I’m tired of being happy for other people

I know that makes me selfish

Or maybe human

It’s not that I don’t want other folks to thrive / I do

I love seeing the joy in your faces

& celebrating your wins

& I want us all to get ours

Get what we have worked for so hard

Get free

But I want to be happy

I want to be seen

Recognized

Someone say I know how hard it is for you

Someone say What you are doing matters

And maybe that makes me selfish

Or human

To want this

To want more for myself

To want space to breathe & expand

The voice in my head say

You can’t want that because someone else don’t have it

When I wish for a shower with a soaking tub

Big enough to hold my chair

When I wish for a house with some land

Big enough that I can walk without bruising

For a bed that doesn’t fuck my back up

A chair I can sit in & write for hours

For friends big enough to hold me

& alla my contradictions

When I don’t want to be seen

But I want to be

Big enough to be witnessed

& maybe all that makes me selfish

& so I am

But I’m tired of being happy for other people

I wanna be happy for myself

is this depression?

it’s anticipatory grief

it’s the loss of a future

it’s here-and-now grief

it’s a pandemic

it’s anger for having seen this coming

it’s despair for our chances of surviving

it’s regret for all i couldn’t do 

it’s fear for my loved ones

it’s deep ambivalence about being alive

it’s exhaustion like a thirst in my bones

it’s numbness

it’s a muting of life

it’s an iron veil

it’s a yoke around my neck

it’s amorphous

it’s inescapable

it’s my new normal

it’s all i got 

 

 

 

everything from then on out was going through the motions.
everything from going to work every day to saving for the future to breathing was
a charade performed as defense against the inevitable
a tired eye closed to the light of the oncoming train
a battered heart numb to the cries of the victimized child
a weary soul creaking under the weight of the world
and choosing the path of least resistance.
yet we could not cease going through the motions,
could not stop the motion of the machine grinding towards us
with the threat of growling bellies and chattering teeth.
a few of us figured out that we could stop the motion of the earth
blot out the sun with the moon
compel every human into the street
if we imagined it together.
but most of us were too tired from work
to work on aligning the stars for revolution.
so we waited,
and plotted,
and planned B
all the while praying
for the rest to get as tired
as we were.

    Excerpt from journal of an anonymous Appendage of the Queer Disabled Black Femme Tactical Liberation Body, Third Division (Western Turtle Island). [Archival comments: ….. So, this is written ten years BEFORE the Reckoning. Quantum-temporal collective manifestation or visionary madness? We still don’t understand exactly what the QDBFTLB harnessed to bring us this world, no matter what we might like to think. This begs further research. – taf]