Weight-Bearing

Foreword

When we are depressed or grieving, sometimes the best medicine is someone to just sit beside you and be a witness — a caring, empathetic presence. No matter what you or the people you love are going through, let Brian's beautifully vulnerable essay remind you that you are not alone. So many of us have struggled, too, and although it doesn't always feel that way, there are people who will stand with you.

In fact, every day, every hour of the year, someone who understands that life can be full of challenges and difficulties stands ready to listen to your story at the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline ( or call or text 988).

You don't have to bear this weight alone.

-Katie Shaw Thompson

Prologue

There’s an old story:

A man falls into a hole.
The walls are steep, the light is far above him, and he can’t get out.
A doctor walks by. The man shouts up, “Can you help me?”
The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down into the hole, and keeps walking.
Then a priest walks by. “Father, I’m stuck! Can you help me?”
The priest says a prayer, blesses him, and moves on.
Then a friend walks by.
“Hey! I’m stuck down here!”
The friend jumps into the hole.
The man panics: “What are you doing? Now we’re both down here!”
The friend says, “Yeah. But I’ve been here before.
And I know the way out.”

 

Part I – Amputation

What does it feel like to lose a piece of yourself?

Not some poetic notion of loss.

A real missing body part.

I lost my left leg in 2016.

And for a while, I told myself I was lucky.
Lucky it wasn’t an arm.
Lucky it wasn’t the right leg—I could still drive, still press the gas.
Lucky that prosthetics are good now. Efficient. Advanced.
Lucky to be alive.

That’s what you say. That’s what everyone says.
And so you nod, and you say it back.
Because if you stop to question it, the weight of what you’ve really lost might knock you down.

A leg is just a leg, right?
A meat platform. A weight-bearing tool.
Easy enough to replace. Strap in. Power on. Carry on.

But no one tells you what happens after.
No one tells you about the silence where your body used to be.
The ghost of movement you can still feel.
Or how exhausting it is to pretend you’re fine while quietly falling apart.

I kept a journal in those first months. May through August.
Every day, I tried to write something—anything—that sounded like progress.
I wanted to be the guy who bounced back. Who adapted. Who moved forward.
And I tried. I really did.

But when I read those pages now, I see it between the lines:
The disorientation. The strain. The slow fade of joy.
I see how hard I worked to make everyone else comfortable with my pain.
How I smiled through agony.
How I quietly began to disappear.

I never really stopped to grieve.
I didn’t give myself permission.
I told myself I was okay. That I could rebuild.
That I’d walk again, cook again, lead again.
That I could put everything back together just as it was.

But I couldn’t.

Because something was gone.
And not just the leg.
Something else.

Something I wouldn’t even begin to name until years later.
When the depression arrived.
When the panic came back.

What no one tells you—what I didn’t know until much later—is that you don’t just lose function.

You lose presence.

That man—the one who wrote in the journal, who held the line—I don’t resent him.
He got me through it.
He did what he had to do.

I told myself I’d rebuild. I’d put the pieces back together and move forward.

But grief doesn’t knock.
It waits.
And when it finally arrives, it lets itself in.

Part II – The Loss You Don’t See

After I learned how to walk again—awkward, cautious, determined—I thought I was putting my life back together.
I was doing what you’re supposed to do after trauma: move forward.
Adapt. Rebuild.
And for a while, I believed I was doing just that.

Then I stepped into my kitchen.

That’s when I realized something else was gone.

It wasn’t physical. I could stand, balance, pivot—even move around the stove with a little grace.

But every time I stood in front of the stove, a weight settled on my chest. My mind would go blank. My hands wouldn’t move. I’d stare down familiar recipes like they were written in a foreign tongue.

I was already learning how to be a person again. Cooking felt like a test I wasn’t ready to take. So I didn’t. I put the knives away. Let the pans gather dust. I stopped inviting people over. Stopped thinking about menus. Stopped imagining new dishes.

I couldn’t cook.

And if you’ve ever been to my house for dinner, you know how devastating that was.
Cooking wasn’t just a hobby. It was a language. A ritual. A way of loving.
My mother and grandmother taught me to cook like it was sacred.
One stained recipe card at a time. One seasoning instinct at a time.
It was how I cared for people. How I created. How I connected.
It was how I took care of myself, too.

