The Weight of an Inner Atlas

What would you rather: to be weird or to be normal?

For me, normal meant quieting my voice, dulling my light, folding myself smaller. Weird was humour, resilience, and carrying my own spark through darkness.

I refused to lose the strangeness that made me feel comfortable in my own skin.

So it is safe to say, rejection appeared in its cruellest ways. At times, it made me question everything about myself and being anxiously attached as I am didn't help. I always found ways to link the problem back to myself.

Most people describe attachment in terms of romance, but attachment extends into every connection. I sought reassurance not only from partners but also from friends and family.

I invented burdens in my mind, countless and undefined, believing that the fault was always mine.

Bearing the weight of each compromise was dimming my presence. I kept blaming myself for what took two, and the world too assumed it was mine.

What I mistook for fate written in the stars was only the prophecy I kept writing for myself in secrecy.

Day by day, the weight doubled as I carried the unseen labor of relationships. My inner Atlas grew weary from holding the weight of the world on its shoulders. Others withheld their presence, and it returned to me as self-blame, walking beside its ally, the fear of rejection.

It took me so long to realise how deeply they fed each other. The more I tried to cast them away, the larger they appeared in the eyes of others.

My inner voice kept repeating, ‘it is your fault,’ in trembling sadness.

For as long as I can remember, I was both the source of my pain and its container.

Still, I wasn’t alone inside my mental prison. I had my seeds, so I put them into soil and nurtured. Without realising, humour grew wild and it became my way of turning pain into laughter.

In time, I stopped chasing and started tuning into my own energy.

Relationships carry their own frequency, shaped by energy shifts. Some bonds naturally fade, while those aligned with our higher frequency draw closer; the ones where our spirits can finally rest unguarded.

That’s why my people have always been the ones who laughed with me, not the ones who asked me to quiet my wild, unshapely weird.

Still, even among laughter, there were nights when my own mind turned against me. Then one day, my illness became the shadow that trailed behind the light, teaching me many things, but first the value of my life.

Back then, I was so close to giving up. I even searched for quiet ways to erase myself, a disappearance disguised as fate.

That's why after my recovery, I never took health for granted again. I let gratitude root itself in the smallest act of living: another breath, another morning.

Nothing and no one mattered as long as I was able to take two steps forward every new day.

I had become my own saviour, and no blame in the world could discredit a hero’s act. Even so, ingratitude runs through human nature.

What stays in our hands turns invisible, its worth dismissed.

Only in loss do people awaken, and even when what was lost returns, blindness easily settles back where it once remained.

Soon enough, everyday struggles caught my sleeve again. My learnings grew distant, and I drowned myself once more in self-blame.

Now, I am writing from a place of searching, to remind myself, and to remind you as well.

The endless demand to act rightly does not liberate us; it suffocates, killing us slowly beneath the weight of blame.

For me, it was illness that taught me gratitude, to greet each day as a gift rather than a stage for the regret of being who I am. I learned that even if you hold something close, it can vanish the next day.

For you, it may be the very thing you once believed untouchable, until it slipped away.

The universe does not bargain. It gives and takes not by coincidence, but to teach us how to rise toward our higher selves.

We are unrepeatable sparks, and the world is brighter when we choose not to dim. In time, the dimming will come on its own, in the natural order of things.

So let us not be the ones who choose to make their lives a living hell until then.

Thanks for reading! If this resonated with you, it might be the reminder someone else needs today 🦋

Author’s note:

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