I'm tired

I’m tired.

Blood, flesh and bone tired.

Soul tired.

I’m so tired that as I drove on the expressway this afternoon to pick up my dad’s prescriptions and deliver them to the adult home where he lives I nearly fell asleep.

At 60 mph.

I had to keep shaking my head and opening my eyes wide.

That’s dangerous.

But even more dangerous is that when I’m this tired all my walls, defenses and masks break down.

Ask me something, and I’m liable to tell the truth for once.

Irk me, and I’m liable to react.

Last night, after I got home from choir practice, my wife told me my grandmother had called from the adult home where she lives to complain about me not doing something I didn’t even know I was supposed to do.

I swore.

Now those who know me know I almost never swear.

Even when I’m mad I don’t swear.

I only swear when I’m enraged, or when I’m overtired.

I learned as a child not to say what I really think or feel.

You might get a reaction you don’t like. Or get ignored. Or the words get twisted. Or they get thrown back in your face.

I’ve spent most of my life surrounded by people who react or overreact, who just have to voice their opinions over and over if I dare to open up.

So I keep quiet.

Except when I’m tired.

That doesn’t mean the feelings and thoughts are not in there. Sometimes they bleed out in “jokes” or sarcasm.

But mostly they just bubble around in my head.

Sometimes I feel like I have mental Tourette’s Syndrome.

#%)(+#!

Sometimes people tell me to get rest and that they worry about me.

But some of the same people keep asking and expecting me to do things and telling me what they want to do and giving me advice and sharing what they feel and think and complaining and voicing their resentments about how the world is treating them - all while expecting me to listen to what they say even though they have said the same things before. Repeatedly.

Then other people ask me to do things.

Then I tell myself I have to do some things for yet other people.

Can you say codependent?

There are days that I fantasize about dying, and my final words being, “At last I’ll get some peace.”

Or I fantasize about when my time comes just driving somewhere deep into he woods, taking a long walk, then sitting under a tree and waiting.

Alone.

The only sounds being the wind passing through the trees and the birds singing.

My dream of heaven has always been a cottage on a beach. I walk along the beach with my dog, or sit and watch the waves. Occasionally, Jesus stops by and we have a cup of coffee. Sometimes we talk. Sometimes we just sit and watch the waves or pet the dog.

And there’s no one else.

The only sound is that of the lapping waves.

I suspect Jesus felt some of the same soul tiredness that last week of his life. I’m carrying the burden of a few people. He had all the people – past, present and future. I’m making myself sick, maybe hastening my death. He was facing immediate death of the most horrible kind.

No wonder he sweated blood.

I haven’t done that.

I need to pray. With the same faith and intensity Jesus prayed with.

I need to rest.

I know. I’m babbling.

I do that when I’m tired.

And what I’ve said will probably come back to haunt me.

#%)(+#! it.