By day three, the adrenaline has worn off.
The road continues west, the map insists we’re making progress, but emotionally it feels like I’ve hit a slower, heavier stretch of the film the part where the music fades and the character has to sit with themselves again. We cross into Manitoba, and Winnipeg becomes the destination, though destination feels like a generous word for what today actually is.
The sky is wide here. Almost confrontational in its openness. There’s nowhere for your thoughts to hide when the land flattens out like this. No curves, no distractions just space. And space, it turns out, is excellent at returning feelings you thought you’d outrun.
Today feels heavy again. Not dramatically. Not urgently. Just present. The kind of heaviness that settles into your chest and reminds you that leaving your old life doesn’t mean it stops living inside you. My unsustainable pace didn’t respect provincial borders. Neither did doubts.
I catch myself wondering if I made a mistake. If this is indulgent. If I should already be better, lighter, more healed. As if recovery follows a tidy three-day arc with a satisfying midpoint. As if this were a movie that owed me pacing.
But this isn’t that kind of story.
If anything, today feels like the middle act in films that don’t rush redemption the ones where the protagonist keeps moving even though they don’t feel brave, inspired, or particularly hopeful. Just stubborn enough to continue.
Winnipeg arrives quietly. No triumphant score. No revelation waiting at the city limits. Just a place to stop, to sleep, to exist without needing to perform resilience. And maybe that’s the lesson today is offering: that continuing doesn’t always feel good, but it still counts.
I remind myself that joy isn’t linear. That healing doesn’t arrive on schedule. That some days are just about staying on the road and trusting the story to unfold later.
Tomorrow, I’ll wake up here. And then I’ll decide what comes next.
For now, I let the heaviness sit beside me. I don’t try to outrun it. I just keep going.
