No One Can Read This Except For Tate Okay
Tatum Ryland
English Essay – The Intangible and Tangible In MeÂ
Soldiers at war carry artillery, workers in the city carry their tools, and people every day carry plenty that is visible to everyone. But when it comes to emotions, feelings, and destiny, no one can see how much that weighs, and those are what we as people judge to be most important. It’s easily found that the intangible weight is almost always heavier than any other baggage we might carry. The act of carrying our emotions and destiny can be literally heavy on a person and bring them down. While having a distracted mind can actually affect our faculty to discern good from the bad. In the end, it is that which is intangible that can provide to be the worst and unsafe for us to carry.
The intangible weight can be carried by anyone in any form or any matter. Most people carry some type of intangible weight with them. The degrees of intangible weight vary. Some carry it obviously, and it is heavy, and harrowing, and it will literally hold them down or back. But some carry it lightly, distracting themselves from it menially and keeping it out of their social lives, so no one knows. I’ve yet to meet a person without intangible weight; whether it be personal issues, or issues brought upon them, they carry it with them wherever they may go.
I myself carry intangible weight. I’d like to say I carry it well, and I don’t let it get to me, but it on occasion will sneak up on me and become a heavy, heavy burden. At first glance, if you were to look at me you wouldn’t know that I carry the memories of people I loved who are now gone with me. Nor would you know that I carry my hope to one reach all of my goals. But most importantly, you wouldn’t know that every day, I drag myself out of bed in the morning knowing I will face another day with a family I can’t stand, in a home I’m aching to rid myself from, while trying my damnedest to beat a manic depression that can’t make up it’s mind or my own. You wouldn’t know that the depression I live with once wasn’t so bad, but the person I found that solace in broke a promise, and with it my heart and trust. And with my heart and trust in people shattered, my depression came back full force. Manic, horrible, rearing it’s ugly intangible head and laughing at me as I tried to push it away. No, tangibly, you wouldn’t know me from Eve. Tangibly, you wouldn’t know me—or anyone, it’s really everything inside that makes me who I am. All the things no one can see that make me a person.
 While I carry memories, hopes, dreams, and depression with me, I also carry tangible things with me. Things like the apple locket my best friend gave me the Christmas before she went away to college, or my brother’s dog tags while he’s away at sea, or the scars from my war with myself. I carry these things with me because of the intangible weight behind them. The tarnished silver locket holds good memories of my best friend and I, and it brings me peace. It reminds me of better times, petty fights that end quickly and in long hugs. Of an unconditional, platonic love that a parent should give, but mine never have, so I found it in someone who cared. My brother’s dog tags do the same, because honestly, my brother is my hero. He survived eighteen years under our mother’s rule and he entered the Coast Guard. He’s always been there for me when I needed him, and now he’s there for all of us. Serving his country, protecting us, he achieved his goals. I’m proud to call him my brother. We were going to have to get to my scars eventually, so here it is; the scars from my personal war, the scars that I wear on my body because they’re not going anywhere.
My scars are the most tangible things about me, and if you look hard enough, or at all, you can see them. Pale and evident against my skin, they exist with and against and on me. I carry them with me like I carry the locket or dog tags, but unlike the locket and dog tags, when it comes time to face society I cannot take my scars off. They remain. They will always remain, and they will always have an intangible meaning behind them. The intangible meaning behind why I carry them, why I care about them, why they are so wholesomely important to me, and why I will never be able to get rid of them.
While carrying the tangible with me, I carry the intangible. I carry a well-loved, worn and tarnished silver locket in the shape of an apple. The locket carries with it a sense of love and jubilation, and as a by-law, I do too. Love that I would not have survived my worst times without, and jubilation knowing that I will feel that gentle, meaningful love again soon. I carry a pair of dog tags with me for months on end. The dog tags carry feelings of hope and faith with them. A hope for the owner to come back, and faith that he will. I carry with me my scars. They rest on my body comfortably, placed where they belong, and where they don’t. And they carry a sense of accomplishment with them; a sense of rightful survival. Getting through something so incredibly, chokingly difficult and winning. I won. Do you understand that? Yes, I have scars, but I am not ashamed of them. They are mine and I carry them and wear them with intangible pride. I carry all of my tangible things with pride. I love them because they are mine. Tangible, and meaningful, and mine.
The whole point behind this is that, in the end, we all carry intangible and tangible things/items/creations, but if it weren’t for the intangible, tangible would not exist. Intangible means, by it’s second definition, difficult or impossible to define or understand. Something that is unable to be touched, or grasped; in using applied logic, one can come to the decision that intangibility is an idea. To be intangible is to be an idea. What’s the best way to bring out an idea? Make it into something you can touch, feel, or grasp. Make it tangible. Soldiers carry artillery because it both saves their lives and means they have a chance of surviving. Workers carry their tools because it shows what they do, but also because it means they have some importance, and the tangible tools show that. I carry a locket and dog tags because they mean something important and intangible to me. Hope. Love. Faith. Accomplishment. Survival. These obviously here and evident things are only here because of their intangibility. We cannot have tangible without the intangible. They are intertwined and constant in each other. Like two sides of the same coin, you cannot have one without the other.
