We Are Not Crazy. We are Tired.
Caring shouldn't feel like a full-time job-but here we are.
This weekend, I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t turn on the news, couldn’t open another app. I didn’t want to see the footage, the fury, the familiar parade of cruelty marching across my screen like clockwork. And not because I didn’t care. But because I care too much.
It’s not apathy. It’s something else. A heaviness that sits in the chest and follows you through the day. A knowing. That no matter how loud we scream, the powerful still sleep just fine. That no matter how many votes we cast, the same people seem to stay rich, stay safe, stay untouched.
Trump is back in the White House. And whether you expected it or not, something about seeing it happen again—watching the country circle the same drain—does something to the spirit. He didn’t sneak in this time. It wasn’t a surprise win. He was invited. Voted in despite all that we know about him. And now here we are again, watching rights be rolled back in real time, watching federal agencies gutted, watching cruelty dress itself up as policy. And people—some of them neighbors, some of them family—cheered as it happened.
Students are being arrested for sitting still, for chanting, for daring to care about people halfway across the world. The same campuses that once glorified protest now call it disruption. Some of the same people who once quoted Dr. King now fund the handcuffs that silence the next generation. And we’re expected to keep scrolling like none of it touches us.
But it does.
Every headline, every “breaking news” alert, it takes a little piece of you. Until you’re not just reading the story—you’re holding it. Carrying it in your body. Waking up tired before the day has even begun.
And it’s not just the big things. It’s the slow drip of everyday injustice. The feeling that everything is for sale—truth, safety, even hope—and the price keeps going up.
It’s watching governors ban books while children starve in their own school cafeterias. It’s scrolling past yet another mass shooting—this time at a birthday party or a grocery store—and feeling like you’ve already mourned tomorrow’s victims. It’s hearing about women being forced to flee their states for medical care, while politicians crack jokes about liberty. It’s watching billionaires buy social media platforms, rewrite the rules, and then tell us it’s all in the name of “free speech.”
And just this morning, as millions of Americans braced themselves for another week of bad headlines, Jeff Bezos launched a rocket full of wealthy passengers and celebrities into space. A publicity stunt disguised as progress. As if escaping Earth—literally—was somehow more urgent than facing what’s happening here. As if altitude could offer immunity from consequence.
That’s the kind of tired we’re talking about.
I’ll be honest—I feel guilty sometimes. For turning away. For wanting it all to stop, even though I know it won’t. I know the world doesn’t pause just because I do. But that doesn’t stop the feeling. And every time I read a comment section, or speak to viewers on the street, or talk with folks during a livestream, I realize I’m not alone. It starts to feel like group therapy. Or like we’re all quietly in need of it.
And maybe that’s what this is: a space to say, me too. To admit that even when we’re doing our best to care, we’re still carrying more than we can bear.
There was a time when staying informed felt like power. Now, some days, it feels like a slow suffocation. And if you’ve felt that—if you’ve had to step away just to stay sane—you are not alone.
This is not about giving up. This is about naming what it costs to keep going. What it costs to live awake in a country so determined to lull us back to sleep.
We are not crazy. We are tired. But tired people built this country. Tired people marched and bled and voted and believed anyway.
And now, another week is upon us. The sun rises again, but it feels like Groundhog Day—the same, but somehow worse. Like death by a thousand cuts, not numbing but sharper, deeper. Each new blow not dulling the pain, but drawing fresh blood. We thought we’d stop feeling by now. But the truth is, it still hurts. Maybe more than ever.
So as the week begins, take your breath. Take your rest where you can find it. Don’t mistake your exhaustion for weakness. You are carrying more than your share, and still—you are here.
That too, means something.
Thank you Don. I needed to hear these words. I too wake each morning exhausted. I love my country. The promise of her. I’m angered at what I see happening to her daily. It’s like watching an assault and being helpless to intervene. I’m not crazy. I’m not overreacting. America is dying and I’m exhausted by what I feel each morning as I open my eyes. Thank you for reaffirming that I am not alone in my grief, not alone in my fatigue, not alone in this fight.
We are living in the book 1984, I keep waiting for the MAGA people to wake up. I cannot be the only one that sees Trump has no clothes on! Right?