was trying to protect me.

    From being wrong again. From being hurt again.

    But healing isn’t about being “right.”

    It’s about remembering the path you were always meant to be on.

    A path that, ironically, requires you to stop walking for a while.

    And sit.

    And reflect.

    Not just in the mirror, but in your life.

    In your choices.

    In the version of you who got buried under ambition, validation, and fear.

    So I asked myself:

    What do I want to see when I look at my life?

    Who do I want to be when I can finally run again?

    And maybe, just maybe…

    This part of my healing was about not becoming someone new,

    but finally seeing who’s been there all along.

    And maybe, just maybe…

    this part of my healing wasn’t about chasing, or even changing, 

    but about learning how to stay.

    To show up.

    To hold myself steady when everything else shakes.

    Because for the first time, I wasn’t waiting for someone to come hold my hand. 

    I was already here.

    And I wasn’t going anywhere.

  • Life is Full of Mirrored Moments

    There I was, Saturday night on my balcony, taking a break from watching Gilmore Girls because nothing soothes an overthinking mind quite like the fast-talking women of Stars Hollow.

    And then… from just one floor below, I hear it. The same theme song. The same Lorelai and Rory banter. I lean slightly over the railing and there she is, my downstairs neighbor, smoking, also watching Gilmore Girls. Two women, two apartments, one show, same scene, same night.

    I’ve lived in this apartment for 7 years. She’s just moved in.

    We didn’t say a word to each other. We didn’t need to. The universe already delivered the message loud and clear:

    Some nights aren’t about fate or romance or breakthroughs.

    They’re about mirrored lives, stacked on top of each other like chapters in a book we all think we’re writing alone.

    And it made me wonder…

    If our lives are all little reruns of each other’s heartbreaks, habits, and healing, maybe connection isn’t something we chase. Maybe it’s already happening, just one floor below, one rerun at a time.

  • On Bugs, Metros, and the Art of Letting Go

    In Milan, you get used to two things: heatwaves and unexpected insect roommates. It’s like the city never told them they weren’t invited, and now they just live here, casually buzzing into your apartment like they pay rent.

    One day, I killed two flies. No drama, no mercy, just out of annoyance.

    The next morning, I found a small bug at the metro. A woman wanted to crush it. I let a firm “no” out, and stopped her from doing so. I picked it up in a napkin, keeping it safe until I got out.

    Ten minutes later, on my way out, another insect. Another rescue. A strange kind of redemption arc began to unfold; one bug at a time.

    Months passed. I cried over the spider I killed by accident almost a year ago. Sobbed, actually. Like I had killed something sacred. Maybe I had.

    The next day, I found a bug underground again. Trapped between steel and foot traffic. And again, I set it free.

    I started to notice a pattern.

    Every time I released a bug from the belly of the city (this dark, mechanical underground maze) something in me felt lighter.

    Because maybe it was never just about the bugs.

    Maybe it was about all the things I’ve kept trapped in my own system: the grief, the control, the clinging to people who weren’t meant to stay. Maybe I keep freeing insects because I’m still learning how to free myself.

    And isn’t that the quiet spiritual metaphor of it all?

    We kill things we don’t understand.

    We trap what we don’t know how to handle.

    And every once in a while, we choose instead to set it free, even when we don’t have to.

    Sometimes I wonder if that tiny insect, dazed and dusty, ever turns around and thinks, thank you.

    Or maybe it just flies off, back to where it belongs; the sky, the trees, anywhere but here.

    And me?

    I stay behind on the metro platform, quietly realizing: setting things free… is a very freeing thing to do.

  • The Spider in the Bathtub: A Story About Goodbyes

    It was almost a year ago.
    A spider accidentally drowned in the bathtub.
    Not a metaphor. Not a symbol. A real spider.
    Small, delicate, curled in on itself. Its little body in the water puddle.
    I picked it up gently and laid it out on the coffee table, hoping maybe it was just stunned. Maybe it needed to dry.
    Maybe it would wake up.

    I left the room for a moment.
    When I came back, the spider was gone, thrown away.
    No ceremony. No goodbye.

    I felt the kind of grief that punches through logic. The kind that makes no sense to the people around you. The kind you can’t explain. I know because I had tears in my eyes when he said he threw it out, the kind of tears he could not relate to and didn’t even take seriously.

    But I knew this wasn’t just about a spider.

    Because I’m still not over it. After almost a year.

    This was about every goodbye I never got to say; laid in front of my eyes in the form of a bathroom spidey I had formed a mild emotional attachment to, whose accidental death was my fault, and it was thrown out by the person I loved.

    In my life, people leave.
    Not dramatically. Not loudly.
    Just… suddenly. Quietly. When I’m not looking.

    Loved ones pass away when I’m away.
    Breakups happen over the phone.
    Pets are gone when I’m away.
    Endings, real ones, never seem to happen face to face.

    There are no doors closing. No farewell hugs.
    Just empty space. A sudden absence. A vacuum that no one acknowledges.

    So I carry them.
    All of them.
    Inside.

    That spider cracked something open in me.

    Because I wanted to sit beside it.
    Watch. Wait. Witness.
    And if it didn’t come back, I wanted to give it a good goodbye.
    A sacred one.
    Even if it was “just” a spider.

    But I wasn’t given that chance.

    And that’s been the theme.
    The life pattern. The grief blueprint.

    “I wasn’t given that chance.”

    What do you do when life refuses to give you closure?

    You get it in your dreams at night.

    You get it in the wind that makes you remember a certain moment in your life.

    You get it by making new memories by yourself in the places you used to go together. In the streets you laughed, kissed, argued… Lived life. Even briefly.