overstimulated.

I would be lying if I said that the past three weeks into the year have been quiet. In its own unique way, the harshness of winter in January has reminded me of an isolation I had long forgotten. An isolation that perhaps had once marked my first few years in Canada, where my thoughts were loud as the world around me fell silent.

Lately, things seem louder, and harsher than I expected them to be. As if a million things are vying for my attention and I am growing slow and fatigued with the expectations both written and unwritten within of my own identity and role within my communities. I know that with everything, I continue to grow in gratitude of the places and spaces I get to be, but it is as if my mind is running at a pace at which my body cannot keep, and where my body is rested, my mind is restless and chasing.

Perhaps it’s a symptom of something bigger that I am currently monitoring, but I am trying to listen and hear what my body and mind have been trying to speak. I know I still find comfort and joy within my community so I am expectant that this too shall one day pass. Until it does, I continue to do what I’ve always done - set pace and rhythm in which I can walk, and not run, calmly and gently towards all that is ahead. I am thankful that the joys and rituals that once anchored and grounded me then, continue to ground me now as I look to cement new habits out of old perspectives and honour the spaces that no longer exist. 

Perhaps that is the unbearable weight of being? The quiet beat of a tender existence. The cold that reminds me of a tender trauma that once lived within my bones, and an isolation that my body would rather forget, yet instead it endures beneath a smile that fades gently to black the moment the world stops looking.