Exhausted and Empty

DISCLAIMER (As these, sadly, have become necessary these days): Please, before reading, understand what this article is and is not. It is NOT asking for pity, or condemning anyone or any entity. It IS my personal thoughts, my personal journal, in the hopes that someone else can see themselves in them and gain strength through a sense of understanding they are not alone.

Today, I have nothing. I feel spent, I feel drained, and I have no idea how to communicate that. We live in a world where hyperbole is so often the norm that when someone's truly run to the end of the road, there's no way to express that without someone feeling they are saying things that they honestly weren't saying.

I am tired of being the much maligned "liberal" in an area where that is a swear word. I am tired of personal attacks for holding an opinion that doesn't match others. I am tired of unending criticism with absolutely no recognition for the validity of my thoughts and ideas. And I've found it crosses the spectrum; if I challenge any of the ideas of any of my friends, regardless of ideology, it seems that it's open season directed at me.

To some the answer is simple: just shut up. And if it were that easy for me, I would. But I shut up for a lot of years, and I've seen things happen that never should have taken place. I've seen workers mocked and criticized publicly for asking for a fair wage, then mocked and criticized publicly for receiving benefits to fill in the gaps, and finally mocked and criticized publicly for getting tired of the system, taking the ball and going home. We tell them to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, when these fellows don't have any boots.

I can't shut up when I see these things. I can't shut up when I see families agonizing as the roof over their head drains down on them with no long term answer to the problem. Or when health issues are too long neglected because the social stigma of being on Medicaid is so strong that you don't dare to walk into the small community hospital where HIPAA is nonexistent. God forbid you're on the poorer side of things in America; if you are, in many folks' eyes, you are simply a parasite.

I am tired of hoping when hope is futile; tired of investing in a future that never will come. Tired of the monthly reminder of a future I naively invested in believing this was that critical last ingredient to put me over the top, only to see less qualified candidates selected to do the job I worked for because they either don't like my politics, or they don't like the pay scale that should accompany those qualifications.

I'm tired of spending my life on a treadmill with no clear path to escape.

And if that offends you, then maybe we need to go different directions. Because God knows I've been criticized enough already!