Another province. Saskatchewan this time. Regina by nightfall.
On paper, the journey is progressing exactly as planned. On the inside, it still feels like nothing. The numbness hasn’t lifted. If anything, it has settled in more comfortably, like it plans to stay awhile. The scenery changes Ontario’s forests give way to wide, open prairie but emotionally, I’m blank. Not sad. Not hopeful. Just muted. As if someone turned the saturation all the way down and forgot to bring it back up.
I keep driving.
The road is long and straight in the way only the prairies can manage. There’s nowhere to hide from yourself out here. No curves to distract you. No dramatic mountains or coastlines to pretend you’re having a transformative moment. Just sky, road, and the quiet realization that changing locations doesn’t automatically change what you’re carrying.
At some point, I put on an audiobook. “Nothing Is Missing” by Nicole Walters. I tell myself it’s practical that listening to something thoughtful will make the kilometres pass faster. It’s not even framed as self-help, really. More memoir than manifesto. Safe, I think. Contained.
I am wrong.
There’s a section where she talks about one of her children getting cancer. She doesn’t sensationalize it. She doesn’t try to teach a lesson. She just tells the truth of it. The fear. The helplessness. The love that suddenly has nowhere to go except straight into terror.
And something inside me breaks open.
I start crying in a way that surprises me not quietly, not politely. I weep. Deep, uncontrollable sobs that come from a place far below language. My chest tightens. My vision blurs. I can barely see the road. I have to slow down, grip the steering wheel harder, breathe through it like I’ve been holding my breath for days.
Maybe longer.
It isn’t just about her story. It’s about how thin everything suddenly feels. How fragile life is. How much pain exists that has nothing to do with ambition or failure or productivity. How small my carefully constructed coping mechanisms are in the face of real suffering.
The numbness cracks not into clarity, not into joy but into grief. Raw, unfiltered, and unexpected. The kind of crying you don’t do in front of other people because there’s nothing to explain and no way to stop it on command.
If this were a movie, this wouldn’t be the moment with swelling music or a neat emotional pivot. This would be the scene shot from far away: a car pulled slightly slower on an empty road, a person inside falling apart without witnesses, the world continuing on completely indifferent.
Eventually, the crying eases. Not because I’ve processed anything, but because my body can only hold that much at once. The audiobook keeps playing. The road keeps stretching forward. Regina is still ahead.
I don’t feel lighter afterward. I don’t feel healed. I just feel human… again. Bruised, tender, and exhausted but no longer blank.
Maybe that’s what today is. Not a breakthrough. Just proof that I can still feel something, even if it hurts. Even if it arrives sideways and uninvited and leaves me shaken.
I reach Regina quietly. No reflection worthy of a caption. No lesson to tie up neatly. Just the understanding that this journey isn’t about chasing joy every day. Some days, it’s about letting yourself fall apart safely and trusting that the road will still be there when you’re done.
Tonight, I rest.
Tomorrow, I keep going.