A grip that never loosened, even knowing better

What you were looking at

What moved you about Shinji was not weakness. Read it as weakness and the scene turns into a plain defeat, which is not the feeling you actually remember carrying out of it.

What Shinji was holding could have been put down. There was a way to let go of it, and maybe someone it could have gone to. They did not let go, and not out of some oversized sense of duty - they had already worked out that if they let go, no one else would pick it up. Being crushed by it is proof that they had worked that out correctly.

And what moved you was not the sound of the break itself. It was that the hands stayed on it right up until the break. And that something which had been running entirely on the inside for so long finally turned outward, toward another person - the first time asking for help pointed anywhere at all.

Which means what you were watching was not the limit. It was the moment the limit got admitted, and the direction everything turned in once it was.

And where that leaves you now

One remembered picture gets added here. What you picked was Shinji's eyes at the exact moment they understood it was too much. That view only exists from inside the person carrying it.

You are probably someone who does everything yourself first too. "Faster to do it myself" is the reason you give out loud, but underneath it you can already picture the other person not moving if you asked - so you do not ask, and skip straight to doing it.

Something worth checking. When did you last ask someone for something? If nothing comes to mind quickly, was your "I'm fine" a decision - or a habit?