I’m Tired In A Way That Dying Won’t Fix
988. Remember that number.
Disclaimer - Contains mentions of suicide.
--
I haven't earned the right to feel this way.
I'm too fortunate. Enriched. Blessed with a good life.
I've known the suicidal. Beautiful and tragic in their own ways each, a mind bent by the ever consuming defeat of self-destruction. I've never known the ones who succumbed, only those who maintained their struggle. In that merit, my fortune parades again.
Whatever your concept of nirvana or resurrection is, rest assured that I'm not even sure that cracking jokes at the face of my own mortality for real next time will carry any weight, consequence, or solution.
So it goes, said the schizo.
The problems don't go away with my expiry, they just fall out of my court. Spill over to friends and family and father. Life may go on without me, but that doesn't make it any easier for anyone else.
So I will bear them, for they will persist until I slay them.
If I am to be ignored, let it not be for my mania or overload, but for that I retreat of my own volition, to rest.
I haven't earned the right to complain.
I'm not gaslit or repressed or told otherwise. Hardworking, financially stable family. A childhood of diet bullying. Extracurricular activities I was signed up for but didn't ask. Toys and games galore. Adults who told me to stop complaining, nobody cares. Enough fiscal backing that I wouldn't be left to the streets. I would be pointed down the road, down to dad's door, and they'd tell him "pick up your thirty five year old boy, he's gotten himself in trouble again."
They all told me, I'm so smart but too loud. Brilliant and all too excitable. I turned the tables when I said "fuck it, no mask." Full on manic. Your stimulants do nothing but hold me down, masking the real monster.
Whoever told me that neurodivergence was a superpower was full of shit. It's only super when it works in my favor. The rest of the time it's just an exercise in exhaustion, a stage play with dropped lines and frayed plot threads and no ending.
What do you mean I was supposed to act right out of the gate? Check into the prison of labor rather than have fun and go live? Is this the definition of adulthood? Existential crisis hopping and watching the world turn itself inside out? Nevermind nuclear nihilism, I can't even go two states over without the real possibility of being lynched by sundown, I don't even look like the color you want to hang.
The war on reason and responsibility and respect: is this what we're built for? Tearing each other to pieces for scraps while those holding the scales gorge on the rest of the planet? Running rat races on treadmills while we're chained to the starting block? From the moment I entered the workforce, every victory I've grasped has done nothing to these cuffs. Each advance is personal. Meaningful. But inconsequential.
I'm not even sure that if I put the gun in my mouth that I'd have the agency to tap the accelerator.
The struggle against poverty is a maw that's always lurking beneath your feet, the real monster under your bed. You're always closer to financial ruin than to reaching the one percent.
Yet I have the parachute for when the ground gives way. Many only have the promise of the fall being finite.
I haven't earned the right to fix what's wrong with me, others less fortunate must come first.
If I am to be silenced, let it be for my refusal to submit, rather than of my own surrender.
I haven't earned the right to give up.
It's not my time yet. I hope it's not yours if it doesn't have to be.
The world can keep me running, but it can't get rid of me without a fight.
The only thing stronger than self-consuming despair is self-immolating rage.
I'm flooring the gas and going nowhere fast. Tachometer redlining at the speed of thought, the navigable power of a compass minus the needle.
Something leaks out, spilling like a dropkicked faucet. Words and energy pour into pavement, seeping into cracks. Oil oozes from my joints, excessively lubricated and ready to spin suspended wheels.
Where the hell is any of this going
If I am to be despised, let it not be for my appearance or the demeanor which I cannot help, but with the agency and for the truths that I proclaim.
The exhaustion of inconsequentiality is the monster I run towards, fists at the ready. The moment I break this treadmill, whatever doesn't kill me better start running.
I'm tired. Out of acceptances. As checked out as a lost library book. I've got who-knows how many hours to live and I ain't gonna waste it here.
Not waiting to earn those things I keep being told are outside my jurisdiction.
Thrash. Go wild. Break chains. The cure to being this tired isn't dying.
In the spite and face of everything that's held me down, it is living.
--
This was written as a consolidarity to the self. It is in the sanctuary of expression that the storm of the mind is calmed. I am alive, and in screaming out the manic, like draining the fluid built up in an engine overworked, I reach equilibrium.
Don't worry about me. I'm blessed to be strong enough to handle my own problems. Screeching into the ether, our only audience being the ears of the self, and the void which answers in silence.
If you or anyone you know is considering self harm, please seek the help you need:
