it’s only the fifth day of the year and somehow i already feel like i’ve lived a full chapter.
last week i sat under a table, quietly, eating twelve grapes one by one. i tried to be intentional with each wish, as if the universe was listening closely. some of them were hopeful. some were vague. one of them, i think, was just asking not to feel misunderstood.
there’s a kind of ache that lingers when something doesn’t end badly, but doesn’t end gently either. no explosion. no villain. just a conversation that never quite meets in the middle. that’s the kind of ending that stays with you. it doesn’t hurt loudly, it hums.
i think what lingers most isn’t the person, but the moment where you realize you were asking to be understood and the other person was only trying to be right. there’s no blame in that. just a quiet incompatibility that shows itself early, thankfully, before the year has gone too far.
it’s only january 5th. i’m trying not to rush the year, or myself. i’m letting things sit. letting feelings linger just long enough to learn from them, but not long enough to harden me.
maybe that’s what the grapes were for. not wishes that come true immediately, but reminders of what i want to carry and what i don’t.
and so early into the year, i’m choosing softness. i’m choosing clarity. i’m choosing not to confuse emotional absence for peace.
i did not lose someone in the way people usually mean when they say that word. there was no immediate absence in my daily routine. no chair suddenly empty at the table. no phone number i had to stop scrolling past.
but recently, my mom found out her cousin passed away. and somehow, even at a distance, death still found its way into the room.
death has a strange way of doing that. it does not ask how close you were. it does not ask how often you spoke. it simply arrives and reminds you that life is fragile and fleeting and deeply human.
what struck me most was not the sadness alone, but the remembering. the way my mom spoke about him. the stories that surfaced naturally, as if they had been waiting for a moment like this to be let out. laughter mixed with silence. details that had been dormant suddenly mattered again. death did not erase him. if anything, it sharpened him.
we talk about death like it is an ending. a full stop. something heavy and final. and yes, it is painful. it is uncomfortable. it carries a weight that settles in your chest and refuses to fully leave. but it is also a mirror. it forces us to look at what remains.
what remains are stories. memories. shared traits. inside jokes. the way someone moved through the world. the way they loved. the way they were loved.
in that sense, death is not only about loss. it is also about preservation.
i realized that remembering someone is an act of care. it is how we keep them present without pretending they are still here. it is how grief softens into gratitude over time. remembrance is not denial. it is acknowledgment. a quiet agreement that someone mattered enough to be held onto.
maybe that is why death feels so destabilizing. because it pulls us out of our routines and asks us to consider our own impermanence. it asks questions we do not usually make time for. who will remember us. how we will be spoken about. what parts of us will linger.
and maybe that is the strange gift inside the sadness. death teaches us to live with intention. to love people while they are here. to say things we postpone. to recognize that presence is never guaranteed.
i think about how many people exist in our lives not loudly, but steadily. cousins. relatives. people who are not in the center of our everyday, yet are still woven into our family’s history. their lives ripple outward in ways we do not always see until they are gone.
this loss reminded me that life is not measured only by proximity or frequency, but by impact. by the quiet ways someone shapes the people around them.
boyhood interrupted has always been about pausing long enough to feel things fully. and sitting with death, even secondhand, feels like one of those pauses. a moment to acknowledge sadness without rushing past it. a moment to honor someone by remembering them.
so this is not a post about despair. it is about reflection. about honoring a life by allowing space for memory. about understanding that death, while devastating, is also a reminder that love does not disappear when someone does.
it changes form. it becomes story. it becomes remembrance. it becomes the way we speak their name and mean it.
this year unfolded like a spiral. not a collapse, not a detour, but a return that never quite landed in the same place twice.
i used to think spirals were failures of direction. proof that i hadn’t learned the lesson the first time. but a friend reframed it for me in a way that changed everything. spirals don’t bring you back. they only pass close enough to memory that the feeling feels familiar. you recognize the emotion and mistake recognition for regression.
in reality, each pass through the spiral asks something different of you. you carry forward what you were able to hold, and you release what you no longer need. over time, the weight shifts. the lesson stays. the ache softens. what once felt central becomes something you can observe rather than chase.
