the heaviness that comes with knowing yourself

Sep 07, 2025

knowing myself has been the most painful journey.

it is ironic. you would expect to feel lighter, freer, unburdened - but instead, a heaviness lingers in your chest as you begin peeling back the layers you once found shelter in. each layer - a mask, a borrowed definition, an old comfort that now presses deep into your ribs. knowing yourself opens the nightmare of the lives you have lived - none your own - and the cost of each.

first, you feel grief. a quiet shattering as you realize the years you gave away - too scared to live, to occupy space you were meant to. your light dimmed. fragments of yourself abandoned in forgotten voids. you withered while carving yourself into slivers others could swallow - more palatable, more tamable. more of everyone else and less of you.

then, shame. each “yes” that betrayed you, each silence devoured whole, each piece of yourself you bargained away. shame scorches the places you pressed yourself flat - your curiosity, your voice, your longings - folded into shapes small enough to fit someone else’s hands.

then, anger. a quiet, fervent rage balling in the back of your throat. crawling down the length of your spine. tears, held hostage for too long, break free - flooding, uninvited, and with more meaning than words can ever bear. anger for the way the world chewed you up, then spat you out. anger for the hands that claimed to love you, yet split you open to bleed. anger for the way your light was bruised and blistered because it revealed their shadows. anger for each time you fooled yourself into thinking pain was evidence of love, that submission was safety, that your softness was an anomaly to burn away.

and yet, light seeps in as small, startling moments of clarity: that you were not wrong. not too much. not too little. always just enough, but in hands who could not hold you. it is strange, yet liberating, to realize that the gravity of your own worth was never contingent on their comprehension, approval or comfort - it was always yours. wholly. undeniably.

this understanding does not mend scars, but lifts them ever so gently. the weight of others’ definitions begin to dust, replaced by the steady sobriety of your own knowing. and this changes your contours - where you once saw embarrassment you now see bravery, where you once saw weakness, you now see strength. it births a profound appreciation in you - for the body that carried you while you cried, fought and endured. for the mind that questioned, remembered and insisted truth even when it agonized. for the heart that survived, pulsed and still gave. this appreciation honors the distance you have traveled, the wounds you have carried and the light you have reclaimed.

and this is exactly why so many avoid knowing themselves. the work digs deep, relentless and unflinching. scraping at the edges of who you thought you were and had grown used to. to confront the weight of your own worth, to unearth what has been buried too long, too deep, is to encounter a fire most cannot survive. and therefore, it is easier to shrink, to fold your edges so they fit in regular places, to smother the blaze in your chest rather than to risk burning your place. easier to borrow the models others have carved for you, easier to move through life without questioning than to feel every inch of your being too fiercely.

to know yourself is to live with presence that never lets go - an unyielding anchor of truth, longing, and reclamation. it leaves you raw, awake, and painfully aware of how little the outside world mirrors what you nurture and grow inside. and yet, even in the bleakness, there is a quiet insistence: within this heaviness, in the ache of being fully seen by yourself, pulses a delight for those brave enough to witness it - the rare, unshakable joy of being full, endless, and alive in your own world.

the heaviness that comes with knowing yourself

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