I woke up again this morning and the clock said eight hours had gone by, but my body felt like it had been wading through concrete all night, like every muscle was still heavy with whatever dream I’d been having, and I can’t even remember what the dream was, just this thick residue of effort, and I got up and made coffee and the light was coming through the kitchen window, all pale and watery, and I just stood there, cup cooling in my hands, wondering why I was so tired, so unbelievably bone-deep tired, when I hadn’t even *done* anything yet. It’s not like I’m digging ditches, you know? But my shoulders always feel like I’ve been hauling bricks, and my neck is always stiff, and it’s just this constant drag, like a slow leak in the tires of my soul. And then the phone rang, of course it did, and it was my sister calling to say Ma needed more of that special cream for her elbows, and she needs the good stuff, the expensive kind that you can only get at that pharmacy across town, and I said yeah, yeah, I’ll get it, and I hung up and felt that familiar thud in my chest, not anger, not really, just… more weight, like someone just dropped another stone in my pockets, and I’m already sinking, and I work a forty-hour week and it barely covers rent and bills and keeping the fridge stocked, and I’m always doing calculations in my head, always juggling numbers, always figuring out how to stretch a dollar that’s already been stretched thinner than a rubber band, and now it’s cream for Ma’s elbows and it’s always something else, always another errand, another problem, another thing I gotta sort out from a hundred miles away, and it’s just… a lot, you know? I remember Ma saying when I was a kid that life was a marathon, not a sprint, and I always pictured myself running, maybe not fast, but steadily, one foot in front of the other, but now it feels more like I’m stuck in quicksand, and every step I take just pulls me deeper, and I keep smiling and saying *I’m fine* and *no worries* and *I got this* because what else am I gonna say, and if I stop moving, if I stop trying to pull myself out, then everything just… stops, and I don’t know what happens then, but I don’t want to find out, and so I just keep pulling, keep trying, keep waking up tired, day after day, and the exhaustion just sits in my bones like damp weather.