I’m Tired I’m tired of acquiring but never keeping nice things; possessions I work arduously for that are torn up, soiled or otherwise destroyed. I’m tired of endless piles of laundry, clothes strewn across the floor, indistinguishable as clean or dirty, but washed again nonetheless. I’m tired of chaos, of the arguing, of the drama and constant conflict that ages my soul. I’m tired of being shown how for granted I’m being taken. I’m tired of never knowing if I’m coming or going. I’m tired of feeling responsible for the complete care of everyone else and sacrificing my own care of self. I’m tired of feeling chronically exhausted. I’m tired of my complaints and concerns being pushed aside, minimalized and marginalized. I’m tiring of knowing “things could always be worse” as a means to not being able to be entitled to my emotional journey. I’m tired of listening to others during their times of deepest sorrow, frustration or fear and being a pillar of strength for them but rarely being given my own time to grieve. I’m tired of being told I’m hormonal. I’m tired of having my emotions rationalized for me. I’m tired of being expected to “deal with it” and accept that “it’s just part of being a parent” or “being an adult”. I’m tired of feeling like I cannot still express my inner child, have big dreams and be encouraged to chase them. I’m tired of adults bullying other adults. I’m tired of divisiveness and actions that only perpetuate further trauma and abuse. I’m tired of being an angry white female. I’m tired of feeling threatened by PRIVILEGED WHITE MEN I’m tired of fearing for my own safety, bodily autonomy and well-being EVERY DAY. I’m tired of, when expressing my concerns and frustrations, being called names like snowflake, FEMINAZI, bitch and CUNT. I’m tired of working myself until I’m literally ill and yet still feeling immense guilt for purchasing that $19 shirt at Target. I’m tired of the pressure to be the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the perfect daughter/sister/nurse. I’m tired of attachment titles. I’m tired of being expected to take a side when my beliefs lie somewhere in the middle. I’m tired of women having no safe place to candidly talk and share without fear of persecution, name calling or mean-spiritedness. I’m tired of male violence against women. I’m tired of watching so many of my fellow brothers and sisters continue to live lives full of anger, resentment and self-entitlement, oblivious to their own inner demons. I’m tired of Dr. Google. I will always side with evidence backed scientific studies. I’m tired of watching parents put their children at risk for a lifetime of illness because of a handful of conspiracy theorists. I’m tired of trying to explain facts to those same people and them finding a means to justify EVERY SINGLE TIME. So, I’m tired of selective ignorance where there is a literal WORLD of information at mere fingertips. I’m tired of reckless, self-serving decisions of others that may adversely affect countless people. I’m tired of online battles, egocentric conversations and people’s inability to say “I’m sorry” or “I was mistaken”. I’m tired of being oppressed because of my gender. I’m tired of being objectified because of my outward appearance. I’m tired of consistently having to maintain a stern exterior to protect my children and myself from pervasive predators. I’m tired of mean, bitter people. I’m tired of always being strong. I’m tired of being responsible for everyone’s emotions, blatantly disregarding my own. I’m tired of letting things roll off my back all the while knowing they will puncture me on the way down. I’m tired of pretending I’m always unbreakable. I’m tired of violence, both via the media and in the world. I’m tired of endless wars, of which neither party will ultimately win. I’m tired of our elected officials, having taken oaths to serve citizens and country, acting like nothing more than selfish, insecure middle school children. I’m tired of relentless mind games, fear mongering and empty threats. I’m tired of being tired. I’m tired of taking on all of this weight. I’m tired of being accused of attacking others when I can no longer keep it all in and finally break down and speak my mind. I’m tired of the fragile male ego and the need of constant reassurance. I’m tired of watching women lessen themselves to help a man feel significant. I’m tired of toxic masculinity. I’m tired of men trying to justify their bad behavior as “urges” or “needs” or the old adage “boys will be boys”. I’m tired of watching the world in its current state; its