Feelings Travel in Packs · Week 36.
By Luca Bonafede · September 6, 2026 ·
A lot can happen in a week.
The goodbyes have started. They’re not the dramatic kind, just a quiet accumulation of them. The countdown is on, and with it comes timing nobody asks for: more people leaving the country and more people leaving the province, right as I’m about to do the same. Apparently, endings like to travel in packs.
Even the weather agrees. Summer is packing its bags along with everyone else.
And me? I moved into my fifth home address this year. Fifth, in under seven months. This one is on Water Street, right in the heart of the city, and now my gym and my workplace are literally a few steps away. Not walking distance. Steps. It took five tries, but I finally got the location right, just in time to leave it.
I also signed my first custody and parental agreement this week, completely out of nowhere. One minute it was a regular day at work, and the next I was putting my signature on parenting arrangements. That’s one more first I never saw coming, for obvious reason.
There was a falling out with some friends too. It was a real one, not the kind where everyone sulks in silence. But we talked it through and made peace the right way. That’s the part we sometimes skip when we talk about friendship: the repair matters more than the rupture. Endings can show up all together, but a repair is something you do one conversation at a time. Anyone can stay friends when nothing goes wrong. The real friendships are the ones that survive a conversation nobody wanted to have.
Then came one of those nights. For the first time in my Life, I actually enjoyed a card drinking game. It’s a small thing, but nights like that remind me that not everything worth doing has to be planned in advance.
And then I ended up in the hospital, in a fairly unique way. It was nothing too dramatic, but it was a clear reminder that I’m mortal. I also got the chance to experience the NL health system firsthand, which I hadn’t put on my bucket list. It was the body’s way of sending the invoice. That doesn’t mean stop pushing. It just means pay attention.
The song of the week is “Hysteria” by Def Leppard (1987). However hard I try to keep certain feelings at bay, sometimes they show up when I least expect them. These days I kind of welcome them in, but I watch them from a distance, the way you watch clouds pass over a city you’re about to leave. They’re allowed to be there. They’re just not allowed to drive.
These are my final few weeks here. The countdown is ticking, I’ve just finished unpacking in a place I’m about to leave, and I’m more excited than sad about it. Life doesn’t hand you one feeling at a time. It hands you all of them at once and asks what you’re going to do with the mix. Goodbyes and new beginnings, a hospital bed and a card game, a falling out and a peace made, all inside seven days. Maybe that’s the whole trick: you don’t sort the feelings. You carry them all, and you keep walking.
A lot can happen in a week.
Thank you, and ciao for now.
Luca Bonafede
St.John's, NL, Canada 🇨🇦