There are moments in life when joy does not actually vanish. It simply steps into a quiet corner of the room and waits for us to notice it again. Lately I have been catching it in small, almost accidental ways. A warm light in the afternoon. A sentence that lands softly. A breath that feels like it belongs to me.
I did not lose joy. I just stopped feeling.
And that is its own kind of story.
For a long time I moved through the world with a graceful sort of distance. My body performed the motions. My mind checked the boxes. My heart sat somewhere behind me, paging through old memories as if they were heavy books in a forgotten library. That is how trauma often behaves. It teaches the body to survive by dimming the volume on everything else. The mind slips backstage and murmurs that feeling can wait. Survival comes first.
Dissociation is not a flaw. It is a shield.
A quiet one.
A soft one.
A necessary one.
Memories rise and fall like tides. I think of the photograph of my father steady on the vintage motorcycle, my own small face tucked into the moment, my sister beside me with that tiny smile that now carries the weight of absence. I think of wandering through the galleries of Paris, letting color speak for me because I could not. I think of the runways and rooftops and the river on days when my emotions hovered close but refused to land.
And then one morning something shifted. So small I almost missed it.
The taste of coffee felt like a beginning instead of a task.
The world outside the window looked alive instead of still.
My breath moved like it belonged to a person rather than a machine.
That was the return of joy in its simplest form. Not a grand entrance. Just the body lowering its guard after holding it for too long. Healing rarely arrives with trumpets. It slips in quietly and sits beside you until you realize you have company again.
Sometimes the return comes through art. A painting that hums against your chest.
Sometimes through motion. The memory of wind around a motorcycle and the strange way time bends with it.
Sometimes through creation. Speaking into the camera for the blog and realizing the voice is finally your own.
Sometimes through grief. Because feeling one thing unlocks the room where all the other feelings were waiting.
So I collect these small awakenings the way one gathers shells on a beach. Gently. Respectfully. A little surprised that they reached me at all.
This is the slow return to the body.
Not dramatic.
Not sudden.
Simply steady.
A return to sensation.
A return to color.
A return to the tender ache of being alive.
If joy is visiting you in small pieces, let it in. It is not late. It is simply arriving at the moment you are ready to feel again.