destroyers in utter denial. I’m tired of ALL THE GREED- It has caused abuse, war, human mutilation and countless children’s deaths. I’m tired of society’s RIDICULOUS expectations of the ideal female form. I’m tired of fake tits, tight asses and flat tummies. I’m tired of men expecting “perfection” in a woman while they fill their ever expanding waistlines with chicken wings and beer. I’m tired of the ass-patters, the at-a-boy-ers. I’m tired of seeing blame shifting, scapegoating and flat out lying all in pathetic attempts to save face and avoid accountability. I’m tired of feeling stretched far too thin, always dancing on the edge, but never actually jumping. I’m tired of cooking countless dinners, only to have them picked at by children. I’m tired of washing dishes with tears of frustration in my weary eyes because the dinner I made and threw out was the last of the food budget. I’m tired of pretending to be OKAY. I’m tired of never being allowed to own my feelings. I’m tired of sharing and being condemned for doing so. I’m tired of hard swallows and “I’m fines” through gritted teeth and clenched fists; anxiety attacks in the bathroom between motherly duties. I’m tired of pushing through my own emotions inappropriately in order to quickly address the needs of others. I’m tired of finger pointing; defensive, argumentative conversations. I’m tired of waiting for inevitable civil war, feeling riddled with anxious anticipation EVERY DAY. I’m tired of the pandemic that is disrespect, both for others and self. I’m tired of trying to fix everything. I’m tired, I’m tired. I’m tired… I think it’s time I rest.
I originally wrote this for my blog this past September and it remains one of my favorite writings to date. Thanks for reading!
With all the upheaval and negativity running rampant through our lives, it’s important to be able to stop, take stock of what’s important, and find some joy wherever we can.
At The Band Back Together Project, we like to take the time specifically to arrange a little happy boost for everyone.
t dawns on me as I sit there, anxiety at an all time high, my left butt-cheek falling asleep, that I could be somewhere else eating a bagel. Like Paris. Or Detroit. Or learning the Swahili phrase for “pants are bullshit.” Or washing my car. Okay, maybe not washing my car. It was like -900 degrees out. Washing my car would be like that scene in the Terminator with the Nitrous Oxide and the robot.
I smile, imagining my car shattering in the car wash, until I remember I’m probably sitting on barf germs. I hate barf germs.
My iPhone isn’t getting any signal in here. Stupid AT&T. Should be named the iCAN’TPhone because I haven’t been able to make a phone call since I got the damn thing. Hm. I really could use some mindless interaction from The Twitter right about now. Or maybe a Vicodin-Chip cookie. Or some vodka. Because my heart feels like it’s going to pound right the fuck out of my chest.
When the hell did this HAPPEN?
When did I start feeling stretched as taut as an over-tuned violin string? Why did I feel like the pressure to do more; to be more, to constantly outdo myself was omnipresent? Like I couldn’t ever possibly manage to live up to my own unrealistic expectations? Like I had to somehow be everything to everyone. Like if I didn’t constantly prove myself, I would cease to matter. I would cease to exist.
When did this start? And moreover: how could I make this stop?
These anxious racing thoughts; this anxiety, this had to stop.
Admitting that I had a problem the first step, I know from Al-Anon, and doing something about it was important. Hence the bagel-craving and the barf-germ-coated chair in my doctor’s waiting room. And, of course, the urge to flee so that I could learn Portuguese or Mandarin or really anything but admit that I had a problem.
I’m so tired of problems. I’m so tired of having something wrong that I barely want to admit to myself that I have a problem. Between migraines and my lazy-ass missing-in-action thyroid and insomnia, I can hardly stand to be in the same room with myself anymore without wanting to punch myself in the teeth. Problems are bullshit. I hate problems. Maybe I can make a “Problems Are Bullshit” shirt. Because they are. Bullshit, that is.
Maybe this isn’t ACTUALLY a problem. Maybe I can just ignore it and it’ll get better on it’s own.
Except it hasn’t. Because that’s what I’ve been doing. And it’s not working. Clearly.
Before I could do anything, though, the nurse poked her head into the waiting room, “Becky?” she trilled calmly, clearly unaware of my churning guts.