chemistry gave me language for this. spirals exist because systems are not static. they repeat with variation. they move outward even as they curve inward. what looks like chaos is often just structure viewed too closely. meaning reveals itself only when you step back.
this year, i kept circling familiar questions. about love. about worth. about timing. but each time, i noticed i wasn’t asking them from the same place. the urgency changed. the desperation faded. the questions became quieter, more curious than anxious.
there were boy issues, inevitably. i didn’t get the relationship i imagined. i didn’t get the mutual certainty i hoped for. instead, i found myself orbiting people who felt just out of reach. close enough to stir old feelings, far enough to demand reflection. for a long time, i thought closeness meant possibility. now i understand it often means remembrance. sometimes you’re near something not because it’s meant to return, but because you’re meant to understand why it mattered.
and then there was europe. distance does something profound to perspective. walking through places shaped by centuries, i realized how small my inner crises were in the context of a world so wide and waiting. not insignificant, but human. temporary. i learned that longing does not define a life. movement does.
friendship brought its own fractures. i learned that intimacy changes as people grow. that choosing yourself can feel like loss before it feels like alignment. that not all connections are meant to come with you forever. some exist only to shape you.
through all of this, boyhood interrupted became the place where i could think slowly. where i didn’t need resolution, only honesty. writing became a way to witness my own becoming without demanding that it make sense immediately. i’m proud that instead of numbing the chaos, i documented it.
now, i feel content. not because everything resolved, but because i trust where i am. i’m closer to the things i’ve been manifesting, not in outcome, but in orientation. my life feels less reactive, more intentional.
this year didn’t give me what i wanted.
it gave me what i could carry.
and maybe that is what spirals are for. not to return us to old versions of ourselves, but to pass close enough that we remember what we’ve already learned before moving on.
not in a loud way. not in a way that made me want to run out the doors. it was quieter than that. i loved church. i loved the ritual, the music, the idea that there was something bigger than me that cared whether i made it home safely. church was impactful. it taught me how to sit still with my thoughts. it taught me reverence. it taught me hope.
but the deeper i went, the more i learned how to hold my breath. even before i knew i was queer, my body seemed to understand something my mind had not yet named. there was a low level tension, like i was always one wrong sentence away from being exposed. the sermons preached love thy neighbor, but somehow that love always came with conditions. love unless you believed differently. love unless you lived differently. love unless you were different.
it is unsettling how much hate can exist inside a space that speaks so fluently about love.
i believe in a higher god. i still do. and strangely, being in the science field has only brought me closer to that belief. the more i learn about how life works, the less accidental it all feels. the precision of it. the balance. the way everything depends on everything else. studying life fills me with awe. the way the world was created, the way systems fold into one another, the fact that existence sustains itself at all, feels mind blowing.
science did not distance me from god. it gave me another language for reverence. it taught me that wonder does not disappear when you ask questions. it deepens. and maybe that is why my relationship with religion became so complicated. because the more i understood the world, the harder it became to accept a version of faith that asked me to stop thinking, to stop questioning, to stop being fully myself.
i carry guilt about that distance. the kind that settles quietly in my chest and whispers that i am doing something wrong. like i will be punished for not being in tune. like doubt is disobedience. like stepping back is the same as betrayal.
that is when i realized this did not just feel like a crisis of faith. it felt like a toxic relationship.
one where love is promised but belonging is conditional. where discomfort is reframed as your failure. where you remember the good so vividly that you excuse the harm. where you tell yourself it did not mean it like that, or that maybe you just need to try harder. where leaving feels worse than staying because staying at least keeps you chosen.
i am left in a limbo now.
i want my future family to know where i come from. i want them to learn about faith, about grounding, about believing in something larger than themselves. but i do not want to teach them that love requires shrinking. i do not want them to think demeaning people for how they exist or what they believe is righteousness. i do not want god to be something they fear rather than something that holds them.
so i hold both truths at once. that something sacred shaped me. and that something sacred also hurt me.
maybe faith is not blind loyalty. maybe it is discernment. maybe it is choosing what allows you to stay whole. and maybe limbo is not a failure of belief, but the most honest place i have ever stood
i am done translating silence into interest. done confusing distance with depth. done romanticizing people who show up halfway and call it mystery. nonchalance is not emotional maturity. it is emotional avoidance dressed well.
