"TIRED"

...war fatigue has set in...

“I kept my blade near by…

the war was far from over…it never is for a man who’s sworn himself to the edge…a man adverse to letting the quiet in, the kind of quiet that knows how to find every scar and set it humming. I have been a warrior for longer than I remember: not just in the day to day battles under the sun, but in kitchens at midnight, at worn-out desks, in church basements and boardrooms where the real fights are fought with words and silence. I learned early that strength is the stubbornness to stand when the rest of you wants to fall apart.

They tested me in the obvious ways and in ways nobody writes songs about. They tried to break me with expectations, with betrayals that felt like trusted hands turning to knives, with losses that taught me the price of loving something that can be taken away. I’ve carried other people’s shame like weights, held the line when the lights went out, patched other men’s failures with my thin thread of dignity until it frayed. There were nights I sat on the edge of the bed and counted breaths as if each one was a ration, one for the kids, one for the work, one to keep the doors closed on the panic.

There’s a peculiar kind of exhaustion that comes from always answering the call. It isn’t just bone-tired….ah fuck no…it’s moral fatigue, the slow erosion of the places you used to live inside yourself. You get to a point where the stories you tell yourself to keep going start to sound hollow. Even the victories taste faint because you paid too much for them. I am worn in the good places: loyalties, promises, the small mercies I gave when no one was watching. I am ragged in the bad: pride, the anger that sometimes answers before I do, the nights I wished I could disappear and thought of the easiest way to make that so.

….so yes…I am just so damn tired. Tired of the performance, tired of the armor, tired of pretending the emptiness is honorable. Tired of carrying the weight of expectations like a banner when all I want is to sit down and not move for a while… but know this… tired is not the same as defeated. Tired means I have given everything I had. Tired means my bones remember battles won and lost. Tired means I can name the things that matter now with clearer vision.

So I breathe. I plunge my blade into the earth and let my hands rest on the bark of the tree nearby and bow my head. I let the quiet come, not like a thief but like a teacher, and I learn the small, slow things: how to put a day together out of breakfast and a walk, how to apologize before pride swallows the chances to be better, how to be honest with the people who love me. I am still a warrior but maybe the kind that learns when to lower his blade. That’s strength too.

If you ask me what comes next, I’ll say this: I will keep getting up. I will keep going because the people and the things worth fighting for are worth the tired. I will also learn to sleep when the body says so. I will learn to ask for a hand to carry the pack. I will learn that being a warrior does not mean you must do it alone.

For now, I rest… knowing there is much to be done.”