The long, inumerable days surge by with insignificance as I try to blend in with the high school students. I slowly walk through the school building searching the crowded hallways for something resembling my own cluelessness, but for the most part everything is feigned or masked with joy. I carry my red High Sierra backpack and my glasses with me as I observe the cream brick walls and the sneakers slipping across the wet floors. I notice how the students are all focused on a goal of friendship and sliding through with ease, but I am clueless as to how I could make that my own goal. When the stress of the unknown comes, I begin to notice the weight of my surroundings and my backpack when they indirectly start to emotionally encumber my abilities. I am filled with feelings of anxiety and timidness, and around time my own thoughts turn against me to create more resilient burdens. My thoughts are entangled with my own physical burdens and and it becomes the weight on my back and the feelings of my head.

Like many people, the things I carry go beyond what others can visibly see. On the outside, I carry my backpack and my glasses, which everyone can physically see, but I carry more than just the physical weight and appearance of these objects. Each object represents an emotional burden demanding to be carried in my everyday life; a burden that follows me as closely as the situations or past events in which I used these objects. The burden is a feeling of inadequacy and failure stemming from my socially inept personality. So when I head to my classes, I carry these low-lying feelings with me along with the side effects that accompany loneliness. As a result, a hostile voice is curated in my head that develops into something of a bad friend. The voice, a tiny person in my mind, strives to mislead me on what I can’t do based off of what I didn’t do right during class. The personality of this person is stuck up and ignorant, but I don’t toss him out. Instead I carry him with me begrudgingly as he becomes my glasses in which I see through. My rational thoughts are blurred by this prison guard that keeps me from accepting my already accepted values and abilities, and instead forces me to see past success to see my failures. The gruelling words he recites start to pound into a pressurizing poor-fated pursuit of my willingness to change myself. This person gives me fear of attention, so I attempt to hide it as I continue through school with a mundane essence affecting me instead of others. I try to escape the voice, but my mind drifts to a state of reminiscence as I remember where this person comes from: a small trip to a new Stanton Optical and a compound effect of loneliness that I now tie to it.

As I grew up, there were no worries in my small, seven-year-old brain as I was told that I would be receiving glasses. In fact, I was somewhat joyfull about being able to make out solid lines in leaves rather than the silhouettes that I had seen for so long. After receiving the news, my parents took me to an eye doctor who tested my eyes with the phoropter: a large, metallic, alien looking eye lens. I steadily went through the motions and soon had my prescription assigned to my new glasses. I quickly tried my new, green specs on and ,wow, the clarity that came from them was unbelievable, but something was different. I could feel the cold, plastic frame on my head and see my peripheral vision contract to a dainty circle. It was in this moment that I realized this was something I would be carrying for the rest of my life as I would no doubt struggle with small challenges that would mean almost nothing to others. The weight alone demanded me to carry the burden of reliance on its guidance while also being independent with my own controlled thoughts. Though I must carry on with this weight to get through the rest of my day.

Eventually after a long day of carrying and pondering self discouragement, the end of the school day arrives and I am on my way to my old but familiar bus. The old door creaks open and I begin to walk through the small aisles to find a seat. As I stroll towards the back of the bus, I choose a seat and set my backpack beside me on the grey seat and start to wind down. Soon luminous faces start to appear and they begin to fill the already crowded seats. The seats fill in around me with people fitting three to a seat, but they avoid mine. I start to clean my glasses of the muck they collect everyday when the familiar voice comes to mind as it forms an indistinct cloud of judgement. My normal feelings flow through my head explaining to me that I have more space to myself, but the irrational part of me believes that others are avoiding me. The air starts to smell of stingy body odor as the bus becomes warm and humid to the touch, though this doesn’t bother me. I am too far gone to observe the chaos around me. It is only when I arrive home that I can finally keep my burdens from growing any larger. With that in mind, I quickly start my homework and put on my headphones to fill my mind with relieving music to block the constant noise that resides in my head.

Unfortunately, the noise never leaves the proximity of my own home during the long nights. Just as the stars may shine in the darkness, so do my self-degrading thoughts during a time that should be used for rest. Aggravatingly, I lay restless in my bed as I think about my day and the mistakes I made. I stare at the old popcorn ceiling of my room trying to find meaning in my life, I try to find a pattern. The lack of communication with others comes to my mind closely followed by the days overbearing thoughts I had with myself. I ask myself what a day without heat, flush embarrassment, loneliness and confusion would look like, but I don’t have a clear answer. It would be great to be free, but the burden has already left an imprint on my life. I hear the cicadas screeching in the background, which helps me realize an important detail: the connection between my two most common items reveals the relationship I have with my own feelings. A cicada must embrace its abilities just as I should. I contemplate the idea that, by chance, my burdens are worth carrying due to their strong impression on me. This helps me to believe I should carry it to become the person that I was meant to be. Finished with my evening thoughts, I take my glasses off and fall asleep.

In short, the things I physically carry can be tangibly linked to express the emotional weights I carry everyday. It may be an object of necessity for sight or something new I carry because of it, but the weight still drags me down everywhere I go. When I tie my emotional weight to an object, it will not alleviate the pain but animate it. The life that my burden of inadequacy can bring is only what I make of it. The weight is heavy, but choosing when it brings me down can help me carry the weight on my back and the feelings on my head as I continue to face the days with a desire to make the best of my burdens.