The Heaviness Comes Back

Content warning: This post discusses the alleged murder of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies, the current trial, grief, and the emotional impact on Sydney’s LGBTQIA+ community. It does not go into graphic detail.

There are some stories that do not leave when the headlines move on.

They sit somewhere in the body.

Quietly.

Heavily.

Waiting.

And then, when something brings them back into the present, you remember not just what happened, but how it felt to be living through it.

That is how this feels.

More than two and a half years ago, Jesse Baird and Luke Davies were allegedly killed. Now, the man accused of killing them is standing trial.

I am being careful with my words because this is still before the court. There is a legal process happening. There are families sitting with the weight of evidence, arguments, memories, and details that most of us will only ever experience from a distance.

But even from a distance, it is heavy.

Every new detail feels like something settling in the stomach.

That sick little drop.

That pause before you keep reading.

That moment where your whole body seems to say, not this again.

Not because we forgot.

I do not think anyone in Sydney’s gay community forgot.

I remember how it felt at the time. The heaviness that seemed to move through everyone. Not always loudly. Not always in obvious ways. But it was there. In conversations. In group chats. In venues. In the strange quiet moments between Mardi Gras plans and the news alerts we did not want to open.

There was grief, but there was also disbelief.

Two of our own.

Two people who should have been celebrating with us.

Two people who should have been at the parties, in the crowds, in the photos, in the ordinary chaos of a Mardi Gras season that suddenly felt impossible to enter without carrying something extra.

That is the thing I keep remembering.

The contrast.

Mardi Gras is supposed to be loud. It is colour, music, bodies, glitter, heat, community, history, celebration, and the collective relief of being able to take up space together. It is protest, party, survival, spectacle, and family reunion all at once.

But that year, there was something else in the air.

A kind of guilt.

Not the rational kind, because none of us had done anything wrong by celebrating. Life does not pause neatly for grief. Communities still gather. Music still plays. People still need joy, maybe especially when something terrible has happened.

But still.

There was that feeling.

How do we celebrate when two of our own should be here and are not?

How do we dance with that in the room?

How do we hold joy and heartbreak at the same time without feeling like one dishonours the other?

At Green Park, that emotion had somewhere to go.

I remember the feeling of people gathering. Remembering. Standing together. Trying to make something unbearable feel held, even if only for a moment. There was a tenderness there. A communal sadness. The kind that does not need everyone to know each other personally for everyone to understand why they are there.

Because that is how community works sometimes.

You do not have to know someone personally to feel the loss of them.

You do not have to be their closest friend to feel the shift in the room.

You do not have to have been part of their inner circle to understand that something has been taken from the wider fabric of us.

Sydney’s gay community can feel huge until it suddenly feels very small.

A friend of a friend. A familiar face. Someone you saw online. Someone someone you love knew. Someone who moved through the same streets, venues, parties, friendships, and shared geography of queer life in this city.

And when something like this happens, the map changes.

Places feel different.

Names feel different.

The news feels personal in a way that is hard to explain to people outside the community.

Now, as the trial plays out, that heaviness is back.

Not the same, exactly. Time changes the shape of things. But it is familiar. It has the same weight. The same gut-sick feeling. The same quiet dread around what else we might hear, what else might be reported, what else their families and friends are being asked to sit through publicly.

And I keep thinking that for most of us, this heaviness returns in waves.

For their families, it likely never left.

That matters.

It is easy, from the outside, to talk about a trial as if it is a news event. A legal process. A series of updates. A timeline. A set of details. Something to follow.

But underneath all of that are people who loved them.

People who knew their voices, their habits, their annoying traits, their favourite stories, the way they laughed, the way they moved through a room, the private versions of them that no headline can ever hold.

For those people, this is not a story coming back.

It is something they have been living with every day.

So maybe the rest of us need to be careful with how we carry it.

Careful with how we talk about it.

Careful with how we consume it.

Careful not to turn it into gossip, spectacle, or another horrible thing to scroll through between emails.

Because yes, it is natural to want to know what is happening. It is natural to read updates. It is natural to feel pulled toward the details, especially when something has hurt the community so deeply.

But it is also okay to look away when you need to.

It is okay to not read every article.

It is okay to mute the coverage for a while.

It is okay to say, “I cannot take in any more of this today.”

That does not mean you do not care.

It means you are human.

There is a strange pressure, sometimes, to keep witnessing pain as proof that it matters to you. As if looking away for a moment is disrespectful. As if staying informed means absorbing every detail until you feel hollow.

But care does not have to mean consuming everything.

Mourning does not require you to retraumatise yourself.

And community does not ask us to carry grief alone in private until we quietly buckle under it.

This is one of those moments where we need to look after ourselves and each other.

Properly.

Not in a vague caption way.

Not just “check on your mates” as something we say because it sounds right.

Actually check in.

Ask people how they are feeling about it. Notice who has gone quiet. Let people talk if they want to talk. Let them not talk if they cannot. Make room for anger, sadness, numbness, confusion, and that particular kind of heaviness that is hard to name but impossible to ignore.

Some people will want to discuss the trial.

Some people will want distance from it.

Some people will feel surprisingly affected and not know why.

Some people will feel guilty for being affected when they did not know them personally.

Some people will feel guilty for not being affected in the way they think they should be.

All of that is human.

Grief in a community is not clean. It does not distribute itself evenly. It catches people differently, often depending on their own memories, fears, relationships, experiences, and proximity to what happened.

And because this is a gay community, there is another layer too.

We are used to holding things together.

Celebration and loss.

Joy and fear.

Parties and memorials.

Chosen family and the absence of people who should still be here.

Mardi Gras itself has always held that tension. It is celebration, but it is also history. It is joy built on protest. It is colour carrying grief. It is a party with ghosts in it, whether we say that out loud or not.

Maybe that is why this hit so hard then, and why it feels so heavy again now.

Because it landed right in the middle of a season where we are most visible, most together, most ourselves. It reminded us that even in our safest-feeling spaces, even in our brightest moments, harm can still reach us.

That is a frightening thing to sit with.

So please, as this trial continues, look after yourself.

Look after your people.

Do not force yourself to read everything.

Do not turn the details into casual conversation if the person in front of you is not ready for that.

Do not assume everyone is processing it the same way.

Do not mistake silence for indifference.

And if you are feeling that heaviness again, you are not being dramatic.

You are remembering.

Your body is remembering.

The community is remembering.

This is what happens when something wounds more than the people directly involved. The impact spreads through friendship groups, venues, streets, memories, and seasons. It becomes part of the emotional weather for a while.

And right now, the weather feels heavy.

So let it be heavy.

But do not hold it alone.

Talk to someone. Take breaks. Go for a walk. Put your phone down. Sit with your friends. Say the thing out loud if it is sitting in your chest. Reach for softness where you can.

And if you are close to someone who is more directly connected to Jesse or Luke, be gentle. Do not ask for details. Do not make them manage your curiosity. Do not expect them to perform grief in a way that makes sense to you.

Just be there.

Quietly, if needed.

Consistently, if possible.

Because that is what community has to be in moments like this. Not just the crowd, not just the parade, not just the dance floor, not just the photo, not just the big public display of togetherness.

Community is also the message after the news update.

The hand on the shoulder.

The “I’m thinking of you.”

The “we don’t have to talk about it, but I’m here.”

The decision to care for each other while the world asks us to relive something painful one detail at a time.

I do not have a neat ending for this.

There probably is not one.

There is just the heaviness.

The memory of Green Park.

The echo of that Mardi Gras.

The names Jesse and Luke.

The families and friends who have carried this every day.