The Things I've Carried

Before I could even properly grasp my mother’s finger, thrust upon my shoulders was the ideology of being a miracle. It was something that lifted me up yet weighed me down all at once. It was something that I didn’t even realize I carried until much later in my life. But since I was too young and couldn’t know about this, I carried the weight of dreams filled with great ambition and the perfect life. A goal to go to college like my father before me and like my mother had dreamed to.

As I arrived to my first day of elementary school, the weight of these dreams only grew. Along with my sparkling backpack that carried my crayons, pencils, books, and toys for show and tell, I also carried a small bag that looked like a briefcase. It was heavy to me, despite only weighing five pounds, yet I carried it with pride. For within it rested a small and very primitive laptop. To be honest, it was a little more than a lighter, digitized typewriter, but to me it was everything. This is because within that small screen and my ever-growing knowledge of how things were spelled laid the key to my self-expression. This laid down the pavement for me to travel down a digital road. A long and winding one that wore my heavy and stumbled steps down the older I got, yet to me it was natural, what I thought every child does since I still did not understand that my body wasn’t natural like all of my peers and their families. 

But as I grew, the differences began getting clearer and the weight of them began getting heavier and heavier. I shook too much and far too often. My steps were stumbled. My speech was slurred and sloshy. A lot of the kids were quick to point it out. But none of it was in my control, What bothered me the most was how these kids would ask all these questions about the bulky braces casting my legs. They were lovingly called my robot legs when I was younger and when I was asked brief questions about them. They helped me walk so I had begun to think of them as my cybernetic enhancements that were just another part of me. Even though they were carved from plaster and screws rather than breaking edge technology that went to my brain. But as my classmates began to twist their questions from marvelous curiosity to cruel mocking, the light weight of two and a half pounds on each leg began to weigh on my entire body. That uplifting load of being considered a miracle began crashing down as I began carrying the burden of knowing that I was a burden all because of my missteps on the things I could never control.

I tried to hide it. I tried to fit in. I was desperate for the relief that normalcy seemed to bring. But even when I threw away the robot legs for the constricting nature of skinny jeans, the title of outcast and burden was still thrust upon my shoulders and slashed at my heart like a dagger to the back. Only now, these titles were not only thrown mindlessly by children who don’t know the weight words can have. Many adults outside of my family cemented those titles into my brain. I could see now that their praise about me being a miracle, an inspiration, wasn’t because they saw my intelligence or my creativity to work around my problems. It was all because they thought that I was incapable of doing anything in the face of them and would never amount to anything besides simply existing. But I was furious! I wanted them to see that I was capable, that I am competent. But the weight of my lungs burning, gasping for breath that would only be wasted on the willfully ignorant, became too much.

So I gave up. I began hiding behind a screen. The digital world was where I could hide my flaws. It was where I could hide behind a mask of normalcy, just like everyone else. But putting on this mask was not the relief I hoped it’d be. Every time I put it on, it didn’t blend with my skin, with who I was. It made me feel like a liar and those lies crushed me as the craving for acceptance and true validation became an addiction that left me unable to stand before it.

So within this digital world, I became a storyteller. I wrote short stories and poems about my feelings, about the adventures and romances I’d have with characters I felt connected to. I mean, if I could love them when no one else around them did, then maybe I was worthy of that love from someone as well? Yet still crumpled by a load of cynicism that my condition and other unsavory circumstances life had thrown on to me, my stories, although well-written for my age, were dark, bitter, and dare I say, a bit edgy. They granted temporary relief. A cathartic release of my emotions that someone could read and know how I felt. Although, in the end, I was left feeling hollow. That hollowness led to a sensation of stagnation. That stagnation is a sensation that ground my soul into ashes and didn’t have any decency to spread those ashes anywhere but the trash. At least there, I was where I belonged both in the eyes of those around me and in my own eyes as well.

But one positive thing I see now about this dark time in my life is that physically I couldn’t stay stagnant. My family was homeless and that meant I couldn’t stay in one place for too long nor could I carry much with me every time I moved. The only thing I had made sure to always have was my laptop. An upgraded one from my little digital typewriter, at a weight of seven to ten pounds, compared to the now measly five that used to be so heavy to me.

Within these transfers of homes and schools, it was the last school I was transferred to where I finally made some friends. The first one was a quiet girl named Sydney, her acceptance of my circumstances and patience with them planted the seed in reality that I was worthy of love despite them. We bonded over arts, both her visual and my written works. But what I still remember what really connected us was a hatred for P.E. class. I got hit on the head with enough volleyballs that weigh half a pound to leave a pounding weight in my head. Not only that but we also liked the same song, one that I carry within my heart to this day.

The next friend I made was a year later and who I thought hated me like the rest at first, despite myself really admiring his bold style. His name is Chris. We bonded over Halloween since Sydney was the one who brought us together. That night they both helped me carry my candy bag and the beautiful gown I wore as a costume, making sure I was never left behind. I don’t think they even know that they also lifted one of the crushing weights on my back of slowing everyone down and troubling them with my stumbling steps and slowly helped me grow into a genuinely more positive person.

The third and final friend of this group that Sydney and I made through Chris was another girl named Elisa. Our first meeting was rocky since I had invited them to see me perform because I had finally grown confident enough to get back to singing and acting publicly. I was even the opening act for this show! But due to traffic, they had missed it. I was heartbroken, The anxiety of being forgotten and replaced gnawed at my bones and the weight of a heavy broken heart crumbled me to the floor when I saw them finally arrive. I was worried that I was in the wrong for being upset and that Chris and Sydney would leave me soon after this night. As for Elisa, we hadn’t met before in person, and seeing someone sob hysterically wasn’t a great first impression. Even at that moment, the fear that she wouldn’t want to be my friend mangled the confidence I had carried minutes prior. 

But they didn’t leave. Not then, not soon after, and not even all the times they could’ve. Elisa and I grew to be really close as well. She allowed me to do things that everyone before her and my other two friends forbid me from doing since they viewed me as too incompetent. I enjoyed every bit of our excursions! Even if one of them ended up with me jumping out of a treehouse and having to carry my right arm in a cast and all the soreness of doing so for several weeks after…

During this time I still continued writing on my trusty laptop, which fluctuated in upgrades, sizes, and weight. But now my writing began to reflect my true feelings and perspectives. My stories had dark moments but were not drenched in it. My poetry had begun to blossom with hopeful beauty rather than wither with the venom within my words. The weight I carried of being unworthy, unlovable, incompetent, and being a burden began to slowly fall away as I settled into a happy home and friends that truly cared about me. With the final weight being ground into ash and thrown in the trash when I realized that regardless of what ails me I am not inhuman and I’m no longer alone. Now I am strong enough to not hide away but to carry who I am and the companions I’ve made with love and pride once more...