I sighed, put my iDON’TWORKPhone back into my purse and followed her back.
“What seems to be the problem?” she asked kindly.
“Well,” I started, looking at my hands, ashamed to be admitting this to anyone but the people who live inside my computer. “It’s sorta like this…”
We were married for 17 years, 6 months, and 2 days.
Up until day 6,217, when he told me he wanted a divorce, I thought we were the happiest married couple ever. I said those exact words to my best friend when she tearfully called me to tell me she was considering leaving her husband. I told her that she deserved to be happy.
So, when my dear husband told me the same thing shortly after, I knew he didn’t deserve anything less.
Up until the last day of our marriage (day number 6,394), I thought the divorce wouldn’t actually happen. I couldn’t process the concept that WE – my husband and I – were not going to be married.
. I do that sometimes when I have trouble recollecting events – I pare the story down to basic facts and repeat it until it sinks in. In this case, it made me realize what a shocking and kind of hilarious story it is.
This version is a little more than the nutshell – context is important – but it’s still hard to believe. Plus, some parts were left out for too long and it’s important that I’m honest about them.
So, right – back story.
I met him on my first day of junior college and we became inseparable. A year and half later, he enlisted in the Army while I was moving to continue my education. I couldn’t stand to be apart from him, so I broke up with him.
Kids are stupid.
He showed up out of the blue, all crazy and romantic, two weeks later. I agreed to get back together with him. Two weeks later, we got engaged over the phone. We planned a wedding for eight months later – that April.
Happy, happy day! Huge family event. It stayed a huge family event for more than 17 years. We had three kids, one failed business, somewhere around a dozen moves – including one cross-country and back.
This is where I leave out one part.
Well, where I used to leave out one part. After child number three, our beloved baby girl, things went south.
Meaning, The South wouldn’t rise again. He started having trouble getting it up.
Then, it didn’t come up at all.
I thought we were strong. We were best friends. I really thought we’d be together forever. I even had his name tattooed on my ankle in a big flaming heart. (It’s covered up now. No worries.)
If we talked about our intimacy issues, he just told me I didn’t do something enough. I didn’t initiate enough. I wasn’t there for HIM enough. I wasn’t enough. We tried Viagra; it didn’t work. We had sex a total of four times during the last seven years of our marriage. I gave up.
I’ll skip ahead to tell you how this turned out.
Between leaving me and marrying her, he visited a doctor. For her.
It turns out that years of untreated diabetes shredded certain blood vessels. He had liquid Viagra injected into his penis (OUCH!) and it still didn’t work. He’ll never have another erection without surgery. I have no idea if he got it or if he intends to.
But bottom line there is, it wasn’t – and never was – my fault. I never told ANYONE about his situation downstairs until I had to.
It’s important.
That brings us to Year 16; two months shy of our 17th anniversary.
In February, he found his high school girlfriend on Facebook. She requested him as a friend. He was perplexed and flustered; he asked me a million questions.
Should he add her?
Was she still mad at him for breaking up with her?
Could they be friends?
I was calm. “Honey,” I said. “Oh honey. We’ve been married almost 17 years. We have three kids. We live two states away. She’s married. It’ll be fine. Be friends.”
Hahaha.
See how funny this story is already?
The emails, texts, and phone calls started immediately. At one point, I asked him to stop texting her. Emails were fine, stay friends on Facebook – just don’t text.
But I wasn’t built to be the text police.
So, you want to text? Fine. I trust you.
April was our 17th anniversary. We talked about having more anniversaries, staying married. I pushed for a quick answer; he said he wanted to stay together.
In May, there came a day he couldn’t stop pacing. Over and over I asked what was wrong. He couldn’t give me a clear answer.
I kept at it until he said the words, “I want a divorce.”
We both cried.
He moved out of the bedroom to the couch downstairs.
I cried. I howled. I screamed. At one particularly low moment, I was on my knees, sobbing, before him on the floor, while that stupid Sugarland song, “Stay,” was on the television.
