The Weight You Were Never Meant to Carry

Guilt is a quiet thing. It doesn’t shout—it just lingers, pressing down on your chest, settling into the spaces between your thoughts.

Maybe you could have done more.

Maybe you could have been better.

Maybe—just maybe—this is somehow your fault.

You replay the past, looking for the moment you failed. Searching for the crack where everything started to break. And when you find it—real or imagined—you hold it like proof. See? This is why things are the way they are. This is why they’re hurting. This is why I can’t let it go.

But here’s the truth: Life is bigger than one moment, one person, one cause.

People are shaped by so much more than just us. Their choices, their wounds, their battles—we are only a small part of their story. Even if we made mistakes (because who hasn’t?), we are not the sole authors of someone else’s pain.

So why do we keep punishing ourselves?

Maybe it’s because taking the blame feels safer than admitting we can’t fix it. Because if it’s our fault, then maybe—just maybe—we can undo it. We can rewrite the past. We can save them.

But we can’t.

What’s done is done. What’s broken can only be rebuilt from the inside. And that’s a journey only they can choose.

So this is your permission to let go.

Not because you don’t care.

Not because it doesn’t matter.

But because carrying a weight that was never yours won’t make anything right.

You are allowed to be free.