A new experience every day
In early December, a young woman on Instagram describes a ritual called 13 Wishes: you think of 13 wishes that you have for the upcoming year, write them down on individual strips of paper, then fold the paper in half. Then, you randomly select and burn them one-by-one for 12 nights until you’re left with one wish.
My mom used to do something like this. It was called a novena. For nine days, she would say prayers and use her Rosary to call in some miracle or opportunity or answer.
On Christmas Eve I wrote and started burning my wishes. Gave them back to the universe one-by-one. As the final burn turned to ash, I opened my one remaining wish.
A new experience every day,
2025 sped by like a bullet train. Everything blurred together at such a disorienting pace: sometimes fast and slow at the same time, the landscape barely legible, always arriving at a new location just as I was getting settled. The first full year without my Mom. Valleys so deep they feel like hell. Peaks so rare and wild that I often feel that I am going to lose my mind completely from the disequilibrium.
Nothing feels right; it literally feels like everything is melting. The colors are muted. The sun is out but there’s a shade over it. Drippy candle vibes: tiny stub, fading flame. Is this what it feels like as you are about to die?
What I am describing is my grief. It is the size and shape of the universe. Enormous. Nothing in my life has ever felt this massive. Truthfully, I sometimes feel like I am zooming towards the end of my life; having witnessed her passing up close, having wished as she was dying that I could press rewind and start over from her womb, having pierced the veil and connected with her on the other side.
Somewhere along the way, I realized that I am uncomfortable with how disconnected I feel from the act of living.
A new experience each day is what I need to slow things down to a sensible pace. To create memories and rewire the brain by giving it a way to process time. Because time - defined the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole - makes no damn sense to me anymore.
Still, I’m not interested in losing track of time and space in this matrix. That’s why I added this particular with to my list.
I need a miracle, an opportunity, and answer.