exhausted

I'm so tired.
That's one of those sentences I vowed to myself I would stop using. Everyone is tired, I rationalize. No one cares, they go on just the same.
I'm tired of keeping my illusions, my feelings under a leaden cover.
I'm tired of yearning, love, pain, hurt.
I want to get away from it all.
I have the week off, I tell X conversationally at breakfast.
I hope you're going away somewhere nice.
Well, no. I have work to do, y'know? I have stuff to get done. Today I worked twelve hours, I am beat. I don't have your luxury. Of flunking.
Then light hits your face. Your eyes are green-blue, long-lashed. You are nice. You don't care about me.
It's as if nothing we had mattered.
And I want to cry, and I do, about something else. Anything not to feel the dreaded weakness. I am strong. I am WOMAN! I am not a crumpled piece of paper inside, covered in half-erased notes and scribbles. My pain, I remind myself, is no one's business but my own. All you care about is for this to be an easy split, for me not to be tiresome. Maybe it's not true, but who cares? You won't tell me. You never will.
Yesterday we jog together, and the facade cracks. I holler. I say what I think and feel. I tell you to stop being shit at your job and you get angry. In the evening, you remind me of it, and I had already forgotten.
So that's one thing I'm still good for.
Tonight you're late.
My mistake. Shouldn't have cooked dinner, assumed anything. Maybe you're doing sports, getting drunk, having a talk with a friend, fucking your Rebound Fuck, pretending, like me, everything's ok.
I don't want to know, really.
And now I need to sleep so I can face the rest of the world, and start pretending that I feel nothing stronger than satisfaction, hunger, mild disapproval, amused detachment, until these become my default mode, until I'm the sum of those parts.
How much of Sara will I lose to get over this pain?