Ampa.

"You're waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope the train will take you, but you can't know for sure. Yet it doesn't matter. Now, tell me why?"

_{– Inception –}

Lately, I’ve found myself wandering the dim corridors of my own mind—
drifting, in the quiet corners where echoes outlast answers.
Trying to make sense of time, of life, of loss.
Of the roads we choose… and the ones that choose us.
Of how life places us at crossroads again and again—
always when we least expect it,
always with the clock ticking louder than before.

Not lost exactly—but not fully found either.
Like walking through a dream where nothing hurts enough to break you,
but nothing soothes you enough to heal, either.

I thought it was grief. But it didn’t have the weight.
I thought it was sadness. But it didn’t have the sting.
It was something else.
Something quieter.
Something in-between.

A place where time doesn’t move forward,
but doesn’t stand still either.
Where you go through the motions but feel untethered.
Where your mind can’t quite catch up with your heart,
and your heart feels like it’s searching for something it can’t name.

Limbo

A word I only ever understood in movies—
until it settled into my chest like a second heartbeat.
I think this is what limbo feels like.
A place where you’re awake, but not fully here.
Where your body moves through the world,
but your soul is still waiting for something to catch up.

Just moving.
Just surviving.
Autopilot.
Again.

Somewhere in this fog, I stopped trying to name the feeling.
It’s not exhaustion—though I am tired.
Not heartbreak—though things are breaking.
It’s softer than that. Quieter.
Like a question with no punctuation.
Like standing in a hallway between two doors—
and forgetting which one you came from,
or where the other one leads.

In this limbo, nothing demands urgency.
But nothing feels still either.
It’s a hum beneath everything,
a low-frequency ache that keeps you scanning the sky,
waiting for a sign—
but not knowing what it would even look like.

You keep going, of course.
Feeding the day. Answering emails. Making small talk.
Smiling when someone says “you’re doing great.”
And maybe you are.
But there’s something hollow behind the glass of your eyes.
Not broken.
Just… elsewhere.

Some days, I wonder if this is what it means to pause without resting.
To be present, but not here.
To be held up by muscle memory instead of purpose.
To keep the lights on inside,
even when no one’s truly home.

Sometimes I wonder if limbo isn’t a place you fall into—
but something that slowly grows around you.
Like fog thickening at dawn.
Like dust collecting on shelves you forgot you had.

It doesn’t crash in.
It settles.
A quiet, invisible heaviness.
A silence that doesn’t ask questions—
and doesn’t offer answers either.

You start to lose shape in it.
Your edges blur.
Your voice feels far away,
like hearing yourself underwater.
You’re still you—but softer.
Less certain.
Less solid.

And the world moves on.
Fast, loud, bright.
People call your name,
and you answer—because that’s what you do.
But something in you stays behind.
A few steps back.
Still watching. Still waiting.

For what?
A jolt?
A crash?
A sign?

Maybe for someone to notice you’re not really there.
Maybe for someone to reach in and pull you out.
But no one does.
Because you’ve gotten so good
at looking like you’re fine.

So limbo stretches longer.
Not because it wants to hold you—
but because part of you isn’t quite ready to let it go.

Because in here,
grief doesn’t demand a timeline.
Hope doesn’t ask for proof.
And stillness,
as disorienting as it is,
can almost feel… safe.

Not good.
But known.

My Compass

Sometimes, the thing that pulls you out of limbo
isn’t a revelation.
It’s a reminder.

Something soft.
Something small.
Something that doesn’t ask for attention, but anchors you all the same.

For me, that’s been Ampa.
She doesn’t know it, but she’s been my compass.
The one steady light in a season where nothing else stayed still.

In the blur of these past weeks—when grief made the world too loud,
when the weight felt too heavy to hold—
she’s been the quiet gravity keeping me steady.

Not with grand gestures.
Not with answers.
But with her questions.

Simple ones.
Direct ones.

The kind that only a child can ask, and only a heart that’s slowed down can hear:

“Why does the moon follow us?”
“Do flowers get sad when someone cut them?”
“Are dreams real?”
“Why do you love me?”
“How did you chose my name?”
"What did you feel when you saw me being born?"

She doesn’t ask them looking for deep metaphors.
She asks them because she means them.
Because life, to her, is still curious.
Still magical.
Still full of wonder.

And maybe that’s the silver lining in all of this.

