Balsom

“The Weight I Carry”

—A reflection of Harvey Kliever, and of the man behind him.

They say grief is love with nowhere to go, but that’s a lie. Grief goes somewhere—it digs in. It festers. It hollows you out until you’re more memory than man, more regret than breath.

Harvey Kliever didn’t die when he lost June. He didn’t even die when he found out she was carrying their child. No—Harvey died when he chose to stop feeling. When he stared at the barrel, at the lake, at the void and said, “Enough.”

But grief doesn’t let you go that easy. Not when it’s tied to something as pure as love unfinished. And the Hollow—godless, watching, waiting—saw that moment and whispered: “If you won’t carry her, then you’ll carry this.”

So he did. For years. He didn’t bleed. He didn’t age. He just endured. Wandering through ash and alley smoke, solving crimes no one else would touch, saving people he’d never see again—not out of kindness, but out of penance.

Because immortality wasn’t his curse. It was his punishment. He thought he was saving others. But the truth? Every life he touched was a breadcrumb trail back to the part of him he buried with June. The part that felt. That ached. That loved.

Then came Betty. All sharp edges and shattered glass, surviving the same storm in a different bottle. And then CeeCee—feral and bright, a child made of scars and second chances. And for the first time in forever, Harvey stopped counting how many nights he’d lived… and started counting how many people he couldn’t lose.

And when the moment came—when the Harvester stood in front of them and the only path forward led into the dark—Harvey didn’t flinch. Because the man who once begged to die finally found a reason to earn it. He didn’t die to escape. He died because he’d finally learned how to live.

So what does that say about me? Me, the man behind the typewriter. The one who also knows what it feels like to want out. The one who fought that same whisper in the dark that said, “No one would miss you.”

But instead of pulling the trigger, I picked up a pen.

Instead of ending my story, I rewrote it.

I created Harvey not as a fantasy… but as a confession.

I gave my grief a name. I gave it a trench coat and a heavy heart. I walked him through hell so others wouldn’t have to go alone. Because just like him, I learned that pain doesn’t disappear. It transforms. And now, every time someone reads my words—every time someone sees a piece of themselves in my broken heroes—I’m pushing back the void. Not by pretending to be okay but by fighting anyway.

I am not hollow. I am full—of truth, of ache, of story. And my voice? I hope it's entertaining you, but truthfully, I pray it's also helping you. Keep your story going.

— Balsom