things i think about at red lights

The other day, I was stopped at a red light with Lana Del Rey playing in my Airpods. The sky was doing that pink-gold thing it sometimes does before sunset, and out of nowhere, I remembered a conversation from four years ago in a kitchen I no longer live in. I couldn’t tell you what triggered it. A lyric in the song, maybe, or the way the street corner reminded me of one I used to pass everyday but hadn’t thought about in years. But there I was again: that particular brand of sadness, chipped green mug in hand, the sound of someone washing dishes behind me while I said something I didn’t mean.

This happens a lot. My days are full of small, in-between moments. Red lights. Long showers. Waiting-for-the-pot-to-boil moments. Just enough stillness to let things rise up. Not dramatic revelations, just quiet nudges from my brain. Sometimes it’s a song lyric that catches me off guard. Sometimes it’s a memory I didn’t know I still had. Sometimes it’s a half formed idea about grief or desire or how strange it is that we all agreed to use forks.

I suppose I don’t know what do to with those moments. I think in fragments. I process things slowly, often backwards. I walk around with loops of thoughts that won’t untangle unless I write them down. Social media doesn’t really work for that; it demands punchlines, hot takes, knowing what you’re talking about. I almost never do.

Last week, in the middle of a walk, I stopped on a quiet street near my apartment and thought about Echo. Yes, that Echo, from the Greek myth. The nymph who loved her own voice too much, or maybe not enough. After she was cursed by Hera, all she could do was repeat the words of others. No original speech, just reflections, delayed and distorted, forever. In that moment, I think about how often I feel like I’m echoing things I’ve read, arguments I’ve heard, lyrics that burrow into my brain. Maybe this writing is not to say something new, necessarily, but just to say something that’s finally mine.

So in a way, this is a space for the kinds of things I think about when no one’s expecting me to be productive. It could be an over analysis of a Phoebe Bridgers song (I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent with a haunted house with a picket fence / to float around and ghost my friends swimming around my head and wondering what my picket fence is). Maybe a reflection on memory, or anger, or something beautiful I overheard at the grocery story. Or a review of the countless cancelled one season shows I find myself binging. I don’t really know yet, and I like it that way.

If you’re the kind of person who keeps old voice memos just because they felt important at the time, or who rewinds the same 12 seconds of a song because it scratches at something you can’t name, you might feel at home here.

As for me: I feel everything too much and then try to name it. I argue with books. I reread old texts. I use writing to make the mess make a little more sense, or at least to honor it. I overthink. I also, weirdly, love that about myself.

I don’t know where this is going. I just know I needed somewhere to begin.

And red lights are good for that.