“you are not a burden” always feels bullshitty to me.
how can anyone honestly mean that? they must be saying it just to be nice, not because it’s true.
in my experience, almost everything is a burden. all the time. I am so tired.
if other people’s experiences are like mine, then everything must be heavy for them too. saying someone isn’t a burden doesn’t make sense.
a little closer to true would be this: you /are/ a burden, because everything is a burden to me, because I am exhausted. but you are part of my everything. you are the burden I am strong enough to carry, right now, the one I decided to carry. you were willing/able to let me pick you up.
Frodo and Sam at the end of that one movie –
“I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you.”
I am scared that one day I won’t be strong enough to carry anyone, or anything.
I’m scared of letting everyone down.
I am scared of being forced to choose what to let go, and what to grieve, because I can only carry so many things, because I am tired. because I live in a world where each of us is trying to carry everything alone, because we are told that not being able to carry everything alone is wrong and bad.
and the moment I try to carry too much, even just a little too much, everything falls apart.
of course we are tired.
we are so tired we don’t even have the energy to nurture the connections which would help us to not have to carry everything alone anymore.
🍂🥀
I am so used to believing that we have to carry everything alone, and that it’s somehow bad or wrong to live in any other way.
receiving support that I want, that maybe I need – it feels like that is somehow something to be ashamed of.
I don’t know exactly how to adjust to believing in anything different.
but I suspect there is another way, maybe, a way we can help each other with the carrying of the everything. not just two people, not just a family, but a vast network. mycelium. support passed from one person to another.
I do have one idea, which is to try.
to notice the places where there is already support, where there has always been support, even when I can’t see it. to notice the places where I am already there to take care of other people, even when I can’t see that either.
little steps.