There’s a moment I used to hold onto—a memory like a coin in my pocket.
My mom calling me for advice on how to prepare a meal.
She asked something small about seasoning, but what I heard was:
You’ve become the keeper of this tradition now. This belongs to you.

After the amputation, it slipped away.
I’d open the fridge, and close it again.
I’d try to write a menu and forget what food tasted like.
Everything I’d once done with ease felt alien.
It wasn’t that I didn’t remember how—it’s that something inside me refused to move.

It was anxiety. Quiet. Heavy. Relentless.
The kind that makes even the sacred feel suspicious.
It would whisper: What if you can’t do this anymore? What if you mess it up? What if the version of you that could cook—that could love like that—is gone?

So I stopped.

I put the knives away.
Let the pans gather dust.
Stopped hosting.
Stopped imagining new dishes.
Stopped sending the texts that said come over for dinner.

I stopped cooking.

Maybe no one noticed.
Or maybe they did, and they were kind enough not to say anything.
But from 2017 to 2020, that part of me—one of the most sacred parts—was gone.

And I didn’t know it yet, but that silence in the kitchen was just the first.
The first thing to go.

---

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Part III – The Echo of the Walls

When the pandemic hit, it felt like the world joined me in the house I’d already been trapped in.

Everyone else was discovering isolation for the first time.
I’d already done the dress rehearsal in 2016.

Quarantine reminded me—too vividly—of the year I couldn’t walk. Same walls. Same ceiling. Same slow, crawling hours. In 2016, I’d stared out the window wondering if I’d ever feel whole again. In 2020, I was doing it all over, only this time, I could walk—but everything else felt like it was falling apart.

In those years between 2016 and 2020, I was determined to give back—to the people and the city that had held me up. I joined several community boards, helped found a school, and threw myself into Elgin’s civic life like someone who believed he was past the worst of it.

I felt almost invulnerable. Like surviving the fall meant I was done falling.

I didn’t realize I was still in the middle of it.

By 2019 I felt as if I’d finally started to get my footing again – things were moving forward.
I’d landed another Canadian naval contract. I was investing in a friend’s car business.
There was momentum. Direction.
I could feel something resembling hope again.

And then it stopped.
Everything.
Again.

The shutdowns came fast. Projects vanished overnight.
And I watched it all dissolve like a mirage.
Suddenly, I wasn’t just stuck at home—I was right back in the echo of my post-surgery year.
Except now, I could walk.
And still, I felt just as powerless.

But there was one difference this time.

One whisper of light in the silence.

I could cook.

I don’t remember the exact day. I remember the feeling:
Standing in my kitchen.
Looking at the stove.
Feeling something stir.

You can still do this, a voice said.
Not triumphantly. Not even confidently. Just… present.

So I picked up my spatula.
I dusted off my All-Clad.
I fired up the range.

And slowly—one meal at a time—I found my way back to what I loved.
Not because I was better. Not because I was healed.
But because it was something.
Something I could touch. Control. Share.

We couldn’t gather inside. So we built something outside.

We expanded our backyard, strung lights, and found heat lamps, and folding chairs.
We fed each other from safe distances.
Passed plates like lifelines.
Let laughter rise into the cold air like smoke signals: We’re still here.

Cooking became my act of defiance.
Of connection.
Of staying human.

But here’s what I didn’t understand at the time:

You can return to a ritual and still be lost inside it.
You can feed people and still feel empty.
You can find the fire again—but still live in the dark.

Because while I was rebuilding my confidence in the kitchen,
my center was quietly crumbling.
Anxiety had just moved to a different room.
It had taken off the bandages and slipped into a clean apron.

And soon, I’d find myself in a deeper silence than before.
One not caused by injury.
But by the slow, unbearable weight of everything, I hadn’t grieved.

Part IV – The Engine Light Was On the Whole Time

Looking back now, I know I was depressed.
Deeply. Quietly. Dangerously.
But I was still functioning—well enough to fool most people, most days.

I hosted dinners. Took meetings. Sent emails. I cooked meals like everything was fine.
And in between?

I was evaporating.

