Existential Exhaustion

Here is the thing; I am tired.

Like, bone-deep exhaustion tired. I am tired of being dependable.

Tired of being someone who takes on all the responsibility for things, even when other people offer, tired of the accompanying guilt when I falter under the weight of that responsibility, or when I allow people to take one some of that responsibility and they struggle.

I am tired of being seen as dependable and smart and, therefore, intimidating.

I am tired, so existentially tired, of being constrained by other’s conceptions of who I am, of what I am, of who I should be.

I am tired of keeping all my crazy, less-than-dependable, less-than-nice thoughts to myself.

I am tired of being alone, of being the person that people depend on and the dull, endless ache of missing the one person I could always depend on, who would always be there for me.

I am tired of the guilt of feeling I somehow failed her, the stupid, ridiculous guilt of thinking I somehow should have been able to save her or to at least make it not so hard, not so painful, not so ugly and awful.

I am tired of being so consumed with my own pain that I don’t have the energy to get to know all the women I am now responsible for.

I am tired of not knowing how to help myself and thus unable to help them.

I am tired of feeling like every part of my life that truly matters is one epic failure after another.

I am tired of lying in bed not being able to sleep because my brain is full of worry and fear.

I am tired of waking up exhausted, of falling asleep in the middle of the day and having vampire dreams.

I am tired of being intimidated by life, by the unknown, by the idea that I am set up to fail.

I am tired of not being the girl I remember, the girl who would spin around in her Wonder Woman Underoos thinking she could conquer the world. The girl who could confidently pose in her Teela and She-Ra costumes and mean it. The girl who didn’t yet know that when people told her she was smart and strong and responsible it wasn’t a compliment; it was a sentence to being given more work, more responsibility, more to do. The girl who hadn’t yet realized that Wonder Woman and Teela and She-Ra and all the smart, confident, strong women she loved to pretend to be were alone, left to save their worlds by themselves. That such women were branded ‘intimidating’ and to have any sort of life outside their strong, confident, world-saving selves had to create cover identities in which they pretended to be less-than and that only then would they have friends, but not really because they weren’t who they really were. They were who people wanted them to be.

I am tired of not knowing how to be that girl anymore, of saying yes when I desperately want to say no and saying no when I should say yes.

I am tired of putting off finding how to be that girl.

So I am going to take some time to myself, to figure out things I should have figured out a long time ago. Which means I might not be around for a while and I might not answer phone calls and I might not be the person you are used to.

But I’ll be fine. Because I am always fine.