Red Lights Are A Mirror
I pulled up to the intersection and the light was already red. Of course it was red. It’s always red when I’m already late, already tired, already thinking about something I shouldn’t be thinking about.
My hands were still wet from washing them at the gas station bathroom. The paper towel dispenser was empty so I just shook them off and walked back to the car with water dripping down my wrists. I remember thinking — okay, the universe is being lazy tonight. Same red light, same empty dispenser, same stupid Tuesday.
But here’s the thing nobody tells you about red lights.
They’re not actually about stopping.
I had twenty-three seconds with nothing to do. Twenty-three seconds where nobody could text me, nobody could email me, my podcast paused itself like even my phone knew. I was just… sitting there. In a car. At a red light. On Fuxing Road. With wet hands and nowhere to be.
And in those twenty-three seconds, I cried. Not the cinematic kind. Not “music swelling in the background” kind. The kind where your face doesn’t even change that much but you’re swallowing hard and your eyes are doing their own thing and you just let it happen because what else are you gonna do. Run the red light?
That would be so on brand for me, honestly.
My friend Mei asked me once, “Why do you always stop at every light?” We were driving back from a karaoke place in Wujiaochang at like 1 AM and I’d braked for what must have been the fifth red in a row. She laughed and said, “Are you a driving instructor?”
I told her, “No, I’m just not the kind of person who runs lights.”
She got quiet for a second. Then she said, “You know, you stop at red lights in real life too.”
I knew what she meant. I’m the girl who sends the long apology text. I’m the girl who keeps her phone on airplane mode during dinner because she promised her mom she would. I’m the girl who paid back the 200 yuan I borrowed from a coworker in 2019 even though she said forget it, like it was haunting me for two years.
Red lights have always felt like mirrors to me because they force a pause. The world keeps moving around you — scooters buzzing past, that one guy in the bus lane who definitely has his hazards on because he’s picking up his phone, some woman pushing a stroller across the crosswalk in a bright yellow coat — and you’re just stuck. Witnessing it. Inside your own little metal box.
You can’t scroll. You can’t multitask. You can’t pretend you’re anywhere else.
So you look inward.
Sometimes that looks like realizing you forgot to call your dad back.
Sometimes that looks like remembering that you said something mean to your sister three months ago and you still haven’t apologized.
Sometimes that looks like crying at 11:47 PM on a Tuesday because you can’t even explain to yourself why.
I want to back up to that gas station for a second.
I’d been driving for two hours already. Work took me to a factory in Kunshan to look at some packaging samples, then there was traffic, then my boss called to ask a “quick question” that lasted thirty-eight minutes (I checked the call log later), then I had to stop for gas because the tank light came on and I panicked because I hate being stuck on the highway with no fuel.
The gas station was one of those in-between ones. Not a Sinopec. Not a CNPC. Some local brand with a tile roof and a sad little convenience store attached where the cashier was watching a drama on her phone and didn’t even look up when I walked in.
The bathroom was the kind that makes you wonder about humanity.
I went in, did my thing, washed my hands — and the paper towel machine had a strip of brown paper hanging out of it like a tongue. I pressed the button. Nothing. I pressed it again. The strip wiggled. So I tore off what I could, which was about a third of a paper towel worth, and dried my hands the best I could and then gave up and walked out with damp fingers.
That night, somewhere between the gas station and the red light, I had this thought: I’m so tired of being the person who keeps going anyway.
Like — even the paper towel machine doesn’t work for me. The bathroom faucet runs slow. The soap is that cheap clear stuff that doesn’t really clean anything. And I’m the idiot who still washes her hands like it’s going to save her.
But I do. I keep doing it. I keep stopping at red lights. I keep apologizing. I keep picking up the phone when my mom calls even when I’m about to pass out.
Why?
I don’t know. I really don’t.
Here’s what I think red lights are.
They’re these tiny, mandatory voids. The universe forcing you into a pause button you didn’t ask for. And in that pause, you see whatever you’ve been avoiding.
Last Tuesday my red light showed me that I haven’t felt rested in nine months.
I can already hear some friend saying, “Well, have you tried meditation?” Yes, Anjali, I downloaded Calm. I lasted four days before the app started suggesting I meditate about my phone usage, which felt like the universe making fun of me. The fifth day I deleted it because I felt guilty every time I opened it.