He told me to stop; Just get up.
He didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want counseling. He was just done. Wanted his Facebook girlfriend.
At that point, he said she was still married; they were just friends. She “helped” him through this rough time.
In June, he took trips to meet her, the first in the city where we had our honeymoon because it was “more convenient.”
In July, I saw he’d been tagged in photos from a high school friend. We were still friends on Facebook. (I told you this story was funny.)
These photos were for his birthday party, to which I wasn’t invited, but there they were, arms around each other. Someone commented what a cute couple they were.
About that time, SURPRISE, I started dating. I’ll admit, I wasn’t just dating; I was down to fuck. After only having sex four times in seven years, I wanted some.
And I got some.
Never anywhere near my house – no one came over. He was still sleeping downstairs on the couch. He moved out in August.
At one point before our divorce, after he followed me to a park and took pictures of me partially naked and in an obviously sexual embrace with another man, he said, “You’ve got your get out of jail free card.”
At the time, I didn’t feel like our marriage had been a jail.
Of course, now I see that it was – we were both unhappy for a long time. Now, I’m thankful he gave me the card. When his business failed, we had to start over again and I didn’t see him the same way.
I lost respect for him, loving him a little less each day thereafter. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for him.
Our divorce was final in October.
At Thanksgiving, which our divorce decree states is always his holiday with the children, he took his girlfriend, her kid and our kids to his family’s holiday feast and announced their engagement.
They got married in January on the beach with our children in attendance. I made arrangements for him to take them out of state for the event. I bought clothes for them to wear. I spent hours convincing our eldest, then 16, to go with them. I thought I was helping our kids through the transition by accepting the situation and being positive about their relationship.
They’re still together. I don’t say negative things about them, not around the kids. Of course, I hate them.
If I could explode people with my brain, they’d be first on the list. Clearly.
Sometimes I look around this house we shared – our last home together – and it’s hard for me to think that he’s not here, that he’ll never set foot in this house again. That loss has left a scar on my heart. A sensitive one.
I’m still shocked. I don’t know that I’ll ever get completely over it. I’m taking a break from it right now, but I have happily dated A LOT.
Four guys I’ve dated have left me for their high school girlfriends. I started asking men if they were still in touch with their high school squeezes because if they were, they’d soon find those bitches irresistible.
I laugh about it – to hide my pain.
I’m broken, yeah. I’m working on doing better, on being better.
I knew it over before she did.
Really, it was just a matter of time.
She picked the fight by avoiding it.
It was never about me at all.
And I never really had the chance to properly confront her at all; another example of why I refuse to have big conversations via text, letter or computer.
Naw.
Some shit needs to be said as a human being, with a voice, even if she was too chickenshit to look me in the eye.
And to be clear, she broke MY heart.
She held the ball and dropped it, again and again.
Not because it was fun.
Not because she’s evil.
But because she’s never, ever, ever to blame. And she doesn’t apologize.
I’d given everything I knew how to give to this woman, and bit my tongue over and over when she’d gone a little bit psycho at others, but I believed she’d be there for me until the end.
And I grieved. Even before she hauled off at me in private messages, I grieved because I knew, I just *overwhelmingly knew* it was going to end.
What a glorious run we’d had.
What stories of good times.
But at least I was already prepared when the time came to say goodbye. I’d had months to adjust to living my life without her, it’s not as if she’d made any effort — at ALL — but she’d merrily play the victim because that’s just how she do.
Okay. Cool.
You’ve got anything else to do rather than reconcile with your supposed “family,” Lord knows, but now’s when we’ve come to the end.
You said horrible things.
You blamed me.
Played your victim overture.
Because you couldn’t admit you were wrong.
And you’d rather die than say you’re sorry, or anything at all, without attempting to qualify it behind your trauma drama and bullshit. You truly would die on that self-righteous hill.
And you did.
You literally went to your grave without apologizing, because you thought you could play the passive-aggressive chicken game with me.
Spoiler Alert: that’s a game nobody wins.
