When the Weight Is Familiar
When you’re trusted to hold everything together—but not trusted to be held.
An Art of Drinking Water reflection · 5 minute read
It often starts the same way.
You walk into a room and are mistaken for support.
Not because of what you said.
Not because of how you carry yourself.
But because authority wasn’t imagined to look like you.
You correct it quietly.
Or you don’t.
Because sometimes it feels easier to do the work
than to insist on being seen doing it.
So you adjust.
You code-switch—not once, but constantly.
Tone.
Cadence.
Language.
You learn which version of yourself is safest in which space.
You become fluent in translation.
Not because you lack authenticity,
but because authenticity has a cost.
Over time, the fatigue sets in.
Not from the work itself—
but from managing perception while carrying responsibility.
And still, you stay loyal.
You show up early.
You stay late.
You protect systems that do not protect you back.
You defend decisions you didn’t make.
Absorb consequences you didn’t cause.
Carry weight that was never evenly distributed.
You tell yourself this is professionalism.
That endurance will be noticed.
That loyalty will be returned.
But there comes a moment—quiet, unmistakable—
when you realize you are trusted to hold things together
but not trusted to be held.
That realization changes you.
Water taught me something here.
Water doesn’t code-switch.
It doesn’t justify its presence.
And it doesn’t stay loyal to containers that crack and blame the leak.
It flows where it is allowed to move freely.
It leaves spaces that drain it without replenishment.
That leaving isn’t betrayal.
It’s truth.
If you’ve been mistaken for support when you were leadership,
if you’ve edited yourself into exhaustion,
if you’ve been loyal without protection—
know this:
You were not confused about your worth.
You were navigating gravity.
And gravity always reveals itself eventually.
Like water responding honestly to the pull beneath it,
you are allowed to choose environments
that recognize your depth
without requiring your disappearance.
That choice is not abandonment.
It is alignment.
And alignment, finally,
is where the work becomes lighter.