The Weight Around My Neck

An essay I wrote for an English Class.

Thought I would share.

The first weight I ever remember receiving was my first day of pre-school. It was a horrible affair; the smells, the sounds, the movements of that strange place hit me like waves as I walked with my mother through the wrought iron gate painted a miserable shade of green. I wondered to myself why any place would need such contraptions. At closer inspection my hands, new to this world three short years before, ran over the gate’s rough green coating. Pieces of the horrid color splintered and peeled off to reveal an equally hideous color of burnt red that caked on my fingers and refused to be removed. My mother touched my back and encouraged me through the horrible gates. We walked down a concrete pathway towards my prospective classroom. There were lots of children playing along the yard bordering the cold, unfriendly path. Occasionally I could perceive a shriek or shout as I walked in my red sundress. That morning I had insisted I could get ready myself and proceeded to pick out my wardrobe, completely unaware of what I would be taking home later that day, As my small hands fumbled with the blue glossy buttons of my boldly patterned dress earlier that morning, I was completely unaware that that would be the day I would be given a weight that I would keep for more than a decade. As I walked down the concrete cold walkway, I looked at the socks I had picked out earlier that morning; they were folded perfectly and the small, colorful beads surrounding the edges of the white cotton moved and swayed with my miniature, white keds. My mother walked me to a large wooden door with a small window I was not nearly tall enough to be able to gaze through. She opened it and we walked into a classroom that smelled of stale goldfish crackers and lemon scented Lysol. The sun burst through the blinds in millions of horizontal lines across the multi-colored square floor. Everything was decorated with an absurd amount of apples and leaves. This surely was not the same welcome as the soft pink, even lines of floral wall coverings that my room at home greeted me with. The majority of the day passed and I was unscathed. Nearing the end of the day, after our naptime, a ridiculous invention in and of itself, my floral sundress, beaded socks, and white keds, marched ourselves over to the arts and crafts table to try our hand at construction paper. As I pulled out the miniature navy blue chair at the glitter and paint stained table, a small black haired girl with two braids and large pink bows at each end skipped by and happened to trip over one of the cold silver legs. I was immediately put in a horrific time period of time out. My tears and cries for understanding were answered with commands to toughen up and rub my useless tears away. “Toughen up. Be strong” my teacher and her harsh brown bob told me. I went home that autumn day with my red floral dress, shiny keds, beaded socks, and an additional weight around my neck imperceptible to everyone around me.  I was to be strong.

Four years later I sat in my grandmother’s doddering living room. Yellowing, outdated wallpaper was the backdrop of unfriendly black and white photographs of relatives who had died years before I was even thought of. Light blue crushed velvet sofas lined the walls. My grandmother’s orange tabby cat sat glaring at my tiny frame. My grandmother had named the cat “Bob” after finding out it was a female; the cat must have taken this personally for every time my elementary aged self attempted at playing with the cat, it hissed me into submission. My long, blonde hair adorned with a small satin bow reflected in the grandfather clock I was seated in front of. The mysterious workings of the clock mystified me. There was something eerie and sinister in the clock. Every color in the room seemed to silently struggle with one another. Even the popcorn ceiling seemed to be involved in the argument. Two blue rocking chairs sat in the corner facing a very small television set with antennas that sprouted out like oversized ears.  The chair on the right was my grandfather’s. It was less cushioned and much stiffer than my grandmother’s soft chair to its left. A delicate lace sheet rested on the crown on the chair.  I had never seen the chair so desolate looking. Everyone was gone in the next room. The sound of the constant breathing machine ceased. Silence came rushing in like tidal waves. My grandmother, along with the rest of my family, came in the room with faces cold as stone. “You won’t be able to play with your grandpa anymore, you’ll have to be strong now.” My streams of sorrow soaked into the stiff blue chair I ran to for cover from the weights. I could not avoid them.  Sure enough I felt another tug. The bristles in the thick rope became more undeniable, more harsh, more unforgiving. The orange tabby cat hissed. I was to be strong.

 Seven years later and the weights still hung, heavier with each year, the world oblivious to their existence. As my family turned the corner of Joel Road, lines of burning red fire trucks blocked any sort of traffic. My father parked the dilapidating gold pickup truck around the corner and took off for a run towards our street. Streams of water flowed down, black pieces of ash swirling into the gutter as if some sort of dark artist was washing his brushes after a horrid piece of artwork. The black asphalt on our small cul-de-sac showed its cracks and imperfections as my worn out purple vans hurried along the road towards the place I was so accustomed to calling home.  The neighborhood had looked out of their windows as if fulfilling a perfectly horrific scene in a movie. The trees in the front yard told brutal lies as they stood and swayed their long, heavy branches in the breeze. The weights around my neck swung as I made my way towards the burning mess. Flames whipped like a long scourge in the harsh air. The fireman led us through “standard procedures” although I do not understand how any atrocity like that could have a standard.  The man in a dirtied yellow fire department coat kneeled down and told me I had to be strong throughout all this.  Tears streamed down my dirt face unnoticed. I stepped over the door, shattered by the frantic axes of the men who attempted to save our home.  My purple vans turned a dark grey and my blank expression turned to looks of disbelief as I investigated the house further. The nails in the walls had become so hot they shot out like pistols through the wall itself. Though the curtains had been seared away, no light dared shine through the spaces where the windows had been. My once familiar house had been replaced with a horror from an Edgar Allan Poe work. What was left of the house roared with dreadful silence. Plastic picture frames had melted into the burned furniture and warped around the memories they once held.  The high ceilings of my house reached into a dreadful black unknown. The three months following my family was homeless. We ran from motel to motel where mice ran across the floors as I feigned sleep. The sheets smelled stale and every room was unwelcoming. No one talked much and most every meal seemed to be potatoes and gravy. I was to be strong.

 More and more weights were tied around my neck long after I outgrew my beaded socks, long after my face reflected in the grandfather’s clock, and long after my material world turned to ash.  Weights family had placed around my neck, weights broken relationships had placed. I was to be strong. Weights were added in between and after these events, weights I could not begin to take off alone. The string of weights dug like barbed wire into my slender neck. The burdens hung like iron weights.  Every movement forward became harder and harder.  I looked for help of ridding myself of these weights and ever ceased to be let down and disappointed. At each disappointment and failure the world told me to be strong. My world became focused on ridding myself of the weights. Little did I know my efforts to rid myself of the arduous burdens were the very things that were weighing my oppressed soul down.  I was always told to be strong and thus built up the strength that I thought was necessary to hold up my life. One day, a voice whispered, “be weak.” Be weak?  I was to be strong. Weakness had no place. “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Excuse me. That is an anomaly. And I can handle my weights myself. I always have. “Look where that has gotten you. Let go of your weights. I have taken them. Be weak” You have? Is that so? Why do I feel nailed to the ground? “You haven’t let me remove them. Be weak.” And with that it was done. Tears fell like rain. So did mercy. Every weight was taken off, the rough, bitter rope around my neck was untied and the weights fell of like candy from the children’s sweet necklaces. I still wear the symbol of my weights around my neck. It does not dig or scorn, it encourages me to be weak because someone else was strong for me.  I am not to be strong. I am to be weak because in my weakness, I am given strength. As I slip on my dark green shoes this morning, my blonde hair hangs in my face and my delicate silver cross rests around my neck. I am called to be weak.