Been wondering….

Why am I so tired?  Bone tired.  A feeling that goes deeper than muscles and sinews.  Tired to the core of who I am.  I feel physically fine.  I have more than enough energy in a day to do what I need to do, and I’m generally happy about each day.  But the tired I feel is something else.  When each day is done, there’s something that gives my soul, that inexplicable part that’s not my body or mind, a need to rest.

 

That tiredness started to make more sense to me after I created this graphic:

 

 

I’ve seen graphs like this elsewhere, but those often seem out of proportion.  I created this graph to visualize the proportions for myself more accurately.  As soon as I finished, I understood.  The last two segments are why I’m tired.  My lifespan has mostly been in those last two segments; and my life gets shaped by all that came before then.  When I arrived in the U.S. in 1957, I came to a society whose laws told me where my family could live, whom I could eventually marry, what kinds of jobs and education I could have, what towns I could visit after sunset – and those were the laws and written rules.  Then there were the implicit rules about what kind of job I should have or what people I should know.  The catalogue of all the rules ran long.  When the laws started to get dismantled beginning in 1964, I was 12; but the unwritten rules remained.  I then spent the past 60+ years fighting for people to have equitable opportunity to counter the residue from all that happened before.  I’m tired.

 

My fatigue isn’t figurative.  It’s the outcome of insisting that systems must be inclusive and stop operating so they don’t damage people.  It’s from constantly pushing the need for equitable processes that support all.  It’s a weariness from working twice as hard as others to get to the same place.  It’s rooted in the often subtle and sometimes overtly racist reactions I’ve faced from colleagues, acquaintances, or casual connections.  It surfaces when I’m asked to explain all this to someone who can feel momentarily guilty and then comfortably return to a safe life that I can’t live.  It’s carried in my fear of visiting my father’s home state of Texas to research family history because everything I read tells me I wouldn’t be safe there.  It lives in my worry about how a 20-something with a badge and gun will respond to me in our next encounter.  The reasons are inexhaustible, but I’m not.  The constancy leaves me tired.

 

It's what the song says:

 

You ain't never been blue; no, no, no.

You ain't never been blue,

‘Til you've had that mood indigo.

That feelin' goes stealin' down to my shoes

While I just sit here and sigh, Go 'long blues.

Song:  Mood Indigo

 

Go listen to any Ellington version of that song, and you’ll hear it.  That graph above shows me that I carry my lifetime’s and over 400 years of history into every day.  Some people see the dates in that chart as historical milestones to remember and lessons to learn or be taught.  Not me.  I see the reason I’m tired.