What Do We Owe Each Other

musings on what it means to be a burden in a society ill equipped to handle it

On a phone call with my favorite wise women, we spoke about the ongoing trend on social media spaces about being a burden to your friends. Specifically what it means when we tell each other to be burdens.

There is weight in the word, like rocks on your back or bone deep exhaustion. It is the cracking of your spine and an unintentional sigh.

A burden is a woman carrying a child on one arm and her home in another. A burden is your regrets laying their head on your chest humming stories you’d rather forget. A burden is also your sister coming home from work excited about a story and your sleep heavy eyes held open just to keep listening. A burden is something you carry. It only eases if the carrying comes from both sides.

As a product of the 2000s manic pixie dream girl type, whose mania doesn’t turn off and whose excitement wanes like the moon, being too much is a concept I’m afraid is my truth. I know the space I take up, I know the loudness I possess and I know largeness like my favorite dress. I am a lot. And I still feel apologetic about it sometimes.

Once a girl came up to me and said she admired my confidence. I was flattered and also a little bit ashamed. She sees me on stage and I engulf it with my largeness, she doesn’t see the aftermath, where I am just bones quaking in shame and drowning in the terror of being perceived. She doesn’t see the frightened mouse with her fur scraping the wall trying her best to blend into it. Truth is, I am not as secure as I wish I was.

I am a moon child in the same way the tides are, we shift when mother transforms. The highs are as unpredictable as the quiet nights. Sometimes we swallow whole ships, hunger in our bellies for sailors who didn’t know not to go into the turbulent waters. Other times we lull them into the night, a mother’s arms around her delicate child.

There is a vortex inside my stomach that demands to be satiated and I know it makes me needy. Neediness is not a thing that can be helped, just alleviated, this is how I am a burden. I am like tinkerbell withering without belief or validation, my everything is fueled by any attention on me.

How then do we proceed with burdening someone else with our largeness? I find that the best way is through learning how to hold on to other people's largeness too.

Every single one of us has a place of largeness. Some part of us that is heavy or overwhelming or unappealing. It is our task then to hold space for the overwhelm carried by those that carry ours. It is this reciprocity that maintains lasting relationships.

It’s so easy to hold space for the people you love, you don’t even realize you do it. One of my friends claims that she pebbles. She will randomly go out and about in the world, find a reminder of you in the shape of a pebble and give it to you as a sign of affection. She thinks what she gives is small, but is it small if all I’ve ever wanted was to be seen?

I think human beings are especially good at loving. I think it's built into our framework. I mean just look at the fact that we have hands designed to intertwine.

In recent years there’s been too much focus on being alone and not causing any discomfort to anybody, and now we’re surrounded by people who ask you to hold their burdens but have no capacity to hold yours. I think it's time we relearn what it means to be a part of something much larger than yourself so you can grow into a kinder, gentler human being. Maybe if we all do this work, we’ll have a kinder and gentler world.

To a month of sharing each other’s burdens,

Dhan xx