It’s far too easy to carry around the burdens of life. I see it happen all the time. I see people, laden with their past, struggling to continue.
A man I once met up on level designation 82 told me that he had nightmares. He had not had a good life. Abandoned by his parents, shunned by society, refused any sort of home until he reached adulthood, where he started to make it on his own. He started to realise that his life had to be what he made of it, otherwise what was the point.
And I agreed with that assessment. But he didn’t. Not in his heart of hearts. Although he talked the talk, it seems he did not walk the walk, and he was found the next day swinging from a rafter. Luckily they found him in time. With the right people around him, he’ll escape the burdens of his past.
Somtimes the burden is easier to see than others. The man I met once lived with invisible burdens, but after his attempt, he was left with very prominent marks on his neck, which became this reminder of what he had fought against. Sometimes that can spur people on, like with the man I met, and sometimes this can force them further under the riptide.
The Burned Man is a peculiar case, because he feels that burden achingly, every day. He carries the burden physically, in the form of the scarring on his skin, or what is left of it. The kind of burden that physically hurts him to carry, it reminds him of his losses each time he moves a muscle, or walks a step. It certainly reminds him each time he steps in that ring.
But he can get respite from that. When he is still, or sleeping, he can escape the physical burden of his condition.
But one thing that he can’t escape is that mental burden. He can rest still, but he can still remember. He can sleep, but he can still dream. And all that time, the death of his family, and his continued life, weigh heavy on him like the heaviest of burdens.
The question for The Burned Man is whether he can carry that burden, and overcome it, or whether it will weigh him down and drag him under the riptide, like so many I’ve seen before. And I can’t answer that question for him. The truth is we all have a burden to bear, but when your BURDEN is BURNED into your very being, like his, well maybe even the watery riptide can’t even save you.
Maybe your burden is too heavy even for your own death. I see that in your eyes that it’s a burden that will only be lessened by vengeance.
But that is even more dangerous, because it’s driven by pure emotion, and no amount of logic can save you.
Vengeance is the true riptide pulling you under. But only when you realise that you will not find the release to your burden through that vengeance, will you truly be able to stop feeling that weight around your shoulders.