The Weight I Carry Alone

Painting by Luca Ponsato

The Weight I Carry Alone

I never blamed anyone for hurting me,

I don't deserve to be loved.

I came here only to suffer.

Sometimes this feels like the only script

life has written for me

a quiet resignation,

a place where I stand still

while everything around me

keeps taking something from my chest.

I have watched people walk in and out

as if my heart were a waiting room

and their presence was temporary

from the very beginning.

I didn’t protest,

didn’t question,

didn’t hold anyone responsible.

Maybe I believed the hurt was meant for me,

carved into my fate long before I understood

what love was supposed to feel like.

There are nights when I lie awake

and wonder if I was shaped from pain,

if my existence was stitched together

with threads that were never meant

to hold anything warm.

Some of us learn early

that tenderness is not our language,

that affection stops at our doorstep

and chooses not to enter.

So I carry this heaviness like a second skin,

moving through the world quietly,

as if trying not to disturb the places

that are already breaking inside me.

My steps feel borrowed,

my breaths feel thin,

and every day I wake up

with the same dull ache

that reminds me why I am here.

Not to be loved.

Not to be held.

Not to be chosen.

But to endure.

To survive what keeps returning.

To accept that suffering has been

the only constant companion

I never learned how to refuse.

I never blamed anyone for hurting me,

I don't deserve to be loved.

I came here only to suffer.

These words don’t scream

they simply sit in my chest,

quiet and familiar,

like a truth that has lived there

far longer than hope ever did.