The Invisible Weight of “Moving Forward” Press enter or click to view image in full size Photo by Andy Mai on Unsplash I am nearing forty, single, and imperfect — yet, I am complete, maybe. I have become good at pretending that nothing is wrong. That day when I cried until it was hard to breathe, the day when I desperately wanted, at the very least, to be told, “That must have been painful.” The day my mother said to me, “I don’t know what I should say.” I shouldn’t have called. I only wanted a bandage, and yet I heard the sound of something slamming shut. I even lost the will to call a friend. “Loneliness” can take away all of one’s energy. The fact that no one can understand me. A perfect sheet of ice — beautiful, cold, and stretching so far that you can see into the distance. I am standing on one small fragment that has been cut off, balancing on one foot. The ice keeps drifting out to sea, and the fractured pieces move farther and farther away from me. All in order to construct a perfect world.…