boyhood interrupted is realizing how many of us learned to shrink our wants to keep other people comfortable. to accept crumbs because asking for more felt like too much. but 2026 is not about proving you are low maintenance. it is about choosing people who meet you where you are, not where they are convenient.
if someone cannot name what they feel, cannot follow through, cannot show curiosity or care, that is not cool. that is unavailable. and i am no longer auditioning for attention or decoding mixed signals like it is a personality trait.
going into 2026, i want relationships that feel warm. responsive. intentional. people who do not make you guess. people who do not disappear and reappear like nothing happened. people who understand that effort is not desperation. it is respect.
so yes, cutting off nonchalant people is the goal.
not out of bitterness, but out of self preservation.
this strange ache for a version of me that doesn’t exist anymore. isn’t it wild how the brain plays these quiet tricks? how it can make you feel something you thought you’d outgrown, like an emotional ghost brushing past your shoulder. i was trying to explain it to my psychiatrist, this heaviness that kept slipping through the cracks of language. not quite sadness, not quite numbness. just this… sinking. the kind where you don’t want to move, not because you’re tired but because you’re afraid of what getting up might make you feel.
she asked questions in that soft-interrogation way therapists do, peeling back memory after memory until we reached that chapter. the one i don’t revisit often. the one where i kept trying to fill an emptiness with bodies. where i would crawl into moments i didn’t even want, only to leave them feeling icky, haunted, and carrying more scars than satisfaction.
it’s strange how the body remembers what the mind tries to forget.
she called it transference, the way our brains drag old emotions into new spaces without asking permission. how touching something from an earlier version of yourself can instantly pull you back into that era, even if your life looks nothing like it did then. it’s like hearing the song you used to cry to at seventeen and suddenly feeling your chest tighten, even though you’re smiling now.
a phantom limb.
a ghost emotion.
a reminder that healing isn’t linear, it loops, echoes, returns, not to punish, but to show you how far you’ve walked from where you started.
this past week in sociology, my professor asked us to write about how our lives have been shaped by social structures. you know yourself better than anyone, the prompt read, and yet i realized how much of myself has been molded by forces far beyond me. i’ve always loved this class. it makes me feel alive. i find myself romanticizing durkheim’s data tables the way others might romanticize dinner dates. sociology, to me, is the art of realizing that our personal troubles are just public issues wearing custom-fit clothes.
growing up in a strict, conservative, and homophobic home, i learned early on how to perform. like goffman’s stage metaphor, i was the actor, my living room the set, and every gesture a rehearsed line. my habitus, as bourdieu would say, was shaped by silence, learning when to laugh at jokes that hurt, how to lower my voice, how to tuck my softness behind sarcasm. i watched my sisters twirl in the kind of freedom i wanted but couldn’t claim. i learned that being “the other,” as de beauvoir might remind us, isn’t just about gender. sometimes it’s about existing as a boy who can’t perform boyhood correctly.
there was a point, somewhere between algebra homework and whispered prayers, when i started to believe that fitting in was more important than existing. i didn’t have the words for it then, but what i was experiencing was altruistic suicide, durkheim’s idea of losing oneself in the collective. i tried so hard to belong that i nearly disappeared.
but life, like any good social experiment, changes its variables. when i transferred to a high school that celebrated difference, i found people like me, people who lived outside the iron cage. weber’s iron cage, his metaphor for how capitalism traps us in cycles of work and rationalization, made sense of everything i’d felt. it wasn’t just my parents’ expectations that confined me, it was a world that equated worth with productivity, masculinity with dominance, and love with permission.
at berkeley, i see the iron cage everywhere. in 8 a.m. lectures, in linkedin posts about five internships before graduation, in the unspoken panic that if we stop moving, we’ll stop mattering. we’re all caught in this bureaucratic ballet, performing excellence while secretly yearning for meaning.
marx would say i was alienated from myself, my labor, my identity, and he’d be right. but there’s also something liberating about naming the forces that try to name you. like mora’s making hispanics, which shows how institutions created “hispanic” as a category, i began to see how my identity, latino, gay, male, wasn’t just me, it was a negotiation between census boxes, media markets, and family histories.
