PROTEST

Please stop telling me to rise to this.

Rising has become its own special kind of hard labor. I have done it so often that despair no longer feels catastrophic; it feels administrative. Something penciled in between obligations. Something I am expected to show up for on time.

Once, I thought endurance meant I was winning. Now I know it only means whatever has its teeth in me has not finished chewing.

There has to be a point at which continuing is not noble, but intrinsically cruel.

Every demand arrives disguised as necessity, and every refusal holds out a hand to introduce itself as personal failure.

So this is my protest: I am tired of being measured by how gracefully I survive what keeps relentlessly trying to reduce me. I am tired of being praised for staying intact by people who only ever needed me useful.

Take the quota. Take the performance. Take the crippled, compliant thing that keeps dragging itself upright because everyone is watching and waiting. Just do not ask this wretch that remains of me to get back to its feet and call itself ✨alive✨