Pain Relief

This piece was originally posted on Substack on May 25, 2023.

I am carrying what I have always carried.

I hoped that it would be as simple as dropping my burden down the hill of Golgotha.

Alas, John Bunyan was a simpleton.

Life is not as easy as metaphors about the divide between good and evil.

The weight of the world on my shoulders wasn’t my sin.

It wasn’t something that required confessing my wrongdoings to my parents.

It was deeper, more complex.

Realizing life is more complex than that was more relieving anyway.