The bag you carry | Read for a cookie :) |

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Read more from the original author:
THE ARCANE CHASM – Medium

As I woke up from my afternoon nap today, I felt a strange heaviness on my chest.

It wasn’t something I could see or point to. It was just there. Heavy enough that, for a moment, all I could hear was my own heartbeat.

People often say that being with yourself is easy. You don’t have to deal with someone else’s moods, attitudes, or expectations. So, it’s just you, with a version of yourself that should be familiar by now. Simple, right?

So why does it sometimes feel like the hardest company to keep?

Maybe because being alone also means being left with everything else. The memories you thought you had moved past. The conversations you replay. The things you wish you had done differently. The situations you imagine might happen someday.

The past and the future somehow manage to occupy the present, even though neither of them exists there.

But then it’s just you, right?

So be happy.

But are you?

A real big question.

Now it’s not just been days, but years.

The feeling, the void, the incompleteness, everything has become a habit now. Some memories make you happy, while some scare you. Some have been around for so long that you don’t even remember what it felt like before they were there.

And somewhere along the way, there’s this version of you that has become comfortable inside this shell, with all the regular yet scary stuff packed into it.

Maybe that’s when they become a kind of baggage.

You put them into a bag, not because you’ve resolved them, but because you need somewhere to put them. And then you carry the bag with you.

At first, you notice its weight.

Then, slowly, you learn how to walk with it.

You adjust your shoulders. You change your pace. You learn how to keep going without letting anyone notice that you’re carrying something at all.

Until one day, the bag doesn’t even feel like a separate thing anymore.

It feels like you.

Maybe that’s why running becomes so easy.

You run from the circumstances that hurt you. From the possibility of going through the same things again. From the questions you don’t want to answer. From the versions of yourself you don’t want to meet.

But what happens when the thing you’re running from is already in the bag you’re carrying?

You keep moving.

You tell yourself that you’re getting somewhere because you’re no longer where you were.

But perhaps moving away isn’t always the same as moving forward.

And maybe that’s the loop.

You run because you want to escape.

You carry because you haven’t let go.

And because you’re carrying, you keep running.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I simply put the bag down.

Would the silence feel lighter?

Would I even know how to stand without it?

Maybe the hardest part isn’t realizing that you’re carrying something.

Maybe it’s realizing how much of yourself you’ve built around its weight.

Maybe I don’t need to run right now.

Maybe I just need to pause for a while, put the bag down, and find out what happens when I do.

Note from H. Tayrone:
I know this feeling of caring too much only too well. 

See you tomorrow with something new!

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