But when the time came and you died, I’d already given up. I had grieved over the knowledge of your sickness, the inevitable death it would cause, and your abrupt leaving of my life.
And you died. Took that smug self-importance to the grave, you did.
I hope if you ever live freely again, you will not need a person like me in your world. I had given you the very best of me. And when I finally, FINALLY called you out on your shitty little (and it is little, it was so fucking petty of you to gripe at me) behaviour, you responded with denial and vitriol and condescending bullshit.
You did something awful, and never apologized.
And you thought I’d blink first because *that’s what I’d always done before*. I would drop whatever I was doing because you needed attention.
I fought to see you, I defended you, I was the best possible person I could be for you. And you threw it away because you weren’t having a good morning, and rather than admit you were in the wrong, you doubled-down and dug in your heels.
And you lost me.
I let you go.
You died, to me, then and there.
And maybe you never felt anything at all. Maybe it was never any different for you after that.
But I doubt it.
If I hadn’t known you were already dying, and hadn’t grieved entirely before you flew off the handle, it might have been more of a tragedy to me.
But you were already gone. To me.
It’s not the letting go that bothers me. People leave all the time.
It’s that you couldn’t be an adult and reach for me when you knew everything was slipping away.
She was already gone.
Death was just the finality of the episode.
So when you ask me if I’m prepared to lose a person over “something like this,” or how could I “do something like that,” you must remember what has already been done to me.
I’m simply following the course her actions demand. If she didn’t like it, she could have said something. But, as I said, that’s the hill she chose to literally die on.
You’re not a victim.
You’re a child who can’t say “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
Today’s session was a bit hard to swallow, but very much necessary. We discussed co-dependency, power struggles, and volatility… my apparent trifecta.
I learned that ‘feelings‘ are often thinly veiled thoughts and that the two, while similar in many ways, are VASTLY different.
I learned that it’s okay to express both thoughts AND feelings. I don’t always need to apologize when I speak my truths (even if it is upsetting to the other party) because I’m not responsible for others’ emotions, only my own.
I learned that to truly become better, I must acknowledge and study and embrace my failure. I can’t always strive for perfection.
I learned that, although others may be responsible for my traumas, only I am responsible for addressing and fixing them.
Also, and perhaps most importantly, I learned that true happiness isn’t going to be found anywhere else but inside of ME, so it’s up to me alone to find it.
It’s been a long time since you’ve asked me to comment on the book you wrote about your mom’s suicide. I think you are amazing to write about it and I’m glad that you did. I don’t enjoy bringing that chapter of life to mind, given the chaos of those years, but I’ve thought about it often. Especially when I think about what it means to be a mother and uncovering fresh layers of fucked up that we both learned from our mothers.
I know it’s not fair of me to judge them now — but it’s hard not to.
Talking about my relationship with your mom is hard for me because I admired her very much — I was flabbergasted by the way that she slipped back into drugs and addiction.
I was shocked that she abandoned you like that. I was just shocked.
I couldn’t believe your mom would die by suicide.
I still can’t.
I remember the first time I met your mom, I was playing in the front yard while she moved in across the street. She introduced herself from over the fence and told me that she had a daughter just my age, with my name: “I have a Sarah too.”
By the time you came to visit for the summer she had already arranged that we would be playmates. She even arranged a phone call between us before your visit.
When you showed up at my front door, I knew we would be lifelong friends.
My mom worked a lot and my dad was physically or mentally absent most of the time, so your home was like a second home to me.
During these years, your house felt like a Norman Rockwell to me, though now I see that it was far from it.
My mom remarried a man who was addicted to heroin, while at your house, your mom packed lunches, set up the tent in the backyard for us to “camp,” and made goody bags filled with candy. She took us to the zoo, the mall, and the flea market. She prescreened movies, took us for mint chocolate chip ice cream cones, and insisted that you wore a bike helmet. I remember going with her to an NA picnic in the park and how proud she was of her sober chips. We’d to admire the shiny metal coins she earned for racking up months and years of sobriety.
