anchors.txt
Each of these people who fail not to hurt us, they anchor a weight onto us that insists us only worthy of hurting. We’d never accept this claim if overt, we’d be vocally defiant actually, but that’s why these little anchors are so perilous. We carry this weight, unbothered, unknowing, like wearing earrings and necklaces every day. It even makes us stronger for a time, as the muscle and sinew in our body grow alongside the added anchors, keeping us just clear to never really take notice. This linear relationship works for us on the good days. Those good, stable, in-shape days aren’t ever the ones where we struggle, though. It’s the days when we push for more, or have less to push with, where we find ourselves abruptly unable to stand. All the while, the anchors steadily continue piling on, until not even on the good days do we get to get up.
Often, by the time we take notice of the massive added gravity of these hurtful moments, we are already at such critical mass that we can’t begin to articulate the depths we’ve sunken to. We get trapped down there. Caught. Stuck. We go on, grounded so persistently, that we atrophy altogether. The same muscle and sinew that so long grew and held us upright, now wither and elude us. The simple idea of standing up, a newly implausible feat.
We begin to drown in broad daylight, water pouring in on all sides, often even with tact, and decorum. We shove the weight down and into the deepest parts of ourselves to try and get our heads above water. We scramble inwardly with ourselves to survive one more day, hour, minute, second. Left with few options to carry on, We desperately sign a contract, an emotional deferral, a devil’s bargain, and we let the anchors sink all the way underneath us, far enough down that we don’t have to see them again. The relief is instantaneous, it washes us clean and leaves behind a renewed sense of self. Our head comes up for air, we take the deepest breath we’ve had in a while, and we get back to it. Where did the weight go, though?
Our shadow grips tightly onto our ankles from below the floor. It’s being pulled taut between the anchors it carries for us, and our body that it’s unable let go of. Although the weight doesn’t drag us down quite the same, it wrings out our spirit and demands a toll much greater. It’s not the pain itself we lose, rather the parts of us that feel it that we are rid. We might walk around for years with this locational disparity, wearily dragging our heavy shadow through all of the concrete and dirt below us, as the very essence of our being seeps out, in a shuttered, mundane fall to the bottom.
I think of this, and I think of the future. I picture us, having forgotten even the resignation that defined the rest of our life. Us, one day encountering a rectangular hole in the ground, dug up in our name. Us, in the place where this tiresome dissonance will suddenly be equalized, and in a warm reunion, our shadow will be, at long last, able to rest.
I don’t believe the only way out is down, though. If we are to believe that the the shadow, our spirit, our innermost selves, must be reconciled, then we must know for a fact that our only influence on the matter is on which terms this reconciliation is seen through. We must choose against all instinct to face the shadow of ourselves, sharing in the weight again, fighting for our life to bring it back from beneath the ground. That inner self, it is fragile, it is tired, it has held you up for so long. We must not by our own hands, subject this self to the same lapse of love and care that we were given. If we are to ever see ourselves become unbound by these anchors in the same lifetime as their delivery upon us, we must reach inward with care for the deeper self to carefully strip away the weight in the very fashion it was applied — a single roped anchor at a time.