I'm Tired

 I’m tired.

I’m at a point in my life where I find myself unable to understand so many of my fellow earthlings. I am not the smartest, or most creative, or learned, or charismatic, or empathetic person on the planet. But I’m fairly good at not being an asshole. There’s too much of that going around – and has been – for me to try and stomach or explain away. And to be honest with you, that hurts.

Yesterday, someone in whom I find an unfettered goodness, and someone whom I love very much not only for the kind of person he is, but the kind of intent and goodwill and sincere humanity he leaves in his wake, posted something on Facebook relative to crime and what might be considered an impending invasion of the National Guard into Chicago. What could be the causes of the crime, what might we be able to do to stem the tide of chilling murders of the innocent (and criminal, alike), at whose feet does the blame rest, etc.? Heavy and important and critical questions, all. None, however, with answers sufficient enough to gather what is required to stamp out the scourges behind the systemicism plaguing our country. There can be no answers provided we can use as a silver bullet to cull the horde of greed; it is too advanced and too entrenched.

In the comments section of his post, I inserted myself only after having been complimented in a way I didn’t deserve, deciding to let this subject sit a moment before I opined. The reason I started this blog so many years ago was to provide myself with an arena of mental combat and intrigue for anyone strong enough in their conviction to read, and anyone brave enough to challenge the ramblings of a crazy man to what end I did not know. My mind is something of a mine field at times, and you never know what you’re going to get. Give me the ability to say absolutely anything I want without the threat of recourse and you’re doomed at the outset. Disclaimers are not required, nor are they encouraged on the page. Friends and acquaintances, the few who have scrolled my entries, as well as strangers who happen upon what they might describe as drivel or the incoherent stitchings of a mad man, politely excuse themselves to more interesting pastures as opposed to asking more about that which frightens them. And that’s fine. To believe as I did decades ago that posts sway anyone to or fro, you are only setting yourself up for a personal defeat you aren’t able to communicate to anyone but yourself via whatever internal monologue you think you have.

The last time I posted something on this blog, my treasured and inexpensive therapy couch, was in January of 2023. It must have been around that time, or shortly thereafter, where I realize I was yelling into a well. No one was listening and I’d found myself angrier and angrier with the world around me. The expression of my mind’s eye into this blog turned to an obsession with Facebook and TikTok – I craved humor but couldn’t escape from the urge to forward clips and posts of what I thought should compel those around me to act in a way that wasn’t normal. Not that they, themselves, were complicit, but more that I could see facets of what I was railing against in their behavior, their tone, their votes.

Reading my friend’s Facebook post yesterday, along with the comments underneath, and sitting with my words, I informed myself first and him later that I wouldn’t be contributing my opinion. To what end, I asked myself, would baring another part of my injured soul do anything to answer the questions to which he was seeking answers. It is the same moment when I admitted to myself that I am simply tired.

I wrote a piece in 2014 which I linked in his comments section. I’d let him know the only space I felt it appropriate to blather on would be my seldom-used blog. To my surprise and delight, he said he looked forward to what I might write. As an appeasement, I sent a link to an earlier piece called ‘The Accident of Birth’. You’ll have page back a little bit to find it should you be interested in its content.

Deep breaths were once needed as I sat at my desk composing lofty paragraphs about the country and what ails it. I don’t take deep breaths now, and if I can cajole my willpower from today forward, I never will again. It isn’t worth it. The fight I fight as a black man is different. I’m tired of excusing my outlook. I’m knackered from the constant effort required to be a human outside of my house. Every day. Black fatigue is a buzzword or catch phrase popular with those who haven’t the ability to empathize and see only constant references to struggle and inequity and powerlessness and want to somehow wish it away, to marginalize the feelings of the marginalized as a salve for whatever it is that I cannot imagine is so awful that ails them.

What drags me down and reduces my very existence are the very subjects no one wants to address in polite conversation, in open communication, and with a true passion – and intent – to resolve.

Racism. Religion. Systemicism. Greed.

