No. Ballast is only applied from one edition of Competitions to the next — it’s not permanent.
For example, if you finish edition 18 of Competitions in the top-50 and decide to skip edition 19, when you play edition 20, your Ballast will be 0.
If you hover over your Ballast balloon, you’ll see a small popup that contains your Ballast number, but also “What’s this?” written in blue. Click on it, and you’ll get all the info 🙂