How Do You Let Go of the Weight of a Life?
Objects settle into a world of their own. Hidden inside them are lives, memories — and the reckoning that follows.
RastinewsObjects. Those who make a place for themselves in the world of objects. The lives and memories hidden inside them. What comes after is a trial.
Each piece of clothing seemed to eye me with menace. I fought myself, trying not to face my burdens, not to meet their gaze.
How does a person let go of such burdens? I started with my own wardrobe, armored for battle against a formidable front.
Objects, memories, waiting without reason. Growing used to waiting, waiting while growing used to it.
I realized that what a person keeps is never just an object. It is the weight of a person.
No one sheds these burdens in a single day; first comes a reckoning — facing them again, getting to know them again, or at least daring to. What we call a burden is rarely the object itself. It is the time steeped into it, the emotion, a sigh.
Open a wardrobe, open a drawer, and it is never just objects that greet you. Unworn days hang there, meetings postponed, possibilities left half-finished, all stored away. Every piece of clothing, every object, is a reminder of what might have been. That is why their gaze feels like a threat — they are the silent interrogation of the past.
Standing before the wardrobe, you are really standing before yourself. Open the drawer, and out come the dreams you swore to forget. Escape is easy: close the lid, turn off the light, leave everything exactly where it is. But that does not lighten the load — it only draws out the time before you face it. It is futile to try to bury in a drawer what you have already hidden in the darkest corner of your mind.
Drawers are more devious still. Folded belongings are the disorder of a mind that only looks organized. The time steeped into them greets you like unspoken words — half-finished goodbyes, all the "maybe someday"s. The more a person grows used to waiting, the more they grow used to carrying the weight. And after a while, they stop seeing what they carry at all.
But what a person keeps is not the object. The object is only an excuse to remember. What is truly being kept is a version of themselves they cannot let go of. It is not the shirt they cannot part with — it is the moment they wore it.
Letting go does not begin with throwing things away. It begins with looking — honestly, without flinching. The question "What does this remind me of?" weighs far more than "Do I still need this?" The first is asked of the heart; the second, of the wardrobe. Then something shifts. A person realizes they can no longer carry certain things. So they ask themselves: is it possible to let go? Quietly, without ceremony, without telling anyone, they try to cut the tie.
Coming across a box of a dead person's belongings lands on the chest like a sharp pain.
With someone's passing, objects become the most faithful, most merciless witnesses to being left behind. Carrying them is like keeping in your pocket a ticket for a journey that leads nowhere. They are a silent scream that time has stopped at that point.
To touch that object is really an attempt to touch a hand that no longer exists. It keeps the soul suspended in a permanent "limbo of grief." Every object kept is a memory box that postpones the goodbye while keeping the pain fresh.
The heaviest burden is the fear that letting go of the object will count as "betrayal." People believe that giving away that cardigan, that wallet, those glasses would betray the one who is gone. But the real weight is trapping the departed's spirit inside an object, alongside your own.
You know that object will remain a rope tying you to the wreckage of the past…
Trying not to meet its gaze, cramming an entire lifetime's grief into a bag in a single motion.
And in that moment, fleeing from even a second's thought, desperately trying to seal the bags shut in one motion without looking at them…
It is not like some vast emptiness; you feel a single breath make your ribcage groan...
If I stop, if I look, the fear of never being able to run again engulfs your entire being.
In letting go of these burdens, a person actually draws closer to themselves. Because the heaviest burden left behind, the thing that remains, is you. In the end, you are left only with the sum of yourself. Within that sum, a new equation appears — diminished, worn down, but truer. And inside that sum, a new equation takes shape. You are the unknown. You are also what must be solved.
The views expressed here are the author's own; they may or may not coincide with the editorial line of Rastinews. Rastinews is a free platform open to differing views.