The Weight in the Middle
A Narrative Essay
Sometimes I describe myself as a tennis ball — bouncing between people, roles, needs, crises — but that was always the soft version of the truth. A metaphor that made the chaos sound almost playful. This one is better. Truer. Heavier.
It’s the weight. The weight on my shoulders. The weight I carry. The weight I’ve always carried. The weight of everyone else. And the weight of me.
My whole adult life, I’ve been sitting on a scale — the old‑fashioned kind, the ones they used to have in sweet shops. A scale with two pans that tip depending on where the weight falls. A scale that looks balanced from a distance but never truly is.
On one side: my husband. On the other side: my children.
As time went on, the “children” side grew heavier — partners, grandchildren, the dog, more needs, more life, more emotional gravity. That side became a whole ecosystem, a living, breathing constellation of people who needed me, called for me, leaned on me. A world that expanded without asking permission.
My husband’s side stayed the same shape but filled itself with his world: the high‑powered job, the hobbies that were never small — the rockstar era, the studio engineer, the Scalextric era, the swimmer, the mountain biker, the award‑winning brewer, the marathon runner. His time was always full. His identity always intact. He never pretended to be anything he wasn’t.
And me? I was the tiny metal weight in the middle. The pivot. The hinge. The thing that rocks back and forth trying to keep both sides steady.
I didn’t realise how much I was compensating — shifting, adjusting, absorbing, smoothing, carrying — until I broke. Until the scale snapped. Until I couldn’t be the counterweight anymore.
Now I see why we came undone.
Because I was never meant to be the fulcrum for two entire worlds. Because I was always giving more to the side that needed me — the children, their children, the whole family web that pulls with love, urgency, crisis, and care. Because the left side — his side — only ever got what was left of me.
When our kids were little, he had half of me, but he wanted all of me. And when the grandchildren came, he had even less, because I was needed — by our grown children, by their children, by the lives that kept expanding and multiplying around me.
He wanted me, and a sprinkling of children. But like butter, I was spread too thin — stretched across generations, across needs, across emotional emergencies and everyday life.
And now he wants his side alone. And mine — who knows. My side is a constellation, a tangle, a tribe, a responsibility, a love, a weight. His side is singular. Mine is plural.
And I was never built to be the pivot between “one” and “everyone.”
Now I sit in the middle differently. Not as the weight that keeps everyone balanced. Not as the quiet mechanism holding two worlds in place. But as a person choosing where I place myself — left or right — unless I’m pulled to the right, which is where I want to be. Where I’m needed. Where my heart naturally leans.
This is the truth of it: I was never the tennis ball. I was the weight in the middle, trying to keep a life balanced that was never built for one person to hold.
And now, finally, I’m learning to put myself down somewhere that doesn’t break me.
Footnote (written years earlier, during the fall‑down phase of perimenopause and ND burnout)
I didn’t know what was happening to me then. I only knew I was disappearing. And that i had dropped all my metaphorical juggling balls. I didn’t know it was ND burnout. I didn’t know it was the cost of being the weight in the middle for too long. I only knew I couldn’t keep doing it, and I didn’t know how to stop.
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