The Things I Carry

I carry the immense weight of potential with me. I carry the knowledge that death exists, and that we are all born to die. I carry the memory of every nightmare and doubt and sleepless night and restless day and dark morning and even darker night; I carry the strain of trying to see into a cloudy, uncertain future, a future filled with a form of destruction yet unknown to me. I carry the constant, unwavering and terrifying suspicion of never being good enough, of never improving, and of never reaching the stars that I yearn to be made closer to. I carry passion. I carry the obligation to be and make others happy. I carry tears, both wept and unwept and the memory of sweat long ago perspired and the recollection of blood spilling, drop by drop, into a white porcelain sink, becoming less and less white as time goes on staining and corrupting the once pure and innocent and undisturbed white coloring. I carry contradictory contradictions. I carry the internal battle between happiness and sadness, making life both a constant state of ecstasy and a constant state of suffering. I carry the weight of others. Within me I hold the experiences and insecurities and fears and dreams and thoughts and ambitions and logic and sympathies and opinions and emotions and souls of many, indiscriminately. I carry a fear to love, but also a deep and primal and unexplainable need to love. I carry the weight of my soul. I am fortunate, however. As I carry others, others carry me. It is this sense of closeness that defeats the nightmares, and sleepless nights, and the restless days, and the dark mornings, and the doubt, and the fear, and the insecurity, and the vulnerability and the uncertainty, and the bitter feelings, and the sense of hopelessness, and washes away the bloody porcelain, and heals the wounds that sweat and blood and tears once leaked from and ultimately overwhelms the sadness with waves upon waves of relentless kindness and happiness, pounding on the door to my heart, determined to drive away the terror and longing and sadness and fear and feelings of inadequacy and leaving only light of the purest form, creating a new feeling- that of absolute and complete awe for the power of this closeness, for its ability to drive away the crushing weight of the void, and stop the contradictions from contradicting, and replacing this blank, empty space with the most essential and human parts of all of us. This sense of closeness makes all of the weight worth it.