Borrowed Weather

There are some feelings that arrive so quietly I don’t recognize them as feelings.

They arrive as weather.

At work, this is the most common place I notice absorption—not in a dramatic way, not as a crisis, but as a slow transfer I only understand afterward.

There are meetings where marketing comes up and the direction isn’t quite landing yet.
I bring a few possible paths, hoping we can find footing.

The response is often brief. Vague in a way that isn’t careless—just unsettled. Like the decision hasn’t landed yet.

I admire my boss. And when she’s holding uncertainty, my body tries to hold it too.

In the moment, it can look like teamwork. Like problem-solving. Like staying engaged.

But later I can feel what happened.

The first signal is always my chest.

Pressure.
A kind of internal crowding.

Then my shoulders join in—the old sensation of the world on my shoulders, as if I’m physically carrying what hasn’t been resolved.

My thinking gets foggy.
My body aches—heavy.
And sometimes I feel weak in a way that doesn’t match the actual day I’m having.

Because my emotions are generally steady now—balanced, even—this kind of mixed internal feeling stands out.

When I start to feel mixed, it’s a warning light. Not danger, exactly. More like: pay attention.

Something has entered me that didn’t start in me.

Urgency is the easiest doorway for absorption.

If there’s urgency in the room, my system wants to act immediately. It narrows. It starts sprinting ahead, trying to build a bridge before the ground is even stable.

That’s the hook in me:

fixing.
being good.
being needed.

I tell myself I’m helping.

But what often happens is that over-functioning turns into malfunctioning.

Overload.

I’ll try to explain—offer more words, more options, more clarity—not only for the other person, but because the act of explaining makes me feel briefly grounded. Like if I can name the shape of it, I won’t slide into the funnel of not being good enough.

And when the meeting ends without a clear landing, the uncertainty doesn’t always stay in the meeting.

It comes home with me.

I’ll wake up worrying. Ruminating.
My mind goes everywhere at once, trying to figure out the steps for ease in navigation—trying to finish the decision in my head so my body can rest.

I notice it in my appetite too—sweets, comfort, that subtle reaching for something that will soften the residue.

And patience becomes thinner, especially with myself. I add pressure to normalize, to balance, to fix.

Sometimes I try to recover by distracting myself. A movie. A podcast. Something to take my mind off it.

But the weather hasn’t been named yet, so it lingers.

This isn’t about fault. It’s about what happens in the field.

Absorption isn’t always purposeful. It isn’t always conscious. It can be as simple as two nervous systems in the same space, one of them unsettled, the other wired to stabilize.

It’s natural for each of us to feel our way through life. And when we do, it affects others. It just is.

Absorption can also be a gift.

It gives me insight. It lets me sense what’s moving underneath the words. It helps me understand what isn’t being said yet.

But it becomes too much when I can’t seem to get away from it.

When the same weather returns again and again, and I start taking it home as if it’s my job to process it to completion.

That’s where discernment begins for me—not as judgment, but as a quiet sorting:

Empathy is understanding someone’s feelings.
Absorption is taking them on without realizing I’ve done it.

Empathy can stay connected.
Absorption becomes entangled.

So I’m practicing a small kind of reclaiming.

When I notice I’ve absorbed, I exhale.
I pause.
I lean back—sometimes literally reclining in my chair.

There’s one posture that helps me come back quickly: crossing my legs and folding one ankle over the opposite knee. It’s simple, almost mundane, but it signals something to my body: I’m not bracing forward right now.

And sometimes the boundary is even quieter than that.

Not responding.
Not fixing immediately.
Letting the question hang in the air until it’s actually mine to answer.

It can feel uncomfortable. My system wants to resolve. It wants to soothe the vagueness into certainty.

But when I can let it be, something changes.

I stop carrying what isn’t mine.

Time alone helps. Silence helps.

And cannabis—used gently, intentionally—has helped me reset, too. Not because it creates wisdom, but because it softens the grip. It makes it easier to notice what I’m holding and set it down.

I keep picturing a coat.

A coat I didn’t choose.
A coat I put on because the room got cold, because someone else was shivering, because I know how to warm things up.

But it isn’t my coat.

And I don’t have to wear it home.

You might notice the moment urgency enters the room—and whether your body starts sprinting before you do.

You might notice the “world on your shoulders” feeling as a sign you’re carrying something that didn’t start in you.

You might notice how quickly “fixing” turns into overload.

You might notice what it feels like to leave the coat where you found it.

And maybe later you’ll find yourself in a quieter space—
under covers, if that’s your way—
and if you’re lucky enough to have a devoted companion nearby, even better—
with the weather finally back on the outside of you, where it belongs.

If Borrowed Weather resonated, you might also explore:

Discernment Begins as a Texture, Repulsion Has Phases, or Magnetism Isn’t Proof. Each holds a different aspect of the relational field. Follow your own current.

Series: Discernment & Relational Fields