the weight of a quiet stone

A stone the size of my thumb sat in my pocket for years before I ever realized it was there. I don’t remember when I picked it up — maybe sometime around childhood, maybe earlier, maybe it was placed there before I learned to speak. All I know is that it grew heavier every year, pressing into my leg, shaping the way I walked without me even noticing.

I carried that stone through empty kitchens where arguments echoed like slammed doors. Through long nights when I pretended I couldn’t hear the muffled crying in the next room. Through mornings when I woke up already tired, already bracing myself for what might go wrong.

By the time I was ten years old, the stone had turned into a symbol I didn’t have language for — the weight of holding myself together. The weight of pretending. The weight of being the strong one, the quiet one, the kid who didn’t make things harder.

My mother once told me, “Some of us are born carrying more than others.” She didn’t say it bitterly. More like an apology she didn’t know how to deliver properly.

As the years passed, the stone darkened. Not literally, but emotionally. It became the shape of responsibilities too big for my small shoulders. It became the taste of fear when the house got too loud. It became the ache of watching people I loved fall apart in front of me.

And I thought that was normal — that everyone walked through life with something pressing into their ribs.

But then adolescence arrived, and everything cracked open.

By sixteen, the stone was no longer subtle. It felt like a river rock lodged inside my chest, heavy enough to drown me if I stopped moving. I didn't tell anyone. I didn’t have the words for that kind of weight. So instead, I smiled in hallways, made jokes in classrooms, kept my voice steady even when my hands shook under the table.

People thought I was calm.

People thought I was unbreakable.

But calm can be a costume.

And unbreakable? Sometimes that’s just the name we give our most quiet pain.

The stone kept growing, layering itself with unspoken apologies, unsent messages, and the kind of loneliness that sneaks up on you even in a crowded room. I kept it pressed deep into my pocket like a secret — something I hoped would disappear if I ignored it long enough.

It did not.

Then came the night I almost sank.

I remember sitting alone in my room, staring at a blank wall because everything else felt too loud. I remember thinking, I can’t do this forever. I remember feeling that stone pulse with its own heartbeat, pulling me down, down, down into the dark.

But something strange happened that night.

I reached into my pocket — really reached — and touched the stone.

It was cold. Hard. Unforgiving.

And yet… it was mine.

For the first time, I didn’t try to ignore it. I didn’t pretend it wasn’t shaping my life. Instead, I acknowledged it. The fear. The pressure. The exhaustion. The years of emotional survival I had never learned how to name.

I sat with it — truly sat with it — and felt something inside me shift. Slightly. Barely. But enough.

Not freedom.

Not healing.

Just recognition.

Sometimes, that’s the very first step.

Life didn’t magically get better from that moment.

But I started learning how to live differently.

I slowly learned that I could put the stone down sometimes. I could lay it on a desk, on a pillow, on the edge of a bathtub while I breathed for the first time in hours. I learned that heaviness feels lighter when it isn’t hidden. I learned that silence can make pain grow sharper, but words — even imperfect, trembling ones — loosen the grip it has on you.

By twenty-one, I had begun carving my own path. It wasn’t clean or easy. Healing rarely is. But I started meeting pieces of myself I didn’t know existed — softer pieces, hopeful pieces, versions of me that believed I deserved something better than just surviving.

I even left the stone behind once. For a whole year, I lived without it. I laughed easier. Slept deeper. Trusted louder.

But life has a way of circling back. A way of testing the seams of your growth.

The stone returned — not the same one, but something familiar in shape and texture. A new weight, a new fear, a new darkness trying to settle inside me.

But this time, I didn’t panic.

This time, I didn’t let it define me.

Because I had learned something that changed everything:

The point was never to get rid of the stone.

The point was learning how to carry it without losing myself.

Now it is 2025, and I still carry a stone with me. Not out of habit, not out of shame, not because life never hurt me again, but because it’s part of my story. Part of my becoming. Part of my strength.

It doesn’t weigh me down the way it used to.

Some days, it barely weighs anything at all.

When I hold it now, I see every version of me who survived long enough to hand it forward — every child who swallowed fear, every teenager who smiled through shaking hands, every adult who kept walking even when the road felt endless.

My scars aren’t secrets.

My heaviness isn’t shame.

My past isn’t something I run from.

It is a stone — small, weathered, familiar — carried not as a burden, but as proof.

Proof that I stayed.

Proof that I kept going.

Proof that I never sank.

And that…

that is enough.