Carrying Oneself

Evening had fallen. The bag carried on the shoulder all day was finally left by the door. The key turned, shoes were removed, and the weight of the day seemed to slowly drain away. But something strange was happening: the bag could be placed on the floor, the coat hung on a hook, the bags carried in hand could be set down. Many burdens of the day could somehow be left behind. Yet there were things that could not be left outside the door. They entered the home with you. Quietly. Every day. Sometimes you did not even notice it.

Much of life seems to be spent carrying things: possessions, responsibilities, plans, tasks. Things are constantly moved from one place to another. Suitcases are dragged through stations, boxes are carried, bags leave marks on shoulders. But as the years pass, I begin to think that these are not your true burdens. Because the heaviest things are often invisible. No one carries them in their hands. No one leaves them anywhere. And often, you only notice their weight in a long silence.

Perhaps one of the things a person does throughout life is carry their past selves with them.

A fear from childhood, a sentence spoken years ago, a shame you thought you had forgotten, an old dream. Sometimes you believe these things are behind you, left in the past. But then, in an unexpected moment—while walking down a street, looking at an old photograph, or catching a familiar scent—you realize they are still alive somewhere inside you.

Because the past is rarely something that stands behind you. It is also something that walks beside you.

I like to watch people’s suitcases at train stations. Some are small, others large. Some seem prepared for just a few days, others carry the mark of a long journey. But as I observe them, I always think the same thing: you can change cities, but you carry yourself with you. You can move to a new home, travel to another country, rebuild your life. Yet within all of this, you carry the same gaze, the same memories, the same wounds, the same hopes. Perhaps that is why some escapes do not lighten you. Because the destination changes, but the traveler remains the same.

The strange thing is that sometimes people grow weary not from carrying others, but from carrying themselves. Waking up every day to the same face, wandering within the same mind, encountering the same questions in different forms. Many people have perhaps wished at certain points in life to be someone else: someone who made different choices, someone with greater courage, someone with a different past. But no matter how far you run, you eventually sit again at the same table, look again into the same mirror, confront the same inner voice.

Perhaps that is why there is such a thing as becoming a stranger to yourself. Sometimes you feel like a guest in your own life. You look at old photographs and recognize the person in them, yet cannot fully remember them. You cannot understand why things you once cherished now seem so distant. You know you are the same person, yet you do not feel like the same person. Because what you carry through the years is not only memories; it is change itself. As you walk, you transform. And as you transform, you continue carrying pieces you thought you had left behind.

Some burdens are more than weight. You do not want to let them go. Like an old letter. Like a faded photograph. Like a dream formed in childhood. Because some of the things that tire you are also the things that make you who you are. Resentments sometimes become character. Waiting becomes patience. Losses become understanding. You are shaped a little by everything you carry. Therefore, letting go of some burdens feels like giving up part of yourself.

I once thought of this while walking across a bridge. How many times does a person change over a lifetime? How many different people do they become? And where do all those former selves go? Perhaps they go nowhere. Perhaps they simply retreat into quieter rooms within. Our childhood, our youth, our fears, our ambitions… all of them remain with us in some way. Sometimes visible, sometimes hidden. But they never disappear entirely.

What is it that a person carries with them the most?

When leaving a city, do they carry what they packed in their suitcase?

Or the feelings they had while living in that city?

When leaving a home, do they carry the things they gathered?

Or the years they left behind in that home? There are no definitive answers to these questions. But sometimes, at the end of a long walk, when you feel exhaustion on your shoulders even though there is no actual weight, it tells you something else. Perhaps what we truly carry is not our experiences themselves, but the imprints they leave within us.

And perhaps growing up is partly about this: not about completely freeing yourself from burdens, but about learning to walk with them. Not about throwing the past off your back, but about stopping the fight with it. Not about changing yourself, but about learning to live alongside your changed selves .

Because the longest journey a person ever makes is perhaps not from one city to another, nor the final stop of a train, nor a distance marked on a map. The true journey is continuing to walk with yourself despite all your changes. And perhaps that is why, when you look back years later, among all the things you carried, the heaviest and most indispensable is your very self.