Weight of the World

We each carry the weight - stress, anxiety, fear and so forth - of our individual lives. Of course, we each seek to find blame for our struggles and often end up finding a contributing fault in ourselves. We carry a burden that we cannot afford to plaster with weekend city breaks, shopping sprees, and dinners out. However, we believe that media-advertised escapism or self-care is needed to heal. There is often a feeling that our troubles are inescapable. Can we justify the pursuit of happiness when we are hardly functioning within the tornado that is modern life? I am not leading up to an answer to all of your problems, merely to start a conversation about our communal burdens. 

I know people with the weight of worry: about a baby on the way, an undiagnosed illness, or stumbling through the job hunt, house hunt, love hunt. All of them traipse through life with their baggage dragging behind them, which - to each of us - feels more like hauling a body to a grave than taking a suitcase through an airport. You are not the only victim. If you ever stare at the ceiling contemplating this existence, remember that this existence contains you, and that is amazing, honestly.

Think about it. The chances of you being here right now. Last century, no one could have even imagined you, in all of your complexity. No one could perceive this technological era that operates with coordinated chaos. You are a miracle, and it is a miracle that you are lying in bed, in four-day-old pyjamas, with specs of Cheeto cheese on your fingers, staring at a ceiling that has always been a white ceiling and will never be anything but a white ceiling. This is not me. I am in a cafe having a perceptibly good day yet feeling like trodden in shit.

The man sitting across from me appears more fatigued by his dragging bodybag than anyone I have seen walking past the window beside him. For some reason, I cannot picture him in four-day-old pyjamas eating Cheetos, but you never know. Shamefully, I can't offer even a smile of encouragement.

Let us go back to this idea of living through a tornado.

Yes, life is like the weather; there are storms, droughts, and sweltering, suffocating heat besides the cool sea breeze. As a child, life was like a constant Spring. A few showers here and there, but many days of blue sky and warm breeze - at least, I hope it was for you.

Since your adolescence, you have entered into Summer. There were harsher periods of heat, which started as a feeling of bliss but, after a time, lit wildfires. Or, there have been these vast storms that sometimes pour but cause minor damage. On rare occasions, the storm becomes a tornado.

In a tornado, you and everything you love, and every thought you have, is turfed up and sent spinning on a jammed Haunted House fair ride. Remember, tornados have an eye. Tornadoes will elude you into calm, only to tear you up again. The other thing about tornadoes is that they move irrationally; you could enter a storm's eye a few times, believing it is the other side, only to tackle another beating. But it will spit you out eventually, I promise.

I am going on a lot with these metaphors - I hope you are keeping up. What I am saying is that life is constantly changing, like the weather, and that there will be good days and bad days, but the fact stands that there will be days. Autumn and winter will come, which will bring its challenges. Sorry, it will not get easier. It is just going to be.

I realise I am no solace. I realise I am no aider. I am only another, like you. Here to talk if you need.