That children don’t overcomplicate joy.
They don’t analyze laughter.
They don’t schedule love into their day.

They feel it.
They follow it.
They live it in real time.

Ampa’s in first grade now—
her first year of “responsibilities,”
and still, she carries them with joy.

She doesn’t dread school.
She doesn’t see homework as punishment.
She sees it as a puzzle to solve,
a chance to show what she knows,
a game she’s slowly learning how to play.

And I wonder when did we forgot to see life that way.
When did we decide that everything had to be so heavy?
So serious?
So scripted?

What if we let go of that weight?
What if we let ourselves return to the simple truths?

That joy can live inside a question.
That presence can fit inside a five-minute hug.
That maybe life isn’t supposed to be mastered—
just marveled at.

Maybe the path forward isn’t always built with discipline and grit.
Maybe it’s drawn in sidewalk chalk,
with giggles and muddy shoes and crayon-colored dreams.

Maybe the real wisdom is in remembering how to play again.

The Honest Mirror

Maybe that’s what children do without even knowing it—
they hand us a mirror we forgot we needed.
Not one that reflects our exhaustion,
but one that reminds us who we were
before the world told us to grow up and carry everything alone.

Ampa doesn’t ask me to be perfect.
She just asks me to be there.

To tie her shoes.
To tell her stories.
To listen when she talks about her day like it’s the most important thing in the universe—
because, to her, it is.

And in those moments—
the in-between of school homework and bedtime routines—
something shifts.

The fog lifts a little.
The weight lightens.
The clock stops ticking like a threat.

She reminds me that I’m not just surviving this life.
I’m building it.
With her.
Through her.
Because of her.

And maybe that’s the secret to getting through the hardest chapters:
not pushing through with force,
but remembering who we’re doing it for.

Maybe parenting isn’t just about raising someone else.
Maybe it’s about re-raising parts of yourself that got lost along the way.

The part that laughed without guilt.
The part that trusted easily.
The part that saw the world not as a battleground,
but as a playground.

Ampa lives like that every day.
Responsibility doesn’t scare her.
She carries it the way kids carry things—awkwardly, sometimes messily,
but always with both hands and her whole heart.

She shows me that you can move forward without being hard.
That strength doesn’t always look like armor.
Sometimes it looks like gentleness.
Sometimes it sounds like a question with no answer.
Sometimes it just feels like standing in the sun
without needing a reason.

And maybe that’s where healing begins—
not in understanding everything,
but in noticing the beauty again.

The beauty in being needed.
In showing up.
In letting the simplest things bring you back to yourself.

Because when the world goes quiet,
and the grief returns like a tide,
and everything feels just a little bit too much—
she laughs.
She runs.
She asks why clouds don’t fall.

And just like that—
the light comes back in.

We grow up thinking wisdom comes from age.
From the ones who’ve seen more, endured more, been around longer.

But then you meet a child—
and they show you that sometimes, wisdom comes in smaller packages,
with missing teeth and shoelaces tied in knots.

Children don’t carry the weight of the world.
Not because it isn’t heavy—
but because they haven’t yet been taught to hold it the way we do.

They don’t overcomplicate.
They don’t pretend.
They just ask.
They just feel.
They just are.

And maybe they’re the ones who know the truth we forgot.

That life isn’t always meant to be solved.
That not every feeling has to be fixed.
That joy doesn’t need a reason,
and grief doesn’t need to be rushed.

Ampa teaches me this every day.
With the way she says what she feels without shame.
With the way she forgives in seconds.
With the way she finds wonder in things I stopped noticing long ago.

She reminds me that being human isn’t a performance.
It’s a practice.
One that starts over every morning with a new question,
a new hug,
a new moment to pay attention.

And maybe that’s all we need:
To pay attention.

To the small hands reaching for ours.
To the quiet questions that stop us in our tracks.
To the teachers sitting beside us at the dinner table,
asking why the moon follows the car
or where the sun goes when it’s night.

They won’t be little forever.
But their lessons stay.

So when the path gets blurry again,
when the weight returns,
when limbo knocks—
I’ll remember who taught me how to find the light.
Not with certainty,
but with wonder.

And I’ll keep walking.
Not because I know where the train will take me—
but because I know who will be sitting beside me when it arrives.
Because love doesn’t erase the grief.
But it gives it somewhere to rest.
And sometimes, that’s more than enough.