The Weight of Existing | Zen by Wren

There are seasons of life when existing itself feels like labor. Not the productive kind of labor, not the kind that builds or creates, but a dull, obligatory effort — like clocking into a job you never applied for and can’t resign from. In these times, days do not unfold with purpose; they simply pass, one after another, as if time were something to endure rather than inhabit. You wake up, you move through routines, you attempt the tasks expected of you, and yet it all feels like motion without meaning. Life becomes a series of gestures meant to keep you afloat in a world that no longer feels like it has room for you.

There are moments — sometimes long stretches — when I wonder why I’m here at all. I was raised to believe that some higher Creator showed me my life before I was born, that I must have seen something worth choosing - something worth staying for. But right now, I can’t see it. Life doesn’t feel like a gift; it feels like a burden I didn’t agree to carry. I spend my days trying to stay busy, trying to distract myself from the heaviness that follows me everywhere. It’s as if I’m constantly waiting, moving from one day to the next, but not out of excitement or hope — more like I’m just waiting to be farther along in the timeline, so I'm closer to being done for good.

People tell me to chase dreams, to travel, to do the things that are supposed to make life feel meaningful. But when the inside feels empty, those things don’t land. I can do them, sure — sometimes they even pass the time — but they don’t answer the bigger ache. They don’t explain why everything requires so much effort just to maintain the basics of survival: brushing your teeth, doing laundry, paying bills, meeting expectations. It feels like life demands endless energy for tasks that never stop and rarely feel worth it. Life feels like a chore and sometimes it feels like there are only a handful of days each year that offer even a flicker of warmth, and it’s hard to convince myself that those moments are enough to justify the weight of everything else.

There are days when hopelessness whispers its darkest questions, and it scares me because the pain gets so heavy that I don’t know what to do with it. And yet, I stay. Not because life feels easy or joyful, but because I know my pain would become someone else’s if I left — and I can’t put that weight on the people I love and care about. So I keep going, even on the days when I don’t understand why. I keep moving, even when the meaning feels blurred. I keep holding on, even when holding on feels like its own exhausting job. I feel trapped between my exhaustion and my empathy. One part of me wants to keep building my success as an entrepreneur — I already run three businesses, and I want to be fully self-employed and create the life I’ve always dreamed of. But another part of me, a part that feels even heavier, wants to withdraw completely: to deactivate all my accounts, cut off contact with everyone, and just completely disappear.

This emotional exhaustion isn’t loud. It doesn’t always come with dramatic breakdowns or outward signs of distress. Instead, it can appear as a quiet heaviness — a sense that every day is just another item to check off a list you never wanted. The things that once brought warmth or joy feel distant, not because they have disappeared, but because something inside has dimmed. Moments of happiness still come, sometimes unexpectedly, but they land softly, as if muffled by a thick layer of indifference. They don’t feel like enough to justify the effort it takes to keep going. They flicker in the shadows of a larger, more persistent emptiness.

When life feels like this, the world can appear strangely hollow. You can look around and see people moving forward — pursuing goals, making plans, finding connection — and feel somehow disconnected from that rhythm. It’s not jealousy and not quite sadness; it’s more like watching a distant play through thick glass. You go through the motions because not doing so would cause questions or consequences, but inside, there is a constant sense of being out of place, as though you are living someone else’s script and waiting for an exit you’re not sure exists.

Perhaps the hardest part of this experience is the feeling of being trapped. There is the pressure to keep going, to meet expectations, to hold yourself together simply because that is what you’re “supposed” to do. Yet beneath that pressure lies a quieter truth: you’re tired. Not the kind of tired that sleep fixes, but the kind that seeps into your bones and your thoughts, the kind that makes the idea of tomorrow feel overwhelming. It’s a fatigue of the spirit, an exhaustion that whispers questions about meaning and worth, questions that rarely have easy answers when you’re hurting.

Still, even within this heavy landscape, there is something important to acknowledge: these feelings, as consuming as they are, are not signs of failure. They are signs of pain. They are signals that something within you needs attention, compassion, or change — not judgment. Feeling like life is a chore doesn’t mean life truly is meaningless; it means the weight you are carrying has become too much for one person to hold alone. And it means you deserve support, not silence.

This kind of emptiness can make it hard to imagine things getting better, but the very fact that I can describe these feelings shows a voice within me that still wants to be heard. A part of me is still reaching outward, trying to make sense of what feels unbearable. That reaching matters. It is, in its own quiet way, a form of strength — the kind that doesn’t look heroic, but keeps me connected to the possibility of something different from the pain I feel right now.

Life doesn’t always offer easy answers, and it does not always feel worth the effort. But the sense of pointlessness I'm experiencing is not the whole of me, nor the whole of my  future. It is a chapter — a difficult, heavy chapter — in a story that is still unfolding. And even if I can’t feel it today, my story is not finished, as much as I want it to be.

Much love,

Wren 𓅫

Founder, Zen by Wren