The Weight of it all

The weight doesn’t arrive like a burden.

It arrives like a verdict.

There is no warning, no shift in atmosphere, no moment to prepare. One breath I am sinking, the next I am pinned — held down by something I can’t see, can’t name, can’t negotiate with. The ground doesn’t just catch me. It claims me.

The weight settles first in the chest — a dense, immovable pressure that feels less like emotion and more like mass. As if something inside me has collapsed into itself, forming a core of gravity that drags everything inward. Breathing becomes a deliberate act, a slow, strained pulling of air through resistance.

Then it spreads.

My limbs feel thick, as if filled with wet sand.

My hands feel clumsy, swollen with exhaustion.

My legs feel anchored to the floor, heavy enough to root me in place.

My spine feels burdened, as if it’s carrying something I can’t put down.

This isn’t tiredness.

Tiredness has edges.

Tiredness can be slept off.

This is weight — the kind that makes even stillness feel like effort.

The weight changes the way I inhabit my own body.

My posture folds inward, not from sadness but from physics.

My shoulders slump under a pressure that isn’t emotional but gravitational.

My head drops because holding it up feels like lifting a stone.

Even my face feels heavy — the muscles slack, the expressions slow, the eyes dimmed by something deeper than fatigue.

The world above the surface keeps moving, but I can’t rise to meet it.

I can’t even rise inside myself.

The weight makes everything feel far away.

Tasks.

People.

Thoughts.

Possibility.

Even the smallest actions become monumental.

Standing up.

Walking to the sink.

Picking up a cup.

Answering a message.

Each one feels like dragging myself through invisible mud.

My children feel the shift before I speak.

They move more gently.

They watch me with quiet, instinctive awareness.

They sense the heaviness in the room, the way the air thickens around me.

They don’t ask what’s wrong.

They don’t need to.

They can see the weight pressing me down.

The weight doesn’t make me disappear.

It makes me immobile.

I am still here — just harder to animate, harder to access, harder to lift.

The underwater mind slows my thoughts.

The weight slows my body.

Together, they create a kind of internal gravity that pulls everything inward.

Attention.

Energy.

Emotion.

Will.

Nothing escapes easily.

Nothing rises naturally.

Nothing feels light.

This is the truth of the ground:

it doesn’t hurt.

It holds.

It holds me down.

It holds me still.

It holds me in place whether I want to be there or not.

The weight is not punishment.

It’s aftermath.

The cost of altitude.

The residue of impact.

The body’s way of saying:

you cannot rise yet.

And the hardest part is this:

there is no timeline.

No clear path out.

No promise of when the heaviness will lift.

All I know is that I am here —

underwater,

under pressure,

under weight.

This is the ground.

And the ground is heavy.