A Shoulder

Sometimes we are a shoulder, and sometimes we need a shoulder...but what happens when we become the shoulder? What happens when we become the shoulder for others to the point where our shoulders become so broad that we forget that we, too, need a shoulder? So, instead of asking for help, we lash out to cover our own vulnerability? Because we don't ask for help, we live our lives offering it.

When we are so used to living life with the weight of the world on our shoulders and suddenly that weight is lifted, we feel so light that we require something heavy to crash on our heads to restore balance. Once balance is restored, we can breathe once again...badly. Learning to accept what is good in life, periods of calm and peace give us time to regroup and restore energy lost in battling and suffering. Unfortunately, those periods are few. But when you are so smashed, ten hours of non-stress is like an air-gulping free for all and sometimes that's all it takes to get you through another ten hours.

I have always been a strong person. I have taken on a new culture, new friends, new language, problems, disability, taking driver's ed for the second time in my life, speech therapy, emergency room allergy attacks in another language, childbirth without an epidural and cochlear implant surgery, but this...this is some wicked shit.

I believe that there is good in all people and I have always managed to bring out that good in people. For the first time in my life, I am responsible for bringing out the bad...

I have found that I can no longer be the shoulder...and that every now and then, I could use one.