“riptide”

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I keep thinking about how lucky I must be.
A small-town girl from a fishing village in Borneo, the first in my family to get a master’s degree, who lived a whole decade in London and now wakes up under California sun.

It feels unreal sometimes, like the universe handed me a postcard life.
Palm trees. Blue skies. Costco runs.
The mundane kind of magic I only ever saw on TV.

California Love, California Dreamin’, California Gurls, half the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ albums, songs that built fantasies I didn’t even know I was dreaming until I finally got here.

And yet… something in me doesn’t settle.

My friends in London still call it home.
They say come back like I only stepped outside for a moment.

But California doesn’t feel like home either.
So I’m here, somewhere in the middle again, not quite here, not quite there.
A familiar kind of drifting.

Moving from Asia to London felt like this too.
History repeating, just on different continents.

I barely post now.
Barely update anyone.
Half the time I don’t know how I feel, and the other half I’m afraid someone will tell me how I should feel.
Silence becomes easier than explaining a life I’m still trying to understand.

I tell myself: you’re in the Bay Area, going back to tech makes sense.
Logical. Expected.
But my body refuses.

Every time I open my CV, something folds inside me.
I call it procrastination, but I know better.
There’s something underneath it I’m not ready to look at yet.

Everything here is bright and polished.
Clean streets. Glass buildings. Teslas sliding by like they’re gliding on air.
Even the trees look like they’ve been lightly photoshopped.
I can’t tell if I’m supposed to be impressed or quietly alarmed.

And underneath it all is the guilt.
Survivor’s guilt doesn’t scream.
It whispers.
You’re alive. You got a second chance. Don’t waste it.

So I whispered back: live big, make it count, even when I wasn’t sure what that meant.

Because most of my life has been about shrinking.
Softening my edges.
Staying small.
Disappearing when things got loud.

It’s hard to choose expansion when collapse feels safer.

In that knot of gratitude and guilt, I can’t tell what’s mine and what I’m just obeying.

Maybe that’s why nothing feels right.
Maybe that’s why tech feels wrong even though it looks perfect on paper.
Maybe that’s why the idea of starting something of my own keeps tugging at me,
marketing, dancing, something that feels like mine,
but my heart still feels a little unsteady.
Like I’m not fully inside my life yet.

It’s a strange place to stand.
Alive, but still catching my breath.
Safe, but still scanning the water.
Dream life on the surface, riptide underneath.

I keep trying to move forward, but the ground hasn’t settled.
I’m still adjusting to the fact that I didn’t die.
Still figuring out what a true life looks like after the ocean let me go.

For now, I’m just here.
Still breathing.
Maybe that’s enough for tonight.