Too Tired to Be This Sad

I am too tired to be this sad.

It’s like my body can’t even hold the weight it takes to make space for the grief that lives in my bones. If I’m honest, it feels like I’ve carried this grief my whole life. Like something I was born into. Like my cells learned it before they learned joy.

It’s like a wet blanket draped over my body. Even breathing feels like a chore. And what’s strange is how normal it feels. Like my body just knows this place—this default to despair. No matter how much I grow, no matter how much healing I do, no matter how many times I try to shift my thinking, my brain still offers me oblivion.

And oblivion—it’s not terrifying. It’s seductive. Quiet. Empty. Dark. Safe. I could rest there.

Right now, the grief is so loud it’s not just in my voice. It’s in my hands. My fingers are shaking on the keyboard as I write this.

And I keep asking: what is the measure of a person?

What is the measure of me?

Is it what I know of myself? Is what I know even right? Or am I just gaslighting myself into believing I’m good? Maybe I’m not. Maybe I’m just someone doing shameful things and convincing myself otherwise. People much worse than me thought they were good. Nazis said they were doing the right thing. Missionaries thought they were doing God’s work.

Maybe I’m just another person trying to outrun the truth.

There are people—people in higher places, with titles and power—who tell me who I am. They say I’m irredeemable. Unworthy. A beast who caused harm. Harm I deny. And I don’t know who to listen to: my own heart and mind, or the experts who claim to know me better than I know myself?

Sometimes I feel like I’m being gaslit. I know what I know. I feel what I feel. But they keep saying something else. And if I keep denying it, maybe I am delusional. Maybe I’m the problem. Maybe there’s no way out of this spiral.

It feels like I’m falling into some kind of doom I can’t escape.

This is what hell feels like.

Not fire.

But silence.

Doubt.

Loneliness.

No one to trust.

Not even yourself.

Because in the end, maybe it doesn’t matter who you believe you are.

In the end, you are what they say you are.