The Space Between Leaving and Landing

The Last Three Weeks

The last three weeks before I left Canada didn’t feel like a countdown. They felt like compression—everything heavy and unresolved being packed into a very small amount of time. I was leaving. That much was certain. What everything else meant was not.

I packed up an apartment I had lived in for almost twelve years. Twelve years of routines, of becoming different versions of myself in the same rooms. I didn’t cry because I was leaving the apartment. I cried because the apartment had quietly witnessed everything I hadn’t fully processed yet. The grief, the growth, the exhaustion, the survival. Packing it up felt less like boxing objects and more like dismantling a chapter I hadn’t had time to reread. Thanks to a few good friends who helped me box the memories, pack up my life and store the pieces of my life that I needed to put on hold for 11 months. Without these friends, I would probably still be packing.

At the same time, work was tightening its grip. Deadlines piled up, along with the unspoken pressure to “wrap everything up neatly” before going on leave. Except nothing felt neat. I was still waiting to find out whether my disability leave would even be approved. Living in that uncertainty—needing rest but not knowing if I was allowed to take it—carried its own weight. I was physically packing while mentally bracing, constantly running worst‑case scenarios in the background. My teammates were incredible: some understandably needy as things wrapped up, but most deeply supportive, making sure I did what I needed to do before taking off.

There were a lot of tears in those weeks. Quiet ones. Sudden ones. The kind that come not from one single cause, but from carrying too much for too long. There are still more tears - but less frequent and more purposeful.

Then I moved in with friends for the last two weeks.

It wasn’t dramatic. It was generous. A soft place to land when everything else felt like it was in motion. I didn’t need to explain myself there. I could exist without performing competence or optimism. That mattered more than I can properly put into words. On the Sunday before I left, a massive snowstorm hit. Fifty-six centimeters of snow fell in a single day, burying streets, sidewalks, and any illusion that this transition would be gentle. Canada reminding me, one last time, exactly where I was. Two days later—Tuesday—I left in temperatures below minus thirty. My body tense from cold, my mind already somewhere else.

The contrast was almost absurd. Buried in snow on Sunday. Gone by Tuesday.

I didn’t leave feeling triumphant or fearless. I left tired. Relieved. Grateful. Still unsure. Still crying - quietly. Carrying more emotion than luggage. Leaving behind an apartment, a country, a version of myself that did the best it could under the circumstances.

I wasn’t running toward something shiny. I was moving toward space. Toward warmth—literal and otherwise. Toward the possibility of healing without constantly justifying it.

Those three weeks weren’t about endings or beginnings. They were about the in-between. Sometimes, that’s the hardest part to survive—and the most honest part to remember.

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Snow, Snow, Snow

Journey Begins...