of Atlas at last

This is slightly embarrassing, but, when I was little, some of my favorite heroes were the Greek gods and goddesses and titans - the heroes of the ancients.

(I still haven't quite outgrown them...nor do I think I ever will)

Never mind that I knew they weren't real. They were mesmerizing, and I loved them. I love them still. I love the lessons I've learned from them, and the hours of companionship they provided..

Artemis.... Athena.... Theseus.... Achilles..... Persephone ....Hades.....

...Atlas.

Oh, Atlas. I particularly adored Atlas....Atlas, the titan....Atlas, the one who had no choice but to be strong....the one who silently carried the weight of worlds on his shoulders...

An old teacher of mine once looked into my soul and told me that I had the eyes of Atlas. The eyes of one too young too strong, who carries more than is her load to bear, and insists on bearing it alone.

And I have spent years dying to know his secret.

What is the secret of Atlas? How does one carry the weight of so much pain and sorrow and not drown - not break?

"Teach me how to be strong", I have begged God in vain, night after night, staring up at the stars, unable again to cope with the burdens I bear, both my own and others'. 

It sounds kind of silly to ask that of Him, 'teach me how to be strong on my own', but then again, depending on anyone - even God - has never been something I've been particularly good at. 

Atlas carried the weight of all that he had to, and he was strong. Why cannot I be the same way? Why can't I be stronger than breaking?  Because I am not strong, and I regularly break, and I will drain myself beyond the point of utter and absolute breaking, on no food and no sleep in order to prove to myself that I can handle it. 

I will be strong or die trying, and why, oh, why, can't I be strong on my own without coming apart at the seams?

I don't want to - I refuse to - be a burden, so I will bear others', hoping to find in them expiation for all the times I have unwittingly, needlessly, thoughtlessly burdened others with my own woes.

Sometimes I can manage it. But over the past few weeks, I've felt myself drowning. Between cyber bullying, my eating disorder flaring up, street harassment, fights both at work and at home, people telling me I was fat, and endless other drama coupled with people I felt responsible to support, I was trying to be strong for everyone else, and, as usually happens, there was no one to be strong for me.

And as for the ones who wanted to be there for me, I refused to let them, slipping back into old habits, lulling myself into numbness just to cope.

And Atlas, my role model of so many years, suddenly appeared in a song I had never heard before - a song that comes around and arrests me from line one.

'I will be strong, said Atlas to the earth'

(yes. yes. I will be strong, and I will not break, even when I am breaking, I will not break...)

but the song then takes a drastic turn.

'Atlas tried to carry all the weight of the world but it broke him like he knew it would.'

(oh)

'We're not gods of the universe, we are only human.
We're not gods of the universe, we are only human'

(i am still convinced that little bit is because God knew I needed to hear that twice)

'So let's stop trying to be superheroes now,
And freedom will come when you lay it down'

(lay it down? lay what down?.....lay.....wait...Atlas...lay it down.)

And it suddenly hits me, along with the tears.

Lay it down.

Lay down trying to be strong for everyone else all the time. Lay down the weight of the pain of all the worlds inside and around me. Lay down the mask, having to keep it all together.

Lay down starving into numbness beyond exhaustion so that their pain doesn't become yours - instead, take their pain and their burdens and all of your own, and lay them down at the feet of Jesus.

Because otherwise, I'll just keep repeating this cycle of overwhelming myself with other people's struggles, in addition to my own, and forgetting that Atlas' secret isn't that he stayed strong all the time - Atlas' secret is that he couldn't.

Atlas' secret is that he broke. 

And when Hercules came, he was beyond endurance

And the hero took pity on the Titan and built the Pillars of Hercules.*

And Atlas folded up his cloak.

And together they walked down the mountain of God.

'We could be glorious if we'd just give up being gods'

Freedom will come when you lay it down.

Lay it down.

<3

(*a small note: yes, I'm aware that most variations of the story of Hercules and Atlas depict Hercules as either having: a. built the pillars of Hercules on the way to fight Geryon in a different labor altogether.. or b. splitting the mountain Atlas, who has by this time been turned to stone by Perseus, thereby creating the pillars... but I stumbled across this version in an old old book many years ago, and it's my favorite)