Returning

I don’t think it really hit me until Thursday. It was barely after six in the morning, the first embers of the sun not quite yet risen on the horizon, but the street was already busy. The construction crews had been out since I’d headed into work an hour earlier, barricades at either end of the busy stretch of Toronto real estate as King Street once again became Festival Street. 

It was familiar, and yet brand new. I’d seen this before, but not in three years. The sweat cooling on my skin, I headed into my friend’s conveniently located downtown apartment to shower and set myself up for the day to come. Although we’d been open for two days already, this was it: we were back.

2020 was the first time in six years I didn’t work an in-person film festival; didn’t fall into that relentless rush of work and screenings and late night drinks. The chaos of barely sleeping and snatching meals at odd times of the day, and having no concept of anything that’s happening outside of the two block radius that you’re inhabiting. The only reason I found out the Queen died that opening day was because a delegate whispered it to me as she approached to pick up her pass – otherwise, I’d never have known, not in that bubble.

Returning this year was both a joy and a challenge. My body had fallen out of the rhythm of it, in a way that I became very aware of as the tempo increased throughout the summer, pushing into the busy last weeks of August. I’d leave the office after dark, my mind foggy and my back aching, to collapse face-first into bed. I sent a multitude of rambling voice notes to friends late at night as I shoved a slice of toast into my mouth. 

But alongside the exhaustion and anxiety about what was to come bubbled the excitement. The pure adrenalin that pushes me toward the festival of knowing that for those two weeks, I am there and nowhere else. 

A friend stopped by later into the week, just to check in. “I love seeing you in these two weeks,” she commented, shaking her head a little. “You’re so in your element.” And I was, no matter how tired or hungry or frustrated, I was running on full capacity across every part of my mind and body.

Anxiety and excitement bleed naturally into one another and I felt it still that Thursday morning as I returned to the building, sans grubby box-moving clothes, now presentable for the line that was already amassing outside the door. I savoured those few moments right before we opened, before I’d be lost to questions and polite greetings and the buzz around me.

While familiar in some ways, for me this was a year like no other. I’d never had so much responsibility on my own shoulders, nor such a relentless drive to make the absolute best of it that I could. I’d come too far and gone through too much through the course of the summer not to come out of it triumphant. 

But triumph came in ways I hadn’t expected, too. For the first time since moving to Canada, I found myself crossing paths constantly with people I knew, if only tangentially or in a vague, professional context. I started to see in a very real, tangible way, the place I’d built for myself here in my work. For someone who often feels as though, even after four years, they don’t know that many people here, I could barely make it down the escalator nor round the street corner without bumping into at least one person I knew. 

An unusual sensation started to build as we crested over the wave of the first weekend and into the quieter second week. I think, it might be what’s known as pride. I’m not one for it – I was brought up with such an expectation of hard work and ambition that I take achievements, professional or otherwise, as just what I should be doing, with very little consideration for the dedicated they took to get there. My parents natural reaction to any achievement I return to them with is still, “that’s good”.

So, to feel pride came as a surprise. Almost, for a moment, as a sin. But as we slowly started to wind things down and I took stock of all we’d achieved, I couldn’t deny it: I was so proud. Of our team, and of myself. I let that feeling sit, trying hard not to run for it as every instinct pushed me to. I had earned it.

Coming down from those weeks is, in a sense, the hardest part. Too many times I have come down too hard too fast, immediately getting sick as my body goes from overdrive to still in a heartbeat. Like the slowing of your feet on the pedals of a bike, I brought down the tempo and eased into a quieter week.

I’m not sure I entirely succeeded. It’s been over a week since we closed up and I still feel exhausted and lethargic, and the fog that settled over my brain in the wake of the festival is only just starting to clear. That this is the first time I’ve written anything substantial in months, too, makes it all the harder to get words down on the page. 

At time of writing, I’m soon to swap the city out for a week further south, with the crashing waves of the Caribbean Sea instead of the wail of sirens and the rattle of the freight train. The thought is almost apprehensive: a week to relax and just be? Did I even know how to do that anymore? (Have I ever?)

I jokingly said as we tore down the venue on Saturday last week, “no one’s going to need me anymore. What am I going to do when people don’t constantly need me?”

But I forgot there’s someone that always needs me, and needs me also healthy and rested – and that’s myself.