Atlas: The Dive Monday, January 2, 2023

I am unburdened.

I am unburdened not because I have surmounted the seemingly-insurmountable, but because I have forgotten the weight I bear. It seems impossible that I could forget to carry my life, my responsibilities, my hopes, my dreams, but with a lack of clarity, things that may seem at the forefront of your mind may disappear into this all-too-powerful fog. I lost focus.

I forget.

I forget what I enjoyed and what I despised. I forget what I loved and what I feared. I have lost my identity, my sense of personhood. I am nothing but now what I am not. I am nothing.

How can I be burdened if there is nothing I hold dear, if there is no responsibility, if there is no passion?

Before I realize that I am in this enchanting fog, my world rolls off my shoulders and into the cold dark of the cosmos — I have shrugged without knowing. There is nothing quite so painful as realizing you have not done all that you could.

It falls further.

The abyss beckons me and calls out, “Follow your world. You are not fit to maintain it. You are not fit to maintain yourself.” Without a moment’s thought, I agree.

I feel the weight of my world on my shoulders.

How could this be possible? My world had disappeared before my eyes and I did nothing to slow its descent. Under this immense stress I realize: this is not the weight of my reality, but instead of what could have been. How do we bear the weight of an entire reality unrealized? How can I forgive myself for what I have not become?

I dive.

I begin to act on what is, burdened by the weight of what could have been, to attain what can be. I jump into the abyss’s dark embrace and race to reach my world. As I get closer, I hear a familiar voice reaching out to me: “Continue following your world. You are not fit to maintain it.” Without a moment’s thought, I disagree.

I reach.

I grasp.

I hoist.

I carry.

I feel the weight of my world on my shoulders.