I’ve learned in my physics lessons that there is such a thing as atmospheric pressure. It’s said that every second of our existence, there is about 1,000kg of air exerted over the area of our individual bodies, which is to say that you are constantly pressed down upon by the weight of a small car. They tell me that the outside of us and the inside of us must maintain a balance. Internal and external. The moment this delicate balance is tipped, we feel it. Yet, we carry all this weight on us as easily as if it were just…air.
I’m not a Catholic any more but I did go for a couple of Catholic youth camps. Each time, we would have to go through these “Spiritual Cleansings”. These are nights famed as the nights where everyone cries the living shit out of themselves. The nights when you’re supposed to be touched by the Holy Spirit and cleansed of your sins.
In one of these cleansings, they had a little skit prepared for us. They brought this guy up to the very front and told us “This is John, still in his mother’s womb. When he was delivered into the hands of some strange doctor, his father didn’t want him. And so he was born with a weight on his shoulders.”
John proceeds to shoulder a huge, heavy backpack.
"Growing up, his mother was always crying.“ As they tell us this, John picks a suitcase off the floor.
"His classmates always felt that he was an outsider.”
He picks up yet another suitcase.
They go on describing his miseries, his trials and tribulations till we no longer see the man, just a Christmas tree of suitcases and bags. An over-packed runaway child. A walking junkyard.
Eventually, someone else walks into this sad little scene. Who else but the one and only Jesus? He comes over sprouting lines like “It’s okay, John. You can give that to me now.”
Forgive me when I say this, for the only word I can use to describe the scene I saw taking place in front of me is “prestidigitation”. He makes a great show of plucking out each suitcase, each bag, saying beautiful things like “You are forgiven” and “I can ease your pain”.
We watch this sad little man shrugging off all the burdens he had collected for a lifetime and we get all teary inside. All around me are my friends, crying and moaning and letting go of their own baggage.
They’re playing Lifehouse in the background like any good and proper Christian camp should and they ask us “What are your burdens? What are the crosses you bear?”
I think to myself “You self absorbed, self righteous bitch.”
I have always felt the weight of a planet on my shoulders and I still do. I see my self as a regular Atlas. I have worn my misery with pride. I wear them like boyscout badges on a sash.
When my grandfather died, I seated my mothers grief on my shoulder. Every time my father smoked a cigarette, I bore another bruise on my shrunken lungs. Every cut on my sisters thighs appears on mine. Every time my best friend pinches her stomach, I put on an imaginary fat suit and tell the mirror she is hideous.
I am the head of a parody church that preaches the virtues of vanity and jerking off. Weave me a crown of thorns for I am Jesus fucking Christ and I die every day for your sins.
I sit there, knees to my chest, waiting like the sinner I am for this savior I claimed myself to be to come and take me. To save me. To enlighten me.
He never does.
The camp facilitators nod knowingly as they watch me weep, thinking that some hot tongues of flame have touched my inner core and cleansed me of my travesty. They put their holy hands on me, as if I didn’t carry enough.
Sometimes, I wish I had that same religious zeal. In a different life, I believed in a religion and a kind God and that the world is a wish granting factory. How easy life must be for those who believe in something.
I’ve learned that every second of our lives, atmospheric pressure weighs us down onto the earth and we don’t even notice it. Well, I’ve noticed it, and fuck if it doesn’t crush me…
