I am exhausted. In a very existential manner do i experience this exhaustion. It feels like the compiled fatigue of a thousand generations of men before me hovering just above the crown of my head.
I am up tonight. No, this is not a whimsical adventure through the nighttime hours filled with themes of romance and explorations of the inner self cataloguing each early-morning hour as it passes me by. This is no reverent act of solitude. This is no worship of the incredible singularity that i am and continue to be despite the sprawling network of conflicts and contradictions i observe. This is not one of those sleepless nights I often romanticize. This is the only space of hours i have between now and the morning i have to complete a mid-semester essay; the time i would usually have during the day being consumed by work. Work. It’s all work, in every shade of labour imaginable i have worked. I have worked unconsciously, and sometimes when i thought i was working i was actually just thrashing about like a caged animal in it’s cell. Because this is not solitude, it is isolation. My physical body strains under the pressures i put it in, and unlike other nights i can offer it no excuse of justification. “We simply need to do this,” I say to my body. “Why?” my body asks of me, “what will this accomplish for us?” And I reply to him, “A grade. An education. A scholarship. A future.” And my body scoffs. And we both grimace.
How would i rather pass this night? Dreaming. And if not dreaming than drifting off into unfocused arrays of thoughts. What i thought to be torture before i now see as luxury. My Lord, i am tired. Now even the tattoo printed on my body becomes a mockery. A false flag of triumph. A delusional attribute.
I am wasting time. Lord how i wish i could waste it all, again and again. Infinitely propelling myself through wasted hours and smiling. I haven’t been smiling enough.