I envied the amount of time and attention that your mom spent with you when she was sober As a kid, I saw your mom as kind, fair, the type who would take the time to listen.
It was very late and your mom answered the phone and insisted that I tell her what was happening. My stepfather hadn’t started hitting my mom yet, but the yelling was really over the top. She gave me a speech about how adults sometimes argue and it can be scary for children to hear and explained that my mom and step dad would never want to do anything to scare me. She told me to go downstairs and tell them that they were scaring me and I couldn’t sleep. They told me to go back up to my room.
Many nights of fighting followed with growing intensity and I tried to call you but ended up talking to Beth.
Beth eventually called my mom and told her that she was concerned about me – I was in big trouble. I was forbidden to speak about “private family business.” It worked: I didn’t speak of the violence again until after his death.
The violence escalated and my stepfather began beating my mom and my brother when he was angry. We moved on several occasions to get away from him.
The emotional abuse from my stepfather became our new normal and we began spending school nights on random people’s sofas, hiding our car down the street.
I spent as much time as possible at friend’s houses and took up babysitting to get out of the house on weekends.
Beth was the only person who knew what was happening; I’d assumed that she would be the person to help me out of that situation. I’m no longer sure she understood how bad things had gotten. She provided me a safe place to go whenever I needed one and a reminder that there are kind people in the world. She told me that I should become one of them. She affirmed that there were a lot of fucked-up things in the world and they would probably never make sense.
Honestly, I don’t know how I would have turned out without Beth as a moral reference point during those years.
Beth became addicted to codeine cough syrup and her behavior changed: she didn’t take us on outings she slept all day everyday. One occasion when she woke up, I remember her running down the hallway singing “boo boop be boo.” This is when I learned that there was something wrong. I was pretty sure that people with bronchitis didn’t do that kind of thing normally.
I knew things were coming unhinged for you, but was too young to appreciate the full weight of what was happening.
I lived in Beth’s house twice, once for a short time when I ran away after my stepfather died and for the school term after that.
By the time I officially lived with Beth she was pretty far gone in her addiction. She slept or was gone most of the time.
It seemed that you were on your own, too.
I still cared what Beth thought of me. She seemed one of the few people who didn’t see me as a lost cause and so I didn’t see myself that way when I was around her.
On Fridays, Beth would take us to the grocery store. She taught us how to grocery shop and some very basic cooking skills.
Things went sour when my mom suspected Beth was using the money she gave her for things other than my upkeep. You and Beth were at odds more often than not. I decided it was best to move back home. Home was a sort of hell, but it was my own hell and I knew how to navigate it.
I didn’t see much of Beth after that.
I’d spend weekends at her apartment while she agreed to leave us totally unattended. The last time I saw her, she’d picked me up from my house to bring me back to your house for the weekend. I remember her being warm and chatting with me for the ride, though I can’t remember what about.
I remember her smiling and I remember that she mentioned that you were unhappy with her these days.
The next time I saw her she was in a coma.
Atrophied hands, hair cut short, dead to the world.
No warm smile, no more sun-kissed freckles, no more frizzy bun atop her head.
She was gone to the world and she couldn’t recover. That’s the last I saw her.
I couldn’t talk about her death with you. It didn’t seem like you wanted to and then you were gone I knew that she let you down and ultimately abandoned you with her suicide. You have every right to be angry with her; hell I was angry on your behalf.
I was just shocked and sad. I think I felt abandoned too.
The next few years were hard for us; the one person I saw as a safe adult had succumbed to drugs and took her own life. It didn’t add up.
Suicide was cruel and yet I remembered her as such a kind person.
There was nothing I could say that would lessen the pain for you so I said nothing.
You remind me of her because you look so much like her now. If you want to talk about what happened, I’d let you start.
What is there to say now, after all of these years?
That was fucked up. There is some fucked up bad shit in the world and it will never make sense, but there is some wonderful stuff too. I think that, despite it all, we both turned out to be people who contribute more to the good than to the uglyl.
I hold you close in my heart, my sister and my dear friend.