Have I tried going to bed earlier? I tried. I got into bed at 10:30 PM like a good girl and then lay there for ninety minutes scrolling through recipes I’ll never make. Last week I spent forty-five minutes reading about how to make Korean corn dogs at home. Do I have the oil for Korean corn dogs? No. Do I have a deep fryer? Also no. But there I was, watching a YouTube woman dip a hot dog in sugar at 11 PM while my alarm was set for 6 AM.
So no. Going to bed earlier didn’t work.
I haven’t figured out what works. And I’m writing this at 1 AM in my apartment with a half-finished cup of tea going cold next to my laptop, so clearly I haven’t figured out anything tonight either.
But I’m not going to lie. That red light did something. I’m just not sure what.
Let me tell you about the worst red light I ever stopped at.
It was last winter. December, I think. Or maybe it was January — you know how winter bleeds together until you can’t tell which month you’re in. My grandma had just died, and I was driving back from the funeral in her hometown. It was the kind of drive where you can’t really see properly because you’re crying, but you still have to drive because the train tickets were sold out and your dad is in the passenger seat and he’s the one who needs you to drive.
I stopped at a red light somewhere outside Suzhou. There was nothing around. Just highway lamps and a road and me, doing 60 in a 70 zone because I couldn’t see.
When the light turned red, I remember thinking: I’m so tired.
Not body tired. Not “I need coffee” tired.
The kind of tired where you don’t even know what you’d do if you could stop. Because you can’t even imagine stopping. The tiredness has become the air you breathe. You forgot what it feels like to not be tired. You think back to high school, college, even last year — and you can’t quite remember what the alternative felt like. You just know it existed.
I sat at that red light for what felt like ten minutes. It was probably ninety seconds. My dad was asleep. I didn’t wake him up. I just cried into my steering wheel and waited for the green.
When it came, I went.
That’s it. That’s the whole story.
No epiphany. No revelation. No “and that’s when I knew I had to change my life.”
Just a green light, and me, going.
I think part of why red lights get to me is that I can’t swipe them away.
Every other annoying moment in my life has an exit. Work? You can quit, or at least think about quitting for an hour every Sunday. A friend being toxic? You can mute them. Your mom calling at the wrong time? Decline. A bad date? Ghost. A weird neighbor? Avoid.
But you can’t decline a red light.
You can’t ghost a red light.
You can’t mute it, swipe it away, archive it, or pretend you didn’t see it.
You just have to sit there and be a person who is waiting.
And waiting is — at least for me — where all the feelings live. The ones I don’t have time for during the day. The ones that pile up behind the apps and the tasks and the meetings and the laundry. They wait too. They queue up at the intersection of my chest, and the red light is when they finally get their turn.
So yeah. Red lights are a mirror. Mine shows me a person who keeps going. Who keeps apologizing. Who keeps showing up. Who can’t remember the last time she felt rested.
I don’t know if that person is winning or losing or just — there.
But I know she’s at the red light right now. Watching her own hands shake a little. Remembering to breathe. Letting the green come when it comes.
There’s one more thing.
I saw a driver once — must have been a year ago, somewhere on Yan’an Elevated Road — who ran a red light right in front of me. Late at night. Empty road. He just floored it through the intersection like it wasn’t even there.
I remember thinking: that must be nice. To be a person who can just decide the red doesn’t apply to them.
But then — I don’t know. I also remember thinking: maybe he’s running from something. Maybe he can’t afford to stop.
I know I can’t afford to stop either. In a different way. I can’t afford to skip the apology, skip the call back, skip the small stupid promise I made.
Running the red would cost me something I’m not ready to pay.
So I wait.
Like tonight. The tea is cold. The laptop is hot. The neighbor is playing piano upstairs (he’s been learning for seven months and he’s still on the same four bars of Fur Elise — I can hear him through the ceiling, I’m not kidding).
The light is going to stay red for a while.
And I’m going to sit here with it.
Not because I have answers. Not because I’m brave. Just because that’s what red lights do.
They hold you.
And the only way out is when they let you.
Alright. I’ve been writing for almost an hour. I’m going to go to bed now, probably not sleep for another ninety minutes, but at least try.
If you’re out there reading this at your own red light tonight — at a desk, at a job, in a relationship, in a city — I don’t have anything clever to say to you.
I just know mine held me tonight.
Maybe yours will hold you too.
If you even get one tonight.