My mother never taught me anything else apart from living without her and my father. Or to be more specific, living without someone I needed. How to not rely on other people but myself. To carry my own weight. That's right, my mother taught me how not to be a burden of others. If living had a weight and giving birth meant to grant a child this weight, her teaching me how to live would be somewhat of an apology to counteract her guilt. If one has to depend on another to bear the weight, he or she has to live with a guarantee that the other person will always be present to carry it, otherwise one will be buried alive by the sudden burden of life once it comes crushing down without preliminary signs. Comparing life to the pull of gravity is a common metaphor in literature, because even invisible to the eye, we, humans can feel the force we are pressured against. And perhaps the intangibility of the weight of living can be proven by our responses to living itself.
Sideward rotation.
When I was sixteen, I was so depressed that I couldn't go to school for two weeks. I was throwing up blood and I lost my appetite. I spent the fortnight in bed. Curtains drawn. Only took a shower every three days. I couldn't even cry because it wasn't like sadness. I wasn't sad. I couldn't describe how it felt then, because I was looking through my diction of words for emotions. Now that I'm older, I finally have a word for it - heavy. After so many years of searching, I realized I was looking in the wrong places. It was not a feeling. It was weight. And maybe depression is just a way of handling the weight of living. It could be a vague measurement of it. It could be that the burden of life was pretty heavy back then, or that it was not, and I was too weak to bear it.
Parallel the moving foot with the other one.
Some people go for a run in response to this weight, and some people run away from it. It was like when my hand couldn't help sweating before a presentation or my heart palpitating when the plane takes off. When my closed eyes kept twitching so hard under the lids that our lashes clashed. Or that time my lips trembled when I first touched his and I went home that day and wrote something about how the stars "shake and burn". I was seventeen when I thought it would happen all over again, that I had to spend two weeks in bed with curtains drawn. But it didn't. It wasn't exactly heaviness. It was pain. It was lighter. And my response to it? I put everything inside a mason jar, sealed it up and kept it in a cool, dry place while I bit hard on my trembling lip. I wanted the memory to hurt. I wanted it to be a feeling, not a burden. Feelings fade away; burden is for life.
Left foot forward.
I was taught to live without someone I needed. But if that someone is who you need, how could you possibly live without him? Sleeping in the same bed where I skipped two weeks of school for, my ears pressed against the telephone, we talked for hours about all the little things and all the pretty things and all the simple things and fell between the pauses and giggles that filled the room, and I wasn't sure if it was lightness or joy. It was also in the same bed where I listened to his small voice on the other side of the phone telling me it was over. My hair in-between the phone and my ear, I listened to his steady, muffled breathing. Loving him felt a lot like that and not only that - it has to be it. Loving him has to feel like hearing with muffled ears. It was as if lying to myself that I wanted to hear it but I didn't, and that I didn't want to hear it but I did. After that, I hung up and never called back. That's the thing about love. People say it's a red string that binds lovers together. I say it's the red string that connects feelings with weight. Love with life.
Rotation to the other side.
If there's something like putting your own weight on someone else's back, then why on earth would there be anyone who would like to carry another person's weight in the first place? Well, there isn't. There isn't anyone who bears his or her own weight and the extra weight of another person. That wouldn't be fair, would it? In fact there would only be two people sharing the weight of the two of them. Like two monks hauling buckets of water with a bamboo stick. The lightness of sharing burdens - that's what love is really about. And yet it is also the quiet terror of being alive, because it means a promise without a guarantee. Love subjects us to the burden of life, and when the other monk leaves, you will be left with spilled water that none of you can put back into the buckets.
There are people rioting against the heavy burden of their lives in Baltimore and yet I am left here having no idea what to do with my pain. All the lovers imitating and rewriting the same love story, thinking it will turn out different from the ones they had, seeking lightness from weight, freedom from burden - and maybe this is why I don't deserve it, because I'm not chasing after it anymore.
Finish the circle with the moving foot.
I met a boy not long ago, and he said reading the things I wrote was like dancing Waltz. You had to find balance under your own weight without the partner's support. I said no. No, it wasn't what my writings were, it was me. To waltz flawlessly, you have to look at each other's right shoulder to prevent dizziness or lock your eyes at nothing in particular and let the surroundings pass by, because looking into the partner's eyes will make you shift your weight onto him unintentionally. And if you can't take your eyes off of him, waltz with a mask on. Put up a false pretense.
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