That’s the brutal trick of high-functioning depression:
You show up just enough to keep the illusion intact.
You move through your day like a cutout of yourself.
You smile when someone compliments your strength—
And hate that they can’t tell you’re drowning.

You wear the mask so well, that even you forget what’s underneath it.

I told my therapist: The engine’s running, but I can’t get the car in gear.
Everything’s on. The dashboard lights are lit. There’s gas in the tank.
But the transmission won’t engage.
I’m pressing the clutch, shifting like I should—but nothing catches.
The engine just spins.
And I sit there—angry, exhausted, stalled in place.

Eventually, I stopped pretending.

I wasn’t at the wheel anymore.
I wasn’t trying to move.
I just stared at my life like I’d driven off a cliff—
like I’d had the whole of my life mapped out, full of forward momentum.
And now I was just watching smoke rise from the wreckage.

Because no one plans to lose a leg.
Or a business.
And then another one.

I used to measure time in progress. In growth. In hustle.
Now, I was measuring it in lost hours.

And the worst months were always January and February.
The gray, frozen stillness of those weeks was unbearable.
The lack of sunlight made me wilt.
It felt like eating without being able to taste.
All the chewing and chewing and chewing—going through all the motions, using all the energy—and getting nothing from it. No flavor. No nourishment. Just a mouthful of something shapeless and bland. And then the swallow—dry, heavy, unsatisfying.

Like you’d gone through the labor of living but missed the part where it was supposed to mean something.

Like you were surviving without actually being fed.

I’d blame this on Seasonal Affective Disorder. It would go away in March or April, right?

Each day, everyone would leave in the morning, and I’d sit on the couch—
not watching TV. Not reading. Not doing anything.
Just sitting. Dozing. Sometimes sleeping.
Sometimes not even aware the hours were passing.

I couldn’t move.
It felt like my limbs were made of concrete.
Like gravity had turned personal.

By mid-afternoon, panic would set in.
I’d snap to attention around 2 p.m. and try to get something—anything—done before anyone came home.
I was terrified someone would notice.
That they’d see how far I’d fallen.

The shame of depression was almost as bad as the depression.

So I hid it.
But hiding it didn’t make it disappear.
It just came out sideways.

In bursts of anger.
In silence, I couldn’t explain.
In the quiet corrosion of my relationships.

And each day, it got worse.

Each day, I thought about ending it.
Not dramatically. Not with a scene.
Just… not being here anymore.
Letting go.
Because I couldn’t imagine a way forward that didn’t feel impossible.

And I tried to write my way out of it.

I created blank documents with titles like “This I Believe,” thinking if I could just name something I believed in, it would be enough to spark something.
A sentence. A story. A self.

But nothing came.

I sat there staring at the blinking cursor, and for the first time in my life, I didn’t know what I believed.
I couldn’t remember who I was.

There are dozens of false starts still saved on my computer.
Stories with no endings. Essays with no spine.
All attempts to claw my way back to something real.
All abandoned.

I wasn't lazy.
I wasn't broken.
I was in pain.

The kind of pain that makes your bones feel like lead.
The kind that convinces you this is just who you are now.
A man watching time disappear while he tries to remember what it felt like to matter.

And I stayed there.
Stuck.
For almost two years.

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Epilogue: The Story Continues

There is no epilogue. That’s not where the story ends.

I did not write this for sympathy. Please—especially not that.
I’m not asking for support or encouragement.
This isn’t a cry for help.

It’s a mirror.

Because some of you know exactly what I’m talking about.

You’ve lost something—maybe a limb. Maybe someone you love.
Maybe a life you built and had stolen, wrecked, or broken beyond recognition.
You’ve lived through high-functioning depression.
You’ve lost your voice.
Forgotten who you are.
Reached for something solid and found only vapor.

I’ve been there.
I couldn’t cook. 
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t write.
I couldn't find my voice.

But I can now.

I’m not in that place anymore.
I’m writing this because I found my voice again.
Because I’ve written tens of thousands of words since then.
Because the act of writing this is healing.
Because I am still here. 
Still standing.

I wrote this not to be fixed but to let someone else know:
You’re not the only one.
You’re not broken beyond repair.
And even if it doesn’t feel like it yet—
There is after.

And I did find my way out.