This is my Weight. I carry it wherever I go.
It's sort of comical, really. It's a large, lead weight with "100lbs" printed across it in white, bold font. Kind of like in an old cartoon. When I was born, my mother said it appeared right above me as she held me in her arms. The two of us probably would've been killed had my father not been there to knock it out of the way. It broke his wrist, and from that day forward it would bother him off and on.
The doctor said he'd never seen anything like it before. Objects don't seem to be set on any very specific guidelines, but the one thing they normally have in common is their frailty. Maybe that says something about people. And most never weigh more than a few pounds at least. This thing, however, was pure, tough, unmarked lead. What it said about the kind of man I would become most of the Object Permanence Specialists said was not good. Mom, though, said otherwise.
Where one specialist said the weight signified much hardship in my life, she would say it just meant I would become strong enough to carry them.
Where another would say the lead signified I would become stubborn and unmoving, Mom would tell them it meant I would have an iron will and thick skin, enough to face my problems.
As a kid growing up I had to lug the weight around in a wagon. Everyone called it "The Weight", except Mom. It was like this thing that was just a part of life that I had to suffer with, but something that wasn't really attached to me, something I just had to drag around wherever I went out of obligation rather than desire.
From home to school, to the park, playing with friends, wherever I went, the Weight had to come with me. It was mine, my burden to bare, and nobody else would help me to carry it.
I was bullied a lot in school. Other kids found it weird how when they all had things like compact mirrors or glass marbles, here was this quiet kid with a red wagon and a giant black slab of lead. It got me the nickname "Doorstop", since that's all the Weight-all I-was good for.
When I would come home crying, Mom would be there to comfort me. She'd tell me that all of the other children just couldn't understand the importance of the object, that it was special and only I could handle something so important.
She truly loved me. I wish I had recognized that from the start, instead of believing she just said those things out of pity. She died when I was thirteen. Her object, a small porcelain doll, was accidentally dropped down a flight of stairs.
My father tried to be strong, tried to put on a show that everything would be okay, but he was a broken man who eventually sank so deep into the bottle that he never came up for air again. One day he went out to drink and just never came back. I still wonder if he's out there somewhere. I still have his object, a small flask. No wonder why he was born with that. I wonder if he regrets leaving me. Or whether he even cares.
That's how I wound up in a foster home.
Nobody wants a teenager, especially not a teenage boy. Especially not a teenage boy with a weird object that he needs ten minutes to carry up and down a flight of stairs every day. The homes I wound up in were more like juvenile holding pens than anything else, with adults who didn't give a shit less about me, and the boys and girls there were even worse than the ones at school. I was taunted day in and day out about the Weight, both at and away from home, and nobody wants to be friends with the kid who was branded a freak. But I didn't retaliate. I took it. I took all their anger, all of their ridicule, their uncertainty and ignorance, their fear and self-loathing they had built up about themselves, and I let them take it out on me.
Sometimes it would escalate to physical violence, but carrying around a big lead weight every day of your life tends to make one pretty strong. I was durable. I could take it. And when they realized they couldn't get from me what they were looking for, if they even understood what it was they were looking for, it would end.
And over time the Weight gained some scratches and dings, but remained solid.
And over time the taunting became less frequent.
And over time they stopped calling me "Doorstop".
Over time some of the boys and girls I grew up with began to see me as someone who they could turn to that would listen, someone they could vent their problems to.
And over time I began to make friends.
And over time I began to see girls as more than just friends.
And over time I met her.
Her object is an old navel spyglass, which fits her quite well I think. She can see things for what they are, see people for who they truly are and not who they pretend to be. And she gravitated toward me, for whatever reason.
She asked me about the Weight. I told her it wasn't a burden I chose, but one I had to carry. She looked at it, with all its scratches and marks, all its dents and dings, the faded paint that now said "1U0'b,"and she said she'd never seen anything so beautiful before. I thought she was mocking me.
But she continued to talk to me. Soon she began to seek me out. She asked for my number and said we should meet up on our days off to hang out. She would drop by and talk with me for hours.
And over time, we saw one another more and more.
And over time, it became "my Weight".
I don't think I really need to explain what eventually happened, it seems pretty obvious where this is going.
So, now I'm at a comfortable place. A kind of comfort I've never felt before.
My entire life I always believed the Weight was dragging me down. It felt so heavy, and at times it seemed like it got heavier, sometimes too heavy to carry any longer. It was my burden to bare, but I don't have to carry it all on my own any longer.
And when we stood before each other in the dark, my Weight was behind me.
And when I stood at the altar, my Weight was beside me.
And when I stood in the delivery room, my Weight was beneath me.
And when I held him in my arms for the first time, my Weight got a little bit lighter.
Mom...he has your eyes.
His object is twenty feet of thick steel chain. The doctor said he'd never seen anything like it. But that's okay. He won't have to carry it on his own.