Learning to live after almost drowning, when survival doesn’t feel like relief.

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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.

Sometimes it feels staged.
Like I wandered onto someone else’s postcard.

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.

Life keeps moving, but I don’t quite re-enter it.

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

So I’m here again, somewhere in the middle.
Not quite here. Not quite there.

I know this feeling.
It has followed me before.

Moving from Asia to London felt like this too.

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, my chest tightens. My shoulders curl in.

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 past like they’re gliding on air.
Even the trees look lightly photoshopped.
I can’t tell if I’m meant to be impressed or quietly alarmed.

And underneath it all is the guilt.

Survivor’s guilt is quiet.
It sounds responsible.
Be grateful.
Do something worthy.

So I whispered back,
then what?
even when I wasn’t sure what that meant.

Because most of my life has been about shrinking…

Expansion sounds beautiful.
But collapse feels familiar.

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.
Tech looks perfect on paper, but my body disagrees.

Something else keeps tugging at me.
Marketing. Dancing. Something that feels like mine.

And still, my heart feels 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.