Some people hang America’s first sin on the institution of chattel slavery. I do not agree with them. This country’s original sin, and one that has been brutally and disgustingly perpetuated is white supremacy. If you’ve found this piece, somehow, and you don’t know anything about me, and have an outlook counter to mine, I believe I can imagine the scoff you’ve just scoffed. If you stop for a moment and consider the true history of this country, the barbaric nature of white advancement will be of no surprise. From the moment this land was removed from Native American control, there began an effort to subjugate non-white peoples. I’m not interested in, nor do I have the mental attention, to delve into every detail. The people brought here and those who managed to escape into this country have never received treatment equal to the rights so deftly debated and codified for white men (specifically). Read any paper or listen to any news program or doom scroll current events and what’s old is new again. White people in power in this country are destroying black and brown communities with impunity and the law is behind them. At the very least, it is doing fuck all to help the targets of ICE raids and the like to protect themselves. Due process, as memorialized in the Constitution so many of the conservative SCOTUS justices swore an oath to protect, may as well be a fantasy. The wealth and job gaps are widening – unless you’re a white farmer in the Midwest as of September 9, 2025. They’ve moved from blatant redlining of black neighborhoods to prevent the ability to provide generational wealth, to blatantly redrawing voting blocks to ensure white power remains the name of the game. North Carolina was the first, and Texas – at the behest of the goddam president of the United States – followed suit, along with a handful of others testing the proverbial waters. Tell me the game isn’t rigged against me. Create an environment that traps generations of citizens, actively works against providing not only the equality they need to rise above, but the most meager of social programs to empower minds, spirits, and economic mobility required to remove oneself from a life of crime, poverty, substandard education and a preordained residence in some form of the prison industrial complex.

The same power-hungry people actively fracturing families and putting innocent people on planes to CECOT or even countries to which they have no allegiance or history, sit with their hand on the Bible and with full chests espouse teachings of Christ. I do not believe in God. I used to. But I don’t, anymore. I cannot. The loving God I learned about as a child would do this? He would put me in this position? He would allow others to be persecuted by mad men and their ilk? He is either all-knowing or all-powerful, but he isn’t both. God would create man, tempt him, punish him, and demand affection or into the pit of Hell you’re destined to live out a painful eternity? He created someone and at birth gave them cancer? He knows and has written everyone’s story knowing their beginning and their end, and is content with the suffering and misery he has created for them? Can’t be. Makes no sense and I refuse to believe someone I’d been told my entire life would be so cruel as to engineer such a shitty existence. The accident of birth is just that, and God has nothing to do with it. If he loved everyone, if he has the power to create beauty and magnificence, he has the power to ensure that all of his children are free from suffering. He has the power to direct our government to use their powers for good and not to explode into contemptuous and disreputable behavior. He has the ability today to stop the hate engulfing every part of this country. He has the ability to never again have a woman raped by her father, to never again have anyone from the LGBTQ community murdered and tied to a fence because of whom they love. He has the ability to see every baby born fed and cared for. He has the ability to put into the hearts of every criminal who has plans to take the life of anyone whether in Chicago or Charlotte or Boise and prevent another single death. The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, the charlatan faith leader of the current administration, and the complete and total piece of shit president who would rather grift an old Christian woman for the sake of his campaign as opposed to finding it in his heart to grant her whatever time she might have left to live in comfort and without financial or medical stress…all and more should be ashamed of themselves.

I do not abhor the concept or practice of religion. I wish those who believe the tenants of whatever they practice to find solace and comfort in their spiritual leaders, both physical and metaphysical. What I do not appreciate is those ideologies having anything at all to do with how I live my life. I am not a good person because God has commanded me to be so. I’m good person because I know that being a dick to another person is just wrong.

The systemicism that bonds both racism and religion is deep, it is powered by an invisible passion, and it is entrenched in this country in a way that cannot foresee any other path than that which we are on today. From the invasion of this continent by Spanish Conquistadors and others to this exact date, scorched earth has been a practice and a way to horde power and influence over those who have somehow been deemed less worthy. To even invent the Three-Fifths Compromise, you have to be one of the worst kinds of humans. To support States Rights as a way to continue the chattel enslavement of GENERATIONS of humans, you are as much complicit today as they were beginning in 1619. To block the education of children on subjects so critical – and decidedly horrific – to the history of the development of this country because you find the subjects uncomfortable to the point you encourage the censoring of museum contents, is unimaginable. But to have the power of the systemic oppression of those groups at your back and the wind in your oppressive sails is all you need to justify the continuation of a system white folks claim to have had no hand in benefitting from. I didn’t own slaves. I didn’t prevent black or brown people from getting bank loans. I didn’t murder Native Americans or force them from their lands. I didn’t do anything to contribute to where we are today. But what you don’t stand up against you will have no chance in preventing, and certainly no way to reverse public opinion or practiced ideology.

