I'm overstimulated, which is a writer's worst nightmare. My thoughts have the zoomies, making them hard to catch or pinpoint. I feel overwhelmed by the vastness of human life. I've met so many new people this week at my new job. And I've seen even more people there that I haven't met. I keep thinking of how my grandma is driving across the country with my aunt and uncle. How people who don't know her will see her and only see an old woman, see her frailty. But that is just her body, that is not who she is. She may be an old woman now, but she was also once a little girl exploring the beaches of Lake Michigan with her best friends and neighbors Rae and Johnny. She was once a girl sitting on her older sister's stack of records in the basement while listening to the record player. She was once my grandpa's high school sweetheart. She was once a girlfriend left behind as my grandpa went to war in Korea. She once, newly married, and never having traveled out of her small town, moved with my grandpa to an Air Force Base in South Dakota where she gave birth to my mother far away from her family and friends. She was once the mother of five young children, raising them mostly on her own. She is a woman who lived through the death of her teenage son. She is a strong woman who lived with and loved an alcoholic man. She was a woman known to be vivacious and full of life, which if you look close enough, you'll see she still is. She is a woman who once filled the halls of her church with art and posters she created and hand-drew on her own. She is a woman who raised strong and fierce children into even stronger and fiercer adults. She is a woman who helped raise her grandchildren, telling them stories, singing them songs, teaching them art, and capturing their imaginations. She may be an old woman now, but she is still all these things. As I've met and seen so many new people at my new job this week, I've been struck again by how each of us has a story, each of us is more than what we seem on the surface. If we urge one another not to judge books by their covers, how much more should we not judge people by theirs? We all love and are loved; we all have people who see us for who we are. We all are more than the sum of our parts. It's shockingly easy to forget this, to merely see people as annoyances, or in our way. We can become so engrossed in our own lives, we forget everyone else is also experiencing life in different, yet very similar, ways. I, for one, am working on remembering.

11:45 PM. Early January. Tobogganing hill. Next to the Dulude Skating Arena. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Seems like nothing too spectacular could happen on such a cold night of a cold season, right? That's what I thought as I climbed up that giant, glistening hill of snow that overlooked the majority of the neighbourhoods in my area. I could hear the busy city sounds that harmonized with the crunches beneath my feet as heaving breaths escaped my mouth. I could already see the very top of the hill, even if my only light source was the large, full moon that hung above, seeming to peer down at me with watchful eyes as I trudged my way closer. Once I finally reached the barren top, where the air seemed a lot thinner than before, I remember the smile I bore as I took in the beautiful scenery of the city line at the horizon. The city lights were scattered around beyond the bordering fences, looking like stars that glimmered and gleamed in different colours; the gently lit sky was still a deep shade of dark blue, contrasting the colour of the pale, cold whiteness of the snow that covered the entirety of the ground throughout the place I called home. I made sure I could still see the shadows of my mother and brother at the bottom of where I stood, just so I could still have that sense of security as I took in a deep breath and placed my toboggan down to face a pathway I was familiar with. It was the pathway I was planning to take that very night- until my eyes spotted it… Earlier on that day, I remember how big of a deal my mom made about me not riding down any of the paths towards the ski jumps, practically forcing me to promise her I would never consider committing to such a challenge. At that moment, I did not think of the situation as much of a warning sign- I thought it was just another one of my mom's parenting rants fueled by her sense of protection and fear of me having fun (I was a child when this happened, so obviously all adults wanted to make things boring to me). Of course, because of these initial thoughts and my naive sense of the world, how could I have ever known that my decision to break that promise the very night I had made it would end up with me in one of the most fatal moments of my entire life? I remember, I finally managed to push myself forward with my large, chunky boots, feeling a rush as I travelled down the slippery path towards one of the largest jumps I could see. The wind was bitterly cold as it whipped against my cheeks, my heart pounding from both the adrenaline and from the heat of my puffy winter coat. All I could hear was the hissing of plastic moving against coarse ice and snow, along with the faint screams and cheers from my little brother. My eyes widened as I got closer and closer towards the heap before me, my head pulling me towards the excitement as much as my body was, and nothing in my gut was telling me to do anything otherwise. That is, until the last few seconds before I hit the jump. All of a sudden, I felt some wild instinct within me activate, practically screaming at me to quickly change my direction before it was too late. But as my legs hit the ground, trying with all my 12-year-old strength to stop the forces from carrying me on any further, all I could remember was the feeling of my stomach churning and my mind spinning with fear as I had to lift off… Then, I suddenly felt absolute nothingness. I slowly opened my eyes to find myself face down against the solid floor of snow and ice. My vision was spinning ever so slightly, yet I could still make out the dark silhouettes of my two family members. My brother ran as fast as he could towards me, his screams faint within my ears. As to my mother, well...I couldn't tell what she was thinking, doing, or even feeling at that very moment. All I could remember saying to her was “I'm sorry...I'm sorry...I'm sorry…” I'm sorry for breaking my brother's toboggan, I'm sorry for breaking my promise to her, I'm sorry for becoming a great inconvenience when we were supposed to be having a good time...and I'm especially sorry for breaking both of my arms.