Fading Lights
Golden Christmas lights used to hang up in my room.
As a fresh grad, I looked forward to coming to this safe, cozy space after elbowing my way through the Makati-to-QC commute. The lights provided warmth, glowing over me while I sank into my lounge chair or bingewatched Vampire Diaries in bed.
I fondly called them ‘fairy lights,’ and oh, did they look magical.
It was a time when I was finally old enough to buy my own stuff — clothes, a smartphone, or just knicknacks for my room. Yet I was young enough to still live with my parents.
In the back of my mind, the lights symbolized small wins and anticipation for a bright future ahead.
I remember plugging on the lights the night Papa passed away, and I was painfully aware of his absence in the next room. My eyes were swollen. I crashed on the bed. Around 2 hours before, I was at the department store with my sister at closing time. Buying a barong for Papa for his funeral.
I kept those lights up for two years. They still hung from my ceiling when I left home in March 2020, bound for Singapore and unaware I’d be away for 19 months because of the lockdown.
My family took down the lights and stored them in a box while I was away, when the bedroom was renovated. I never got around to hanging them up again. Eventually, it was time to move out and live with my partner.
My bed no longer sits in that bedroom. It made more sense for my sister to reconfigure the space and set up her work desk.
The lights have been relocated to a corner in our living room. Many bulbs have gone out. During my visits, I get it to work by twisting the wires and fiddling with the plug. I like to think they light up for me, bringing a familiar warmth. I sit in that little corner and stare up at the lights.
The change is just one of many that make me sad. The house feels quieter, emptier. Even more so when our dog Scooby passed away, another piece of life when Papa was alive.
The world is moving too fast, and I’ve been struggling to keep up. The pandemic felt like a timejump. One minute, I was 27. And now, I’m 32.
Friends are getting married and having kids. Meanwhile, I’m still finding my footing in my career and health. Life has not turned out how I expected it to be at this age.
I feel like my light has dimmed, and with it, my hope for this “big life” I imagined. A wedding and family that all our loved ones would celebrate. No questions asked. No anxiety. No social and legal considerations.
But I wonder: Has the light really faded? The optimism of my youth and the vast road ahead? Or is depression painting everything in these dull, gray colors?
I scroll through Instagram, and I feel like I’m missing out. These days, I barely have the energy to be out and about, to do normal everyday things.
Writing all this scares me. I write out of longing for meaning and connection. I yearn to be seen and understood.
What’s still wonderful?
I hung a new set of Christmas lights in my current home, in the room where I type on my work laptop during the day. At night, the lights gently glow and cast soft shadows on the walls as I crochet or watch a movie on my iPad.
I’ve been finding new spaces and new sources of light. I sometimes ask myself, “What’s still wonderful?” and find warmth from conversations with loved ones over good food and coffee.
I wish there was a neat, satisfying way to wrap up this piece. But my thoughts feel as messy and random as life itself. We do what we can. We create, we live.
I can resist change and be in a constant state of nostalgia — or on worse days, in anxiety and depresssion.
But I can also see the beauty in how the light changes. Sometimes dimmer, sometimes brighter, but always there in some form.
