Every year around this time my body does something annoying.
The light starts to change, the snow starts to melt, everyone around me gets that look on their face like finally and I get a headache.
Not a regular headache. The kind that sits behind your eyes and just… stays. Like my nervous system is filing a formal complaint about the transition.
Spring sounds lovely in theory. In practice, for me, it’s always been a bit of a rough crossing.
This year it’s been more than the headaches though.
I don’t know how you’ve been feeling lately, but if you’re anything like me if you’re someone who picks up on the emotional temperature of a room before anyone’s even spoken the last few weeks have been a lot.
The world feels loud right now.
And not the kind of loud you can turn down.
There’s a divide running through everything. Through the news, through dinner tables, through group chats that used to be easy. People are angry or anxious or deliberately, exhaustingly silent. And somehow all of it lands on you whether you went looking for it or not.
That’s the thing nobody really explains about being wired the way we are.
You don’t get to opt out.
On top of all of that, I’ve been sitting with grief lately. People around me have been dying. And even though this is work I’ve done for years work I chose, work I believe in it still gets heavy.
Especially when people look at you and need you to say something.
They don’t always ask out loud. They don’t have to. You can feel the question sitting there, waiting.
Why did this happen. Why now. Tell me something that makes this make sense.
And you’re standing there holding what you actually know, which isn’t always what they’re ready to hear. So you find the words that are both true and survivable. You hand them something they can hold onto right now.
And then you go home and sit with the rest of it yourself.
I think a lot of you know exactly what I’m talking about. The specific kind of tired that comes from feeling everything while the world is being everything all at once.
And sometimes it matters to just say yeah. Me too.