Throughout 2026, I have been chasing distractions. Side quests, I called them: little detours to find myself somewhere beyond work and endless errands. I tried sports. I tried reading. I joined a writer’s circle. I even took up hiking. Each one was good, and each one danced around the conclusion I was trying to land, leaving me with the feeling that I was missing a piece.
Then, on Halloween, I flew to Arizona to see a homeboy and his coworkers, and we went to a rave.
Somewhere in the middle of it, I had a powerfully psychedelic thought. I was staring at Zedd, a mortal man standing at a table, shaping rhythms that moved tens of thousands of people at once. A DJ isn’t a singer; he has no words to preach. Yet the image was unmistakable: a man at the altar, conducting, and a congregation answering back. It looked like a Mass.
I typed it into my notes, mid-song, thumbs barely working:
a guy standing at the altar of the music in which we worship. stained glass windows projected by the bounding bass. we praise and rejoice in unity. the call and response.
Then the lights dropped, the lasers hit, and the whole crowd answered at once. There was the call, and there was the response, and for a few minutes nobody in that field was anything but a voice in the choir. The air was musky with sweat and fog. We raved until our toes were sore (5AM), and I would have kept going.
If EDM is God, then the rave is church, Zedd is the pope, and Clarity is gospel. To be clear, I am not equating EDM with God, and I am not making blasphemous claims about my faith or the Church. I am saying the experience is comparable: a crowd of people gathered to celebrate what they believe in, together.
And here is what I most want to say about that night: I loved it. I loved screaming until my voice went hoarse. I loved spinning until the lights smeared into one long streak. I loved losing myself completely in the sound. I didn’t do it to escape who I am, and I don’t hate the person I am outside the club. I like her fine. I did it because it was fun, plain and simple, the way a kid spins in circles in a yard just to feel the world tilt. Joy didn’t need a deeper reason, and I didn’t need to apologize for it.
I did feel safe, and I think that matters. I was surrounded by people I trusted, in a crowd that was there for the same reason I was. Safety is what let me let go. It’s hard to surrender to a moment when you’re braced for the next one.
On the way home from Phoenix, I debated whether to post about it on Instagram. I was holding two feelings at once: so proud, and so ashamed, that I’d had genuine fun. The outfit was more out-there than I usually wear. I’d been a little more reckless than my usual self. The Catholic guilt crept in, right on schedule, and I had to tell myself firmly that I deserved it. In the end I posted. My mom said it was okay, and strangely, that was the permission I needed.
That tension runs through my last piece, “On Suffering,” where I hypothesized that suffering is the cure for pain, and forgiveness is the cure for suffering. But I couldn’t find that forgiveness from within. I blamed myself and others for so much of what happened, and the sadness in my body couldn’t be flushed out all at once. There was a self-inflicted profundity to it, a belief that if I stopped hurting, I’d be forgetting something important.
Partying cracked that open. Not the casual kind, but the kind where you sweat and dance and lose yourself the way I did that night, which I hadn’t done in a very long time. I even had to forgive myself for going. And I’m finding that forgiveness has a home in hedonism: letting yourself go, permitting yourself to be happy. Escapism, it turns out, can grant that permission.
The fun didn’t stop at Phoenix. I had a cozy 23rd birthday party with my friends in South Bay, full of the people who know me best. Then I went to a Hugel set at Berkeley with the same homeboy and his friends, and we went bar hopping after. I was the only girl with four big tall bodyguards, and I danced the night away. We danced to Mr Brightside, Dancing Queen and Sweet Carolina. Banger after banger. Somewhere in that bar, I looked around and realized: I am so, so fun. I felt like the main character, and I didn’t feel bad about it. I didn’t feel bad that I felt good. For years I’d quietly believed that hedonism meant mindless indulgence, and I’d cast that judgment on myself and on others. That night I put it down. I owe myself this fun. All of that pain didn’t disappear for good, but for a few hours it vanished into thin air, and I danced without judging anyone, including me.
I’ll admit that I don’t think raving is a sustainable lifestyle. I don’t want to chase high after high, and I know I enjoy the lows as much as the peaks, perhaps a little too much. I’m not sure the guilt is fully gone, either. But Catholic suffering taught me that the only way out is through, and hedonism taught me something I needed just as much: maybe there isn’t endless meaning in endless pain. The only way out is still through. But there is light at the end of the tunnel, and sometimes it’s a strobe from a rave.