You Can Just Be Tired

I was driving home from work exhausted, knowing what was and wasn’t waiting for me when I walked through the door.

There is a particular kind of relief in burying your face deep into someone’s shoulder. Deep enough that you don’t have to look at them. Deep enough that, for a moment, you can pretend they cannot see how completely you are falling apart.

Sometimes the craving for that kind of safety is so intense that you can feel it simply from the memory of having experienced it before. That one moment when everything felt okay. You were sheltered from the world, and there was a sense of release from all the heavy things you had been carrying along the way.

Sometimes life doesn’t knock you down. It simply keeps adding weight until standing becomes its own form of survival.

You can feel the heaviness in your eyes. You enter survival mode focused only on reaching the next task and completing it. Always moving. Always catching up. Never quite arriving anywhere that feels like rest.

When people become accustomed to your competence, they sometimes forget that competence and capacity are not the same thing. I keep saying that I have zero emotional capacity for anyone but my kids. People laugh, but they aren’t hearing me. They certainly aren’t seeing me.

Maybe part of the reason we miss one another is that so many of us are operating without any emotional capacity left. We are all carrying something, moving past each other while quietly longing to be understood. We are just a collection of tired souls missing connection.

But when a true, effortless and beautiful connection is made, life suddenly feels more beautiful. I hold on to that feeling the comfort of being near someone who quietly says:

“I see you. You don’t have to prove anything to me right now. You can just be tired.”

Maybe that is what so many of us are waiting for. Just a safe place to rest our heads whether we find it in a friend, a close family member or someone we love.

A shoulder that doesn’t tense when the tears begin. A person who doesn’t ask us to make our pain easier to witness. Someone who allows us to be tired without making us feel weak. And, for once, we believe them.

I hope you find that kind of safety.

As for me, I am still searching.

—KM