i remember when i first learned about pan-ethnicity, how groups like mexicans, puerto ricans, and cubans became “hispanic.” it made me think of my own upbringing, how i was told to be latino but never too feminine, proud but never loud. identity, i realized, is both a mirror and a marketplace, something we’re sold as much as something we claim.
and somewhere between theory and therapy, i found myself fascinated by how every part of my life, from my first heartbreak to my college major, was linked to the social fabric. chambliss taught me that excellence is mundane, fourcade and healy that we live in an ordinal society ranked by invisible hierarchies, and du bois that the veil still exists, it just changes color. hoang’s spiderweb capitalism made me see that even intimacy can be an economy. when i walk across campus now, i think of the up series, that lifelong documentary that asks who we become as society shapes us. at seven, we dream. at fourteen, we conform. at twenty, we question. and somewhere between those ages, i learned that my story wasn’t a deviation from boyhood, it was just a different syllabus.
maybe that’s what sociology really is, the art of realizing that every heartbreak, every silence, every sunday sermon was part of a larger system, and that by understanding it, you can finally breathe outside it.
wow, i can’t believe it. twenty. my second decade. how did i even get here? growing up, i couldn’t picture eighteen, let alone twenty. sometimes i still feel like that kid who used to stare out the window at night, wondering when life would finally start… but now i’m starting to feel like maybe it already did. maybe it’s been happening this whole time, quietly, in the background, while i was too busy trying to figure out who i was supposed to be.
it’s strange to look back and realize i never thought i’d make it here. not because i didn’t want to, but because i truly couldn’t see it for myself. the world around me made me believe there wasn’t space for someone like me. i know, that sounds cliché, maybe even a little tacky, but at the same time it felt real. it was the kind of loneliness that seeps into your bones before you even understand what it means. i thought being different meant i didn’t belong. i used to shrink myself so small that i almost disappeared. but somehow, i didn’t. i stayed. i grew.
now i feel lighter, freer. it’s like the universe finally took a deep breath for me and said, okay, you can live now. i feel like i’ve been handed this invisible permission slip to take up space, to just be. that old shell of a boy doesn’t live here anymore. i’ve grown into someone i’m proud of. i’m not trying to prove i’m better than anyone, i just know now that i’m enough. that’s everything i used to wish someone would tell me.
it’s funny, i used to be obsessed with setting goals, never intentions. i always wanted things i could measure, like grades, jobs, milestones. but never peace, never energy. there were always signs, little moments of alignment, but nothing that ever truly stopped me in my tracks until recently, when a friend, someone with this soft and grounding energy, did a reading for me. her words felt like sunlight through a window. she reminded me that what’s meant for me will always find me, that i don’t have to chase what’s already written in the stars.
and maybe that’s the biggest lesson of all… i’m done chasing what isn’t meant for me, especially people who don’t know themselves. i’ve done that before, i’ve poured love into places that couldn’t hold it. i used to think if i tried harder, if i made myself smaller or sweeter, someone would finally stay. but i’ve learned that love without grounding isn’t love at all. it’s confusion dressed as connection. and i’ve spent enough time mistaking chaos for care.
she helped me plant four little seeds, intentions i want to carry into this twenty something chapter. first, to bring love into the situation. to create space where i can give love and appreciation to others, the way i always wished someone had given it to me. sometimes all i needed was a hug or a quiet “you’ll be okay,” and now i want to be that person for someone else.
then, a time for healing. i’m finally learning to sit with myself, to look at my past with softness instead of shame. i’m slowly beginning to heal, and maybe for the first time, i’m not rushing it. work through your fears, that one hit hard. fear has always been my shadow, but maybe fear isn’t something to conquer, maybe it’s something to understand. and finally, the answers you need are coming. that card felt the most mysterious, but maybe that’s the point. maybe it’s about patience, about trusting that clarity will come when i’m ready for it.
sometimes i think about the things i’ve written before the late-night posts where i tried to convince myself i was fine, where i mistook survival for strength. maybe those versions of me needed to speak first, so this one could finally listen. because now, it feels different. quieter. softer. maybe this is what growing up feels like, not checking boxes or chasing milestones, but feeling the small shifts inside yourself. learning to love your own company. realizing that peace isn’t something you find, it’s something you create. maybe this is what it means to step into yourself, quietly, fully, unapologetically.
