I Say It to You, You, You, and You.

Photograph by/of Spiral Patterns

Tired stopped meaning anything. There’s regular tired, and then there’s crawling-on-the-floor-on-bruised-blue-knees tired. The word doesn’t even cover the shape of it anymore.

I say it to you and you and you — I am tired.

The kind that doesn’t make you shower even though you’re OCD. The tired that no nap, no sleep, no weekend reset screen can fix. I’ve never woken up feeling “recharged.” Not once. I used to think mornings came with upgrades, like video games. Turns out, I’ve been stuck on the same level for years, with the most ridiculous plot, and no one even handed me a walkthrough.

I’m not “running away from my problems.” Who the fuck enjoys facing their problems anyway? Really. Be honest. We’re all sprinting, crawling, or buffering through something.

People say I dodge mine like it’s a flaw. But maybe the flaw was believing I’d ever spawn into life feeling whole by default.

Maybe it started when I learned this:

The world keeps spinning whether or not you stand up. The city keeps roaring whether or not you speak. The people you love can leave, and everything else keeps moving like nothing happened.

So I light one cigarette after the other, not because smoke fixes anything, but because it’s the only thing that fills a space without asking questions.

The kind that says: “I’ve been on this level too. Ridiculous plot and all.”

I don’t want solutions. I want someone to go: “Yeah. That one. I know that one.”

Tired needed a bigger name. A truer one.

Not dramatic. Not poetic. Just accurate.

I am tired because emptiness doesn’t echo — it just sits there, silent and dense. Because I keep repeating tired like a glitch, like a chant, like a flare, hoping someone recognizes the frequency, not the fracture.

Not pity. Not fixes. Recognition.

The tired that stays. The tired with no recharge button. The tired you eventually stop fighting because fighting it is also… exhausting.

And if it’s going to stay, then at least let it be mine.