The best thing about today was the abundance of stars I saw when I was walking back home from my dance class. And the dance class itself – it makes my otherwise painful Tuesdays tolerable. Today was one of the days that made me questioning whether I have a PTSD, am neurodivergent or slowly falling into depression. There is a happy, creative, functional, sensitive me at and around home and with people outside of my work, and there is me in the office – snappy, isolated, depressed, overwhelmed and discouraged. Twice already, I’ve been lulled by a promise that I would be able to change the workplace – to bring in my vision of equity, liberation and healing, the wisdom I have learned from others. Both times, I’ve been left collecting the broken pieces. The system wants the appearance of change, but resists change. Both times I have paid too high a price for too little a change. I am still paying with my mental and physical change.

So, now, having said that, let me formulate a wish: I want to heal, to really heal. To finally breathe without waiting when the next wave comes and brings me down. I want my next workplace to be truly liberatory. I want to be where I am wanted, where I can thrive, where I don’t constantly have to explain myself, to break down my thoughts and translate them into dead corporate language. I want to draw in colour and outside the lines. I want to be where words like magic and poetry and rewilding and rest truly mean something.

In my multicultural family, I am the only person able to speak multiple languages. Every member of my family inhabits a particular culture and language – their own comfort zone. This leaves me as the only person who navigates between other’s people’s cultural and linguistic comfort zones – changing language to suit their preference, looking for relevant cultural references, constantly translating and explaining. The rare holidays with my mother, my husband and kids are lovely, but I am always given the role of the translator – not only from language to language, but between the habits, expectations and preferences. It is exhausting, especially for an introvert who just wants to be left alone with her thoughts, preferably somewhere on a mountain with a view.

I feel the same exhaustion at work. I feel like I am constantly translating. Not only from English to French, but from the language of the heart, creativity and spontaneity to the one of Excels, hierarchies and corporate BS. And what’s worse, I have to translate back. I should never lead people on, let them believe that I represent an organization for which I work, because I do not. I am an outlier, a deviant. If I were to give some fantastic beast avatar to myself, I wouldn’t be a unicorn – I’d be a dragon.