twenty feels like a soft reset, a slow sunrise, a new beginning in a familiar body. i don’t know exactly where i’m headed, but i know i’m not who i used to be, and maybe that’s the point. maybe growing up isn’t about finding the answers, but learning to live beautifully with the questions.
so here’s to the boy who made it, to the man who’s still becoming, and to every version of me that tried so hard just to stay. and maybe, just maybe, i can’t help but wonder, what if this is only the beginning?
the more you look, the more you see that addiction is not one thing. it does not always come in the form of a bottle or a pill. sometimes it is a pattern, a chase, a hunger for intensity. for me it is not about a single substance. i am addicted to the rush itself. the feeling of something sharp and new, that quick hit of dopamine that makes the world feel brighter for a moment. i do not crave the thing. i crave the feeling.
my friend just came back to berkeley. she is one of those people who makes life here different, the kind of friend you can sit with and pour your whole chest out to, and instead of leaving drained, you leave lighter. she has been telling me about a boy. everything about him sounds amazing, almost too good. but there is this shadow, a habit, maybe more than a habit.
and here is the thing about addiction. it does not just disappear when you stop. it lingers, waiting for the next place to hide. it translates itself into something else, another habit, another vice, another rush. and it is not something a partner can erase, no matter how much they care. if you are in a relationship, it is not your role to fix that person. you can love them, but love does not detox someone’s life. if you try, it can end up hollowing you out too.
i think about this a lot because of my own brain. i have adhd, and if you know, you know. unmedicated, it feels like living with an itch you cannot scratch. your body yearns for stimulation, your mind scans for the next high. sometimes it looks like impulsivity, sometimes restlessness, sometimes just wanting to throw yourself into the deep end of life because calm feels impossible. it makes sense why people like me are more prone to addictions. our brains are wired to chase balance, and sometimes that chase goes too far.
to me, addiction feels like a shadow you cannot outrun. it follows you in different shapes, stretching and shrinking with the light. even when you think you have left it behind, it reappears in another form. and maybe that is why i chase moments, because i am always trying to prove to myself that the shadow does not own me.
the truth is, we all carry something. the question is whether we let it control us, or whether we learn to live with the shadow without mistaking it for our whole self.
hi guys it’s been a quick minute. my last blog post (that i posted) was on mother’s day which feels like a lifetime ago. life has been messy and loud since then, summer drama, family chaos, school, and then my trip abroad that shifted everything for me.
portugal. i went there not knowing a single person and came back feeling like a completely different version of myself. everything was slower there. meals were long, sit down, and social. nobody was rushing with a sandwich in hand or speed walking with a coffee. it felt like people actually gave time to living.
barcelona was another story, loud, bright, full of adventures and boys, the kind of city that feels alive at every corner. one night felt straight out of a movie. we partied until the clubs closed, walked straight to the beach as the sun was coming up, and ran into the ocean with our clothes tossed in the sand. the water was freezing, the sky was pink, and it felt like nothing else existed in the world except that moment. it was also where i got closer to my roommate, sharing stories and memories that only happen when you’re far from home.
and portugal at night had its own magic. every night out felt like an adventure. getting drunk with random friends i had only just met turned into some of the best memories. the kind of fun that isn’t planned, it just happens.
the program itself was all about entrepreneurship and it made me sure of something i had only been half certain about before. i want to be in the healthcare business world one day. helping people has always been the goal, but this summer i also realized how much i love wellness, reading, and just noticing the world around me.
and then there’s buzzpatch. an idea that came out of late night brainstorming and has grown into something that feels real. it’s wild to think about creating a startup while juggling school and everything else, but the idea is too good to let go of. even with our busy schedules, we’ve been chipping away at it when we can. it’s exciting, and it makes me believe even more that i’m on the right path.
and yes, there was a boy. he was kind, thoughtful, the kind of person who makes you rethink what you want in a partner. no games, no edge, just real. i never had a bad experience with men abroad. nobody carried the same kind of guarded energy that i’ve gotten so used to here. it was refreshing.
so now i’m back, back to lectures and lattes, but carrying a little piece of that slower energy with me. it’s like i smuggled a pocket of portugal home and i’m trying not to lose it.
