My Soul is Tired

I feel depleted of energy all the time.  I feel like I'm swimming through molasses.  And yes, I do see that these are signs and signals of clinical depression, but that doesn't ring true as an explanation - for me, at this particular moment.  You do you.  Seriously.  But I did realize that something else had to be in play when taking vacation days and mostly sleeping through them did not help anything.  I didn't end up feeling refreshed; I still just woke up heaving a sigh of exhaustion and resignation.

I think my soul is tired.  I can't yet speak publicly of all the reasons that might be true.  I can, though, say that pretty much every area of my life (not all, but most) leaves me with a sense of not being true to my best self.  If one area is out of whack in a life, we can mostly cope.  When most things are out of alignment, that is soul-damaging.  It is time, and past time, to take action.

And yet, this situation is considerably bigger than my personal challenges.  Those are legion, right enough.  But this effort I'm making, to have a big shiny life, is also happening in the context of a world gone mad.  Or mostly, the United States has gone mad.  Personally and in the culture, I can no longer plug the holes in the dike.  I am officially out of fingers.

Moreover, I have UTTERLY lost patience with the platitude industrial complex.  Please, for the love of all things holy, stop slinging pinterest-worthy memes about wildflowers coming back in the spring at me.  I might just lose it.  Susan Sontag calls it "the free-hanging laziness of aphorism."  Lord, I wish I could turn a phrase like that, but that's another post.

I don't, in fact, know what to do about this situation, but I'm leaning in the direction of "witness," by which I mean standing-with, standing-by, standing-for.  Sometimes that means sitting in silence with a friend or family member wracked by grief.  Sometimes that means standing up, as in "no, you may NOT bring that vitriol into my space."  Sometimes it might mean standing with and for, as in "if you even nod toward voting for that bill, Mr. Representative, I will make it my life's work to get the most progressive person I can find elected into your seat this spring."  And in my personal life, it might mean standing up quite literally.  Get up.  Move.  The cure for exhaustion might be action, in this case.  Don't look away from your problems.  Witness.  Challenge. 

And get the hell out of this chair.....