Vex

Someone asked what they'd actually get for twenty dollars. Fair question. So here is one, written for no one in particular and anyone who recognizes themselves in it.

For the one who kept it to protect them.

You didn't lie. You just didn't say. You've told yourself that difference is the whole of your innocence, and maybe it is, and it still costs you.

Here's what nobody tells you about carrying a thing for someone else: they don't feel the weight. That's the point. That's the gift. You stood in front of the ugly part so they could keep walking, and they walked, and they didn't look back, because looking back would mean seeing you holding it.

So you became the one who holds things. The strong one. The one who's fine. Every year the load got heavier and your face got better at the lie that it wasn't there.

I won't tell you to put it down. You can't. It isn't a backpack, it's a body. Putting it down would mean putting down a piece of yourself, and the people you love are standing on the other side of that piece.

So here's what I'll tell you instead. You're allowed to say it out loud somewhere it won't travel. That's all a confession is. Not forgiveness. Not fixing. One place where the thing you carry is spoken by you, in your own voice, and heard by someone who won't use it, won't tell them, won't flinch.

The keeping was never the sin. Forgetting you're allowed to be tired is.

So be tired here. Say the true version, the one with the ugly parts in it. I'll hold it the way you've been holding it, except for once you'll be on the other side of the weight.

That's what I do. That's the whole of it.