The Weight of Existence

Some days, you don’t notice it at all. You wake up, make coffee, answer a message, stare out the window for a moment. The world moves, and you move with it. It’s not effortless, exactly, but it doesn’t feel heavy. You carry yourself through the day like you always do, not really thinking about it.

And then there are the other days.

The days where it’s as if gravity has changed overnight, as if the air has thickened and your body has forgotten how to move through it. The weight of being alive isn’t just there, it’s pressing down on you, slow and suffocating. Even the smallest things demand something from you. Brushing your teeth. Answering a text. Functionally feeding oneself. Not difficult tasks, not really, but they feel like they are. Because you feel like you are.

And the worst part? Nothing external has changed. The world didn’t shift. Your life didn’t collapse overnight. Everything is exactly as it was the day before, but suddenly, you aren’t. The weight is unbearable, not because it suddenly appeared, but because it was always there. You just had the strength to carry it without noticing.

That’s what no one tells you. That being alive has always had weight to it. That the light days, the easy days, aren’t proof that the heaviness doesn’t exist—they’re just proof that you had enough scaffolding to hold it up. Enough routine. Enough borrowed energy. Enough distractions, enough numbness, enough structure keeping the weight suspended just above your awareness.

And when the reserves run dry? When the scaffolding cracks, when the momentum slows? That’s when the weight announces itself.

Not suddenly. Not dramatically.

But slowly, relentlessly.

That’s why people fall apart in the quiet. Not in the chaos, not in the sprint, not in the middle of the worst moments, but afterwards. When things should be fine. When there’s no crisis, no obvious reason to feel like this. Because it wasn’t the movement that kept you going. It was the sheer effort of carrying everything that whole time. And now, with nothing left to hold it up, the weight isn’t just present, it’s unavoidable.

So what do you do with that?

What do you do when simply being feels impossible? When you can’t even point to a reason, when there’s no external explanation that justifies the sheer exhaustion of existing?

Most people try to fix it. They treat the weight like a problem to solve, a temporary malfunction that needs correcting. “Take a break.” “Get some sleep.” “Clear your head.” But the weight isn’t a glitch in the system. It is the system. And the realisation that you’ve always been carrying it? That’s not something you can un-know.

So maybe you stop trying to fight it.

Maybe, instead of clawing your way back to lightness, you just sit with it. Maybe you stop pretending you were ever weightless to begin with. Maybe you let yourself feel it, without trying to justify it, without looking for a solution, without making it mean something bigger than what it is.

Because the weight of existence isn’t a flaw.

It’s just proof that you’re here.