Cross to Bear
Regardless of the angles I examine it from…or the distance I cover, hoping to notice even a slight change in situation…ultimately, the blame remains mine. I will always keep that blame. I cannot let it go, nor am I even sure the person I would be without it, without feeling the pressure of it against my spine whenever I breathe too deeply, too freely. Everybody carries their cross to bear, but I know I carry more than my share, burdens I gladly accepted, confident in my strength to heave the load. I’ve lugged them so far now that I barely feel their weight, unless one shifts…breaks…jostles…and then I feel them all, sharp pains jutting into exposed ribs, edges of agony I volunteered myself to scraping against my flesh, burning. To fix just one, to put one back into order, means carefully shifting every last piece of sorrow…a careful balancing act I have mastered after miles of walking beneath it, on my own. They are not my burdens. They never were…even the miles beneath me, the years I’ve held them over my head so silently, so strongly, does not make them mine. I took them, shared their weight, and wound up with the heavy end, the entirety. I should abandon them…lean forward and let the dead weight cascade off my shoulders, battering the earth with their rigid hurt…but I cannot do it. No matter how hard it becomes, I can’t let them go. I carry them as proof of my existence, of my strength. I carry them because I know I could not walk on my own two feet without them. I carry them because I am tough shit, because I do not break, because I can walk the tightrope with a thousand pounds of bullshit wrapped around me and still, I will not falter…I will keep going, I will smile while doing it, and let nobody see just how much it hurts. You may see my load, but you will never see my tears. You can see my muscle, but never what it took to get it there. It’s not my style to be so revealing, not in my nature to walk away from a duty. A responsibility. And that’s what it is-my job. I took this position years ago and I can’t give it up, not even when the company dissipates, when the people evaporate, when the group dispenses. I’ll still be employed by my demons, commanded to keep walking, never told I could rest.
And it hurts so bad sometimes, though I feel like it shouldn’t, though it seems that if I knew the challenges and took the offer anyways, that I should not complain. But when I watch people deliberately drive sticks into my gut…twisting, wrenching…what am I supposed to feel? You want me to be honest, you want me to be open, yet you fuck me when I open my mouth…tell me to suck it up-you’re better than that-you chose this path-you made your mistakes. Live with them. I can’t, don’t you see? The farther I get from start, the longer I keep walking, the more it hurts, the more bound I feel, and strangely, the more unable to rest I become.
I buried the rage long ago…having no outlet, no means, to release it. No company could contain it, and I trusted no person to contain me. Instead it stays, hidden, concealed, but boiling just the same. You know what I’m hiding? A lifetime’s worth of misplaced pain. Exposure never seemed safe enough, and no ear I spoke to cared to know the details. But why scream about it? I can suck it up. I was born to suck it up. Keep it coming…I don’t know how to quit.