The volume of all things

between movement and stillness, Archimedes' bathtub, and the body’s quiet undoing

Dear reader,

There is this feeling I’ve been feeling lately that I’ve felt come up a few times throughout my life. I don’t know how else to explain it other than to turn to physics, and even then, I don’t know if the metaphor will land (it’s been a while since I’ve taken physics).

There is this force field where two opposing desires meet, equal in strength but opposite in direction.

In physics, they call it dynamic equilibrium. Basically, it’s when two opposing forces act on a system with equal strength. On the outside, nothing changes. But beneath the surface, there are a lot of things happening. Think of a rope pulled taut and fraying, or those magnets that repel each other if you push them the wrong way.

I feel like I’m in the middle of those two points. I don’t really know how to describe the feeling, don’t have the language. It feels like charged energy with nowhere to go, a sort of metastable state.

I haven’t been feeling okay for a while, but inertia has kept my head above water enough to make it through all the things I needed to make it through. I’ve been moving on momentum alone—deadlines, responsibilities—just enough structure to keep me upright. But now that things are slowing down, now that my leave of absence is finally here and I’ll be done with this last writing deadline at the end of the week, I can feel that part of me that’s been holding it all together is starting to loosen.

I feel the need to retreat, to go inward, to let myself fall apart a little, to finally feel all the things I’ve been carrying but haven’t had space or safety to let out.

I still have a few things I plan to follow through with this month, commitments I care about and want to honour, but I think I need to spend some time alone for a while.

It’s been hard to focus on the things I need to focus on. Hard knowing I’m the kind of person who wants to be actively involved in the world—to show up for friends, to help, to contribute something that matters to the world, to be a part of it. I’m an all-in kinda girl. But it so often comes at the cost of giving myself the space and time I actually need to heal, to catch up with myself (and the world).

I’ve always been like this. I take on too much because I am excited and passionate and driven and sure, a little impulsive sometimes, and then convince myself I can handle it. I love my community, and I try to stay connected, intentional, present. I’m so lucky to have so many beautiful friends, some I haven’t seen enough of, some I wish I could show up for better lately. Please know it’s not because I don’t care. It’s because I’m a lil wash rag wrung dry. I keep thinking of Archimedes in his bathtub, the volume of all things, the water gets too high, particles spill.

When you’ve been carrying illness, stress, and tension in your body for a long time, especially with something like Long COVID or nervous system dysregulation, healing can’t always happen in motion. Sometimes, it can only begin with stillness.

I used to think that going inward was a form of avoidance, but I’m now realizing that it’s a form of recalibration. It reminds me of one time in scouts when I got trapped in a storm, and the compass kept spinning. It wasn’t until the storm lifted that it settled back into place.

I guess I’m writing to say: I hope you’ll be patient with me.

I’ve been feeling a lot of old wounds surface lately, things I keep trying to swallow back down, now lumps stuck in my throat. But I think those things, left unspoken, have shaped where I am now.

There’s emerging research suggesting that part of what contributes to developing Long COVID isn’t just the virus itself, but the terrain it lands in. They call it a heavy allostatic load: the wear and tear on your body from carrying too much stress for too long.

When I got COVID in 2023, my body was already stretched thin. I was working multiple jobs, in full-time school, grieving, raw from a breakup, and two people I love had just died in separate tragedies. I barely remember coming up for air.

I pushed through the initial sickness, taking interviews from my bed, trying to meet writing deadlines, trying to get back to exercise too soon. I told myself I was fine, that I just needed to catch up, push through, get over it.

I’ve been reading about how people with Long COVID often fall into a certain pattern. High-achieving, high-functioning, high-stress-tolerance types. The ones who push through things they probably shouldn’t—sickness, grief, deadlines, heartbreak—because stopping feels harder than to keep going.

It makes sense when you think about it. When you live in a state of constant output, your nervous system doesn’t get to shut off, so you’re stuck in go-mode, the body stays braced. Rest starts to feel like a luxury, or something you have to earn. But without it, there’s no repair, no regulation, just buildup. And when something like COVID lands in a system that’s already worn down, already stretched past capacity, the body doesn’t have the resources to fight it off, there’s no buffer left, no reserve tank.

I finally feel like my body is moving (slowly, cautiously) toward the direction of healing. I’ve been tracking the small markers: my resting heart rate has dropped back to 56, my HRV is hovering around 60ms, VO₂ at 24, and cardio recovery up to 41. They’re still low, but they’re higher than they used to be.

I think the supplements are helping. CoQ10, iron, magnesium, and vitamin D. It makes sense when you think about it: chronic stress drains the body of these things. And my labs backed that up. My system was depleted.

Rest has also helped. Saying no to more things, even when that sometimes means I have to backpedal on a job or two. I felt a rush of relief finishing up a contract yesterday, knowing there’s only one left now (sort of), because I let all the others go. I still have the writing fest contract, but it’s just one event a month. And I’ve kept my research assistant job, just once a week in the archives. It’s quiet work, mostly done alone, slowly, on my own timeline, but it fills me up so much.

With these small changes, I’ve found a bit of homeostasis, just enough stability to keep me from constantly living in fight-or-flight, enough to move to this next chapter.

I’ve done what I often do when I start to feel overwhelmed: I’ve deactivated my social media. I have the kind of brain that gets too hooked on things like that. It isn’t the space for me right now.

Sometimes I worry I’ll be left behind or forgotten because the world moves fast, and I’ve spent so much of my time trying to keep up. But then I think about that line in a poem I once wrote:

Don’t abandon yourself like those old cars you love—
rusting, stacked, and stripped for parts.

So, I’m choosing presence for a while. Might even try fixing something under the hood, though let’s be real, I probably just need a jumpstart and a long rest in the sun.

Please don’t forget me.

Please write to me.

Send postcards and letters, silly little drawings, little flowers, or trinkets. I’ll do my best to send them back.

Let this summer of healing be what it needs to be.

For me, and maybe for you too.

Until next time,
Kay