On the first day of every class, after the prof hands out the syllabus, I immediately flip to the reading list. Yes, I have already memorized it from the course description on the English Department’s website, but now the course is real I tune out the prof’s mandatory speech on UofT’s plagiarism policy and silently fantasize about the unending opportunities for learning what each book represents. Who are the characters? What will they say? How will they make me feel? Over the course of the year, the thrill I feel in September slowly dwindles. This isn’t because the books are bad, but because their former limitless potential fades into a real book. I no longer look at that copy of Passing on my shelf and think, “Oh my god, I can’t wait to find out what that’s all about.” Now I know what it is about—and it’s great. I loved reading it, but I miss the enigmatic excitement of seeing it on the reading list, too.
–Nate Crocker, Social Media Manager
Upon finding out that I’m from New Brunswick, I get some variation of “I bet you miss home and your family” from people; shocked expressions arises when I reply that I don’t really miss either. I have a complicated relationship with my family while my home feels like a museum of melancholy moments. I only miss my dogs. For the past 18 years, dogs have been a part of my daily life. I have grown accustomed to hearing their nails clicking on the hardwood floor as they run to their bowl and not having to set an alarm as they act as one when they wake me by licking my face. For nearly my entire life, my dogs have been a source of comfort, happiness, and stability. But they’re no longer a constant, I’m more than 1,300 miles away from my only living four-legged childhood friend. Now if I’m lucky I’ll briefly see a dog as on the TTC or walking along the streets.
–Abbie Moser, Editorial Assistant
Nowadays, my exhaustion is permanent due to a mix of clinical depression and an overwhelming amount of commitments. “Burnout” is the word that never leaves my mind, a state I am constantly mired in thanks to my unceasing calendar alerts. I miss the sweet, floating days of May and June, when my worries were mostly about whether or not I remembered to bring sunglasses with me when I left the house; now, I run from room to room presenting a smiling, hollow version of myself with dark circles and honey lozenges in hand. I crave a sense of discovery, even if it’s in the offices I’ve inhabited for the past year, and the option to inhabit a noncommittal attitude. Yet disability doesn’t give you an option most days. While I love what I’m doing, and I believe my doing it will contribute to something good, I want to strike a feasible balance between service and self. I’m reminded of the good when I look at my peers thriving in spaces I helped to create, or when I reflect and realize that I now understand my mental illnesses with an intangible nuance that didn’t exist last May. I can only hope for a better June.
-Georgia Lin, Opinions Editor
My mother lived in over 14 places by the time she was 18, crisscrossing the border between divorced parents from Toronto neighbourhoods to New York State—Markham to Manhattan, Lippincott to Woodstock, Lowther to Long Island. The legacy of my grandmother’s restlessness seeps through generations to shape my life in subtle ways. Though I had only moved 7 times by the age of 18, I was always drawn to others who I sensed could recognize, as I felt I could, the precise texture of emotionality that comes with geographical shifts. Landscapes are physical, but they are also affective. I once made a boyfriend drive me an hour and a half to the port city in which I spent my childhood so I could brush up against the landscapes I have fortified in memory. I don’t know what it means to not remember my birth city. I don’t know how to articulate the weight of places that are no longer home, emotional ghost towns. All I know is that losing access to a space emotionally when you still have access to it physically is a particular type of grief.
-Tamara Frooman, Senior Copyeditor
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