Lifenotes: Spring Weight
Sydney has tipped into spring. The evenings are warm again, the light stretches further than I remember and the air carries that restless mix of possibility and fatigue. I walk through it all like someone being fit into a suit a size too small. The city makes space for me but not because I chose it.
Life at home is steady and heavy. Two parents with cancer has become less of a headline and more of a daily rhythm. Phone calls, notes, meals, small silences that last longer than they used to. It is exhausting and it is intimate. Caring is not an act you finish. It is a season you live inside.
I have been at the City of Sydney for two months now. Enough time to start learning the rhythms of council life, the patterns of how things move and who holds what. I am learning about accountability, about sowing seeds of change and being patient with them. About when to go slow and when to push. I am still finding my place in it all, still waiting to see if I can rock up in converse and be taken seriously, but it feels good to be working on something civic, something real, something close to home.
The pressure builds quietly. Being here for family while also asking if this is where I want to stay. Thinking about leaving and knowing what I would give up. Watching a housing market that locks people out. Missing the communities that once held me close and not yet knowing where to find them again. Wanting freedom and feeling it clash with being a carer. Some days it knots so tight that I just cry. Not from one thing, but from all of it stacked on top of each other. The release is messy, but it clears enough space to keep going.
Creativity has shown itself as freedom. In Mexico it came easily because there was space. Rooftops, bikes, zines, late-night scribbles. Here it feels harder. I catch glimmers of it when I swim in cold water or ride until the suburbs dissolve, when I let myself drift into other people’s energy instead of circling my own. The body understands what the head resists. Breath, cadence, salt water, tired muscles. Each ride and swim is a rehearsal for freedom.
Community is something I keep circling. I feel the lack of it more sharply here. The friends who remember old versions of me. The strangers who might become allies. I am trying to sketch the outlines of a circle that does not yet exist, one made of people who want to build together, not just talk. It feels like one of the foundations I need but do not yet have.
Intimacy flickers too. Not just romance, but the smaller tenderness of being wanted in a room, of being listened to without needing to perform. I have felt that in small moments lately, and it reminds me how much I need it. That connection is part of the work as much as anything civic I could design.
The foundations for what I want to build still feel out of reach. I know I want to create something civic, something that opens streets and gathers people. I know I want to keep making zines, bikes, small public gestures that feel alive. But right now it feels like I am trying to build on shifting ground. The space is opening in cracks, not wide enough yet.
Even so I keep moving through the warm evenings. I ride until the horizon blurs. I swim until the static in my head fades. I stand in the dark after the water, skin salted, hair dripping, night air pressing close. I remind myself that even in seasons of weight things start to loosen.
Still here. Still fighting for foundations. Still holding on to the possibility of spring.