I'm Tired

a rant, if you will.

I was sitting on my balcony this morning, reading, watching the trees sway and glancing at my plants that I haven’t watered in days, when the realization hit me: I am tired.

I am tired of pretending to have it all together, to have it all figured out. When the truth is, outside of being a mama, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing or what it is I’m supposed to be doing. Finding my purpose has been an obsession of mine since I was a teenager, one that has continued well into adulthood. And I’m tired of obsessing over it.

I’m also tired of so much noise. My phone in particular has become such a distraction. I spend entirely too much time on it, filling my brain with the insignificant ramblings of strangers on the internet. I’m specifically talking about TikTok here. Sitting outside today in silence soothed my soul in a way I didn’t know I needed, silence is something I’ve been avoiding for a while now, but I’ll be making more time for it moving forward.

There are so many things that I am tired of. I’m tired of not allowing myself to embrace all parts of being human, not just the cute and palatable ones, but the ugly and uncomfortable parts as well. Because the truth is, I am a complex individual. I am extremely sensitive, extremely kind, smart, nurturing, loving, and ridiculously funny but sometimes I’m angry with a fucked up attitude. Sometimes I am moody, impatient and a straight up bitch. Just ask my sister. Sometimes my intrusive thoughts win. I am not a good vibes only type of person. But I pretend well, I hide well, and honestly I am tired of both. Are there parts of me that I am healing and that I want to improve on or get rid of completely? Absolutely. But at this very moment, those parts of me are very much still alive and pop out every now and then.

I think if more people were honest about their flaws and struggles we’d feel less pressured to show up perfect and presentable. I also understand not everyone can handle criticism or being perceived and possibly disliked. The latter used to be me but then I realized I have family members whom I share blood and experiences with who do not like me, and my world has still continued to spin and move along, so a stranger not liking me, for being myself nonetheless, sounds like a personal fucking problem to me. Don’t excuse my French.

I finished my chapbook a few days ago, and as I was going through and re-reading everything making sure there were no typos that I missed, I came across a passage I wrote that ended with “…people don’t want to be alone because they aren’t ready to face themselves. But you can only run for so long, because as the saying goes, everywhere you go there you are.” And it hit me today that I have been running from myself. And I am tired of that as well. It took me a while to realize this was happening because I don’t run from myself by hopping from relationship to relationship, which is one of the more obvious signs of self-abandonment, but I’m learning that I run by keeping myself busy–well distracted, rather. Whether that’s with work, or mommy-hood, or reading, or scrolling on TikTok; silence has felt uncomfortable for me, not because I don’t want to face myself but because I don’t want to do the work of tearing it all down and rebuilding.

And if I am being honest, it all has to come down. You know that feeling when you didn’t do something the right way, but you try to get by with it but the more you add to it the more obvious it becomes that the foundation is not sturdy enough to hold all this shit? That’s what it’s been feeling like lately. Like instead of tending to the cracked and broken parts of my foundation, I just acknowledged it was cracked and broken and began pilling good shit on top thinking the bottom would straighten itself out eventually. But just like in real life, it does not work that way.

So, I’ve accepted the fact that I have to dismantle and build again, but I’ll be honest, I am pretty annoyed about it. I am already juggling a lot with trying to care for myself and care for my baby and now I have to take apart everything I’ve built over the last ten-ish years in order to find contentment and a peace of mind? Yes. Because if not, I’ll look up and be needing to take apart everything from the last twenty or thirty years in order to fix my foundation. Ugh. What sucks is that I can’t blame anyone else but myself for this mess I created, it was me who chose to bypass certain things and hoped to still come out healed, whole, and happy.

Because I am tired of my life looking and feeling this way, and because I have the most important person in my world relying on me, the work begins. Slowly. Begrudgingly. With me wiping my tears, throwing childish tantrums, and deep, heavy sighs while rolling my eyes.