Tomorrow Sounds Exhausting

The Weight You Carry

The past has a way of lingering, not as a shadow behind you, but as a weight you never realize you’re carrying until someone asks why you’re walking so damn slow. Victor never really thought about his past at-least that’s what he told himself. But here he was in a 21 year old Claire Monroe’s cramped studio reviewing his memorable traumatic moments. Claire looked at him with an overly feeling of determination. He hadn’t seen this glance since looking himself in the mirror over 20 years ago. She looked at him sharp, eager, and unfazed by his presence. It was the look of a prodigy.

I couldn’t decide whether or not I resented or admired her. “You’re just too damn bright. Too full of hope, of possibility.” I blurted out. I didn’t even ever having this look when I started out. “So, what’s it like?” Claire asked, her voice steady yet calming, but there was a sense of urgency. Something telling me she was about to dig a little bit too deep into my unstitched wounds. “What was what like kid?” Victor said aloud. “Being a god. The way you were back then. Having it all. Winning every single case handed to your already filled desk.” Victor laughed the compliment off with a dry and blunt cough at the end. “Gods don’t win forever kid.”

Claire didn’t hesitate, she leaned forward. Embracing Victor’s negativity. She locked eyes with him and Victory somehow managed to lock eyes with her. The connection Victor felt between her was believed that she wanted something more than just the pieces Victor was giving about his treacherous legacy. “What happened to you Mr Diaz.” Claire asked bluntly. The question knocked Victor Diaz like a bus. He didn’t think a question like that would ever be directed towards him ever again. For a minute, a second, a moment, he wanted to open up and be completely vulnerable with Ms Monroe. I believed otherwise. What happened is what happened why bring up the anchors of the dead? The truth hung in between them like a mistletoe on Christmas Eve, yet it was Victor who could decide whether or not they confront each other.

I stared at her for a long beat, wondering how much she really wanted to know about the former me. How much Victor was willing to let on would be the real question at hand. Victor has spent countless years of facade after facade up until the process of his book. Finally after years of running away he hit the end of the road where he either accepts it full throttle or ends up as roadkill. “I don’t know if I can tell you,” Victor said hesitantly. “Because I’m still trying to figure out myself.” There was a pause. Claire didn’t seem satisfied, but she was content. She returned back to her seat and sat back. She examined him for head to torso.

“Mr. Diaz, everyone has their own demons. It’s up to You whether they’re that destroy you, or the ones that make who you are.” I couldn’t decide whether she her mental age doubled or maybe even tripled her biological age or if she was just naive. Regardless of what Victor believed Claire’s words struck him like a wasp. “You think demons make us who we are huh?” Victor said leaning into Claire. “I used to think the same thing. You see kid I didn’t choose to be the devil’s advocate. The Devil chose me. The stakes were too high to ignore, and the money, the power it was all right there, just waiting to be captured. Claire blinked subconsciously but her gaze never turned off him. She didn’t believe she could break the traumatic Victor in such manner but she was listening, hanging in his every word like a rock climber scaling up a cliff side.

Victors voice calmed as he continued, “There’s something seducing about it. The way the game makes you feel unreal, like you’re playing with fire knowing that you’ll never be burned for it. But the truth? You lose yourself in it. It eats at you from the inside, piece by piece. I sat back feeling the weight of my own words settle over me like his faded heavy coat. Every sentence he spoke, the more he opened up, the more truth that came to light, dragged Victor deeper and deeper into the dark hole which was the trauma he had been hiding for years on end. Victor glanced up to Claire, casually asking her “You ever think about what happened when the Devil wins?” He asked, his voice lowered, as if this very question carried the gravitational pull of negativity towards his life.

Claire stared silently for a beat, her expression hidden behind what Victor believed was signs of judgment and disapproval. But, there was a spark in her eyes, a recognition of the darkness in Victor that nobody had seen in a long time. “Is that what you’re afraid of?” She said softly. “That maybe you’re playing the devils game despite being retired? That maybe you can never escape it?”

My heart skipped a beat but was able to keep a poker face. This young intelligent woman was able to get about the closest someone has been to the truth since North Dakota. Each question hitting me heavier and heavier like a hammer. I told her coldly, “It’s not about fear, It’s about surviving. Like a memory some people are meant to be forgotten and that’s where their legacy is held.”

The words hung on the air in the studio, thick with the weight of everything he’d never wanted to say out loud. Holding back the pressure and the nerves to explode. He couldn’t hold back the truth for longer. The shovel had been put in his hands by the same very person he had buried the lies for. And yet, here he was with Claire. Standing over the grave he dug with his own two hands, only now realizing he’d been the one lowering himself into it all along.

Victor’s eyes squinted intensely into Claire’s windows. As if for the first time he had been able to see the weight of the truth he had been carrying. They had made it to the edge of this trauma yet it was only up for Victor to confront it. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t have an answer. I let out a low breath, shaking my head. “Then that means I’ve been carrying something that was never mine to hold.”

I glanced up. She was still staring at me, but this time, there was something else in her expression. Not admiration. Not pity. Just something steady. Something real. Claire didn’t say anything she sat there with a feeling of vagueness. She became unreadable. Maybe she thought I was going to continue talking. Maybe she believed I would c***k the silence.

I almost did.

Because for a nanosecond, just a moment, I felt it. The Weight.

And maybe that’s what stung the most. Not the burden itself, but the realization that I never had to carry it in the first place. I just did. I held on, convinced it was mine, convinced that if I let go, I’d lose something myself, maybe. But the truth? I wasn’t carrying anything anymore. It was carrying me.

Dragging me through memories I couldn’t escape, through moments I should’ve walked away from, through people I should’ve never tried to hold onto. And her. I thought about what it meant to be afraid of something you never spoke out loud. To pretend like it didn’t exist, like it never happened, just because facing it meant accepting that it was real. Maybe that’s why people run. Not because they don’t care, but because caring too much means acknowledging the weight of what was left unsaid.

Some people run to forget. Some people run because they know if they stay, they’ll have to deal with the wreckage. And some people don’t run at all.

They stay just long enough for you to think they will. Long enough for you to believe they might hold on, that maybe, just maybe, you weren’t the only one carrying something.

But then one day, without warning, without reason, without a single damn word

They just disappear.