I know they do this on purpose, work us until we can’t anymore. Distract us, bombard us with information about how we’re not doing enough. But sometimes I can’t be the Marxist, I can’t energize the room about something that is so fucking hard to untangle. That is personal. I can’t do this alone, I’m too young to be this tired.
I know rest is revolutionary, but my rest feels like defeat. It feels like defeat because I’ve tried so hard to convince myself and others that we don’t need to be tired, that we can be loved, that we can feel full. But I don’t feel full. I feel tired. How do I hold on to this optimism of another world when I can’t do my own dishes? Why, even in radical anti-capitalist spaces, do we not take care of each other?
What is this for? Why are we running ourselves into the ground and still neglecting ourselves and our loved ones? How much more of this can we take?
To move slowly, rest, talk softly. I was better at this when I was younger, now it’s easier to be loud. Because everything is screaming at me.. I’d rather be alone. But I can’t, I have to sit in a room full of people who look at me and say I don’t exist. I have to defend my trauma in tears because what else am I supposed to do? Stop telling me I have a choice I don’t fucking have a choice.
Every second you pretend this is working and keep your mouth shut, your making life miserable for folks who can’t. You are the one that has a choice, you are a coward. I think I was born with a gentle disposition, you’ve taken that from me. I was told I was defiant when I was 14 because I was gay and scared and in catholic school. I wasn’t a defiant child.
You want me to be nice? Am I not saying it kindly enough for you? Does it hurt your feelings when I say you’ve taken the ability to be loved (to be seen, to be soft, to care) from me and every person that I know? That I have to take two sleep medications to try and forget when my body is exhausted all day from remembering?
I know you haven’t taken my life away from me, but sometimes it feels as if you have. But you can never take away my ability to be human, to love and be loved. But I wish you would understand that my anger, my defiance is coming from a deep unwavering source of compassion and care that I have for myself, and for you. As I’ve learned from the teachings of Audre Lorde, your fear of anger will teach you nothing. Your useless guilt will destroy us all.
Unruly Bodies 
Your posts, along with the things you say in class have really helped me to attack the urge I have to try and solve all of my problems on my own. I struggle with that ingrained oppressive idea that I need to be able to make it through my life on my own skin, that I cannot ask for help or make myself vulnerable. But living like this makes me tired and alone. It is so relieving and so starkly different in the moments I lean on others that it makes me want to cry, but I still I struggle to do it. I just feel guilty that I cannot do it and nothing changes. I am working to change that guilt into something useful, to use that stark difference to generate anger at how capitalism separates us from love and community. It’s still a struggle, but it’s something more than wallowing in a guilt that is made by and for our oppressors.
This is such a powerful piece…The entire second paragraph in particular really spoke to me. It’s so hard to hold on to a sense of revolutionary optimism, whether in the context of a really dark world that surrounds us, or in the ways we’re worn down in our personal lives. The world we live in and the structures we navigate try so hard everyday to rob us of our joy, energy, and love for one another and I think that’s a struggle that’s really important to be named. Because, at least at the root of my own politics and values, I’m driven by the necessity to build a world where we form resilient, uplifting communities resting on foundations of care. The last question of how do we not take care of each other needs to be asked so often, because I think sometimes it gets lost in discourse. Thank you so much for this post!