The people of the world are tired.
Through year after year of being tired, I think I’ve concluded that the old ‘Have you tried turning it off and back on again?’ trick has a human equivalent.
‘Go home and sleep, it’ll be better in the morning.’
Sleeping doesn’t solve the problem, it just postpones the solution for as long as you sleep, and if it really ever was a problem, you won’t be rested. You’ll panic yourself into exhaustion over the fact there’s not as much time as before. The clock ticks down your sanity as you scramble to gather your papers and cram them into the suitcase your great grandfather bought used, trying your best to buckle a belt and eat toast at the same time. You’ll drop your food but by god you won’t drop that suitcase because at that moment it isn’t about your health. It’s your work. Shoving past people on the bus, you couldn’t care less about the angry stares or the woman cursing at you. You just need a seat so the damned bus will move and you can go, try to beat that deadline by the one second it’ll take to feel accomplished.
That moment -- analyze the moment where the bread slipped from your hand and you decided it wasn’t important, shook your head and jumped that first stair onto the bus..
That was the moment where you subconsciously decided that you didn’t need to take care of yourself. Slowly, it would melt into you sitting up all night, frantically shuffling papers and scratching down numbers and letters that slipped your delirious thoughts. You’re working for a future and destroying the present, teeth worn down from gritting your jaw in anticipation, eyes dark enough to close forever as they glance from you to the paper and shake their head, hand it back and apologize.
You’ve forgotten how to yawn and learned how to sleep with your eyes open, pupils glazed over like sheets of ice on the road that killed him -- your only son. He could have grown to be something, but he was too tired to keep driving that night, eyelids pulled down by the last remains of an unforgettable night.
People are tired of walking down empty hallways and trying to interpret the glass paintings we call windows, moving faster than the fatigue will let us process. It takes you minutes sometimes to realize it’s raining, minutes to realize you ran that stoplight and the pretty blue lights in the corner of your eye, the pain of your forehead on a wet sheet of metal was the deputy trying to arrest you for speeding, failing to do his job because a tree stopped you first.
There comes a time, though, when you feel wide awake, unable to stop moving or thinking or staring at the ceiling because you know at any moment something is going to go wrong and then it-
It does. The movement you’ve been longing for all that time is a jump and then you freeze, eyes cast over to the phone before shaky hands pick up and you set it to your ear. You’re so awake that you can’t see, and for once a hush goes through your head at the soft spoken words of the same nurse who told you she’d take care of him.
You’re tired of the lies, you’re tired of the disappointment. You’re tired of that one person who you loved with everything you had and despite trying to make yourself better they feared you because you didn’t know how to talk and you didn’t know how to act but you hoped ‘Dear God, let them love me.’
And they didn’t because they were tired themselves. They were tired of worrying, they were tired of making their lips move, they were tired of existing.
They aren’t alone, but they don’t realize that because when you’ve reached that level of exhaustion, words become a dull blur and you feel like you have a headache because every sound makes you want to close your eyes and just sleep forever, or at least sleep until it’s gone. You don’t want to be touched, you don’t want to be held, you don’t want anybody to acknowledge you’re alive.
You want to disappear as if you’ve fallen asleep in the back of a party, the world too preoccupied in their lives to notice.
gummygunk
turnnoffyourmind
stormborns
blakekathryn
prguitarman