I’m tired because I make good money, I have a great home and family, I’m smart as shit (unless we’re talking about math), I am cultured and appreciate the arts, I am well-traveled, and I am free to move about the country, but I will never have the same standing just based on my appearance as some of my friends who are white. I’m tired because the content of my character is less-judged than the color of my skin. I’m tired because the truth, apparently, will not set you free. I’m tired because even when 92% of black women vote for the most qualified presidential candidate in history, white supremacy dooms us to a future filled with intimidation and insanity. I’m tired because I don’t give a bag of dicks that my closest friends don’t like what I post on social media. It’s very likely none of them will even read this as the only person I plan to even introduce this piece to is my friend I mentioned in the beginning. No one challenges me on my views and I don’t have political conversations with my closest friends and I’m not sure why. I know they are Trump voters. But I am juxtaposed between hating their views and loving them as family for the last thirty years. I’m tired of explaining myself to people – white or not – who don’t have even the most basic ability to see a picture from another point of view. I’m tired because everyone who has ever lived and died is on this goddam rock floating in the middle of the Milky Way in a galaxy that is part of something so unimaginably immense and never-ending that I don’t understand how we can find even a morsel of disagreement among us knowing everything we don’t know.

I’m tired of being a number. I have a keep the lights on job, and passions. I could be replaced in a nanosecond by my keep the lights on job and no one would care. I make someone else money and for that, I am supposed to be grateful. I am a cog in the economy lorded over by the uberwealthy and most days it feels like my only task is to make them richer. Begrudgingly, I admit that life wouldn’t be the same without my technological overseers. I love the convenience of Amazon, the pocket-filling brain power of Apple, and whatever it is Google is doing for me in front of and behind the curtain. I know Alexa is listening to me and I don’t give a shit anymore. I have friends who won’t use TikTok for fear of China getting their data, but don’t seem to comprehend what information our government has the ability to mine, or bury. And I don’t care. I’m tired of putting up a defense for the powerful, the greedy, and the power hungry. I don’t hate billionaires. Hell, I spent $8 on lottery tickets last week trying to be one. But I don’t think they should exist at the expense of a mother who works full time but can’t feed her kids. I don’t think they should exist at the expense of people killing one another with their products. I don’t think they should exist at the expense of school districts not being able to adequately feed and educate all children. There are a lot of things the inequities of wealth can stem the tides of, but unless and until those with the means are made to do so, they aren’t going to do any of it (in large part…I see you MacKenzie Scott formerly Bezos, and I thank you).

The greed (the last of the four, if you remember from many paragraphs preceding this one) is cancerous and has grown unchecked, having metastasized into a monster not even Jules Verne or Stephen King could have conjured. And to be sure, greed comes in many flavors, not concentrated solely in the financial realm. We don’t have universal healthcare in this country because when it was originally proposed by the Truman administration, there were fears that black people would benefit from it and lift ourselves out from under one of their mechanisms of subjugation. College was more affordable until political luminaries like Reagan complained that we were in danger [because of affordable tuition] of creating an educated proletariat, moving the privilege of a higher education to the privileged, themselves. He cut state funding of colleges and universities in California by 20% when he was their governor. Anyone who speaks highly of Reagan doesn’t understand what he unleashed on this country both economically and socially. He was great for the wealthy, but bad for minorities and the also-poor.

Greed moved the tax brackets and loopholes for said taxes on income to prop up the rich and handcuff the broke. And it keeps getting worse. I love those videos of Trumpers complaining about the taxes they pay and lose their minds trying to get out from under the fact that they’re paying Trump Tax Plan taxes. He’s as greedy as the rest of them and he’s creating the same kind of pathetic grifters coming behind him, whether related to him or not. And that greed is proliferated into all corners of society. I didn’t vote for him, they’ll tell you, because of his social policies – but I’ll tell you his impact on the stock market has been great and holy fuck am I making a lot of money because of it. Gotcha. People suffering is less important to you than your goddam portfolio. Wonderful.

I’m tired of waking up every day since he was elected and wondering what kind of embarrassing bullshit he’s gotten into overnight.

I’m tired.

I’m tired of having to defend myself. I’m tired of the racist assholes who troll Bubba Wallace (random, I know). I’m tired of loving country music and being so fucking mad at the way the industry treated Beyonce after she recorded a BANGER of an album. I’m tired of being looked at. I’m tired of side-eyeing people. I’m tired of not being able to laugh out loud at the misery of Trump voters who fucked around and are finding out.

I’m tired of typing.

I’ve decided that I’m going to love my friends no matter their political views. I’m almost 53. My big brother died when some motherfucker ran into him as he was talking a walk a couple days after Thanksgiving in 2012. He was 46. Thanks, God. I have no idea how much time remains, and I want to do what I can to enjoy as many aspects and experiences as I can. Maybe I’ll live to see grandchildren. I don’t know. But I’m tired of being mad. I have no answers for society’s ills that anyone will put into practice. I’m going to exist in my space, love my friends, keep the lights on, indulge in my passions, and refrain from being an asshole (as much as possible). Until there is nothing else.