Reset

I think Covid broke my ability to be introspective.

For so long now, I feel I’ve been heralding my family through a massive flight or fight scenario, doing what is within my power to protect them but ultimately left helpless in the face of a provincial government that refuses to act in the public good and a growing self-centered “me first” attitude among the population.

I am pessimistic optimist. I assume the worst scenario could unfold and prepare accordingly, but deep down I believe people are inherently good and want to help each other. The last few years have rocked that belief to the core. I’m despondent and powerless. A terrible inevitability is rolling out ahead of us all, but only some of us can see it.

Or maybe only some of us care. Who knows?

All I know is looking inside and trying to untangle my thoughts and feelings is a struggle I’ve never had before. Life was simultaneously put on pause and left like a pile of sand slipping through my fingers. The more I try to hold on to it, the faster it scatters and slides away.

I am driving to Nova Scotia next week to visit my parents. I am taking my youngest child and my eldest child. I haven’t seen my Folks in three years. I haven’t been to Nova Scotia in four – the longest I’ve been away since I moved to Ontario in 1997. I miss my parents. I miss my familiar places. I miss salt air and the ocean. My parents have only seen my youngest once, when she was a baby. I’m taking my eldest because the next time my parents can visit, she probably won’t live here anymore.

Time keeps slipping along.

I want to believe the people we’ve put into positions of power will use that power responsibly and do the right thing, but I don’t have faith in that anymore. My trust has been broken. I am worried about what this winter will bring.

Next week will be my reset – a regrounding, sinking my toes into cold salty mud and trying to regrow my roots. I can’t exist without that little flame of hope inside me and I can’t think of any other way to reignite it.