The Slow Return: Navigating the Push and Pull of Daily Life

Photo by Angel Luciano on Unsplash

There’s a kind of heaviness that sits with you when you return from a trip. It’s more than the weight of extra luggage you hadn't planned for, but something deeper, more insidious. It’s the weight of reentry.

You step back into your life, and nothing has paused. The world has kept its pace, kept its demands, and the inbox has grown like a stubborn weed. Backlogs at work pile high, new projects pour in, and every to-do feels like a brick added to an already teetering stack.

I came home to the same mess I left behind. Clothes I meant to fold, corners I meant to clean, plans I meant to set in motion. My suitcase still sits, half-unpacked, spilling its contents into a room that feels like a snapshot of the chaos inside my head. I haven’t had the time—or perhaps the energy—to unpack my things, let alone unpack my thoughts. I listened to more bad news than good on the happenings at home while I was away, how the narcissist parent made things harder for those left behind. Cats who got sick. How my dad bumped his head when he fell from his bed because of a nightmare.

There is no time. There is no space.

But I push through because I must. Because what else is there? The alternative is a quiet kind of defeat, a death that happens long before the heart gives out. The kind where the light dims slowly, almost imperceptibly, until one day it’s just dark.

It’s a constant push and pull. Every moment is lined with exhaustion. Every moment is lined with hope. And in every moment there is an other side that dreams of oblivion.

I fantasize about escape, not to another city or country, but to a pocket of time and space where nothing needs me. A place where I can let go without the world unravelling at the seams. Where I can exist without the fear of things falling apart.

But for now, I hold on. I take it task by task, breath by breath. I find small moments of stillness. I sip my coffee. I steal a few minutes to read a few pages of my book. I pause to write this blog. I need to remind myself that even amidst the chaos, I am here, still myself somehow, still more alive than dead, all selves still together.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough for now.