Through the Glass Doors: A Moment Between Places

This morning, I woke from one of those dreams that barely last a second but somehow stay with you the entire day.

In the dream, I easily opened and walked through a set of glass doors, though glass, they seemed clouded and diffused, like transition lenses mid-change, not yet clear. They felt like the exit of a store or café, nothing remarkable at first, but what lay on the other side wasn’t one place. It was all of them. Stay with me, it might sound strange. As I stepped outside, I found myself in a kind of plaza that kept shifting. First, it felt like BGC High Street. Then, suddenly, it became K Street Mall in the 1980s. Then it changed again. Like flipping through memory slides in real time.

It didn’t last long, maybe just a few moments. But in that short flash, I felt something I’ve been missing lately. Aliveness. Contentment. Something I can’t always name in waking life, but recognized immediately in the dream.

What struck me most wasn’t the places themselves, but what they represented: freedom, movement, youth, possibility. Moments in life when the world felt wide open and I had fewer worries, more room to just be. I want to stop conforming to others’ and my expectations. I’ve spent so long trying to fit into everything around me, and honestly, I’m tired.

That old Queen song popped into my head—I want to break free.

I hadn’t realized how long that feeling had been missing from my life. But thinking back, I know I’ve felt it before. I had to have.

Maybe the dream was my mind’s way of reminding me that those versions of myself still exist somewhere. Maybe it’s a longing for peace or escape. Maybe it’s my subconscious making sense of everything shifting right now—family, work, home, marriage, identity.

Whatever it was, I’m grateful. Even the briefest dreams can carry profound truths, and while I think of the dream and try to recall more details from it, it is futile, like the search for this moment of clarity itself.

Right now, as I write this and listen to OPM—Original Pilipino Music—on YouTube, I can feel a little bit of it again. Not all of it, just a smidgen. But enough. Maybe as I keep writing, I’ll keep uncovering more. Maybe I’ll find my voice—the one that speaks from the deepest part of me, not the curated version, not the one I think people want.

There’s a song called Pasilyo. There’s something about it—this rainy day, the notes of that song, the gentle quiet here at my parents’ home while I help care for my dad. Something inside me is stirring. I don’t know what it is yet, but I hope it reveals itself today. There’s something here, I can feel it.

And sometimes, walking through a glass door—real or imagined—can feel like a quiet prayer:

“Let me find that feeling again. I want to break free.”