The Cruelty Is The Design Within The Supposed “Way Of The World”

I am so damn sick… and tired… of being so damn sick and tired.

It sounds simple, almost laughable. But there’s nothing funny about the quiet devastation of waking up every morning in a body that betrays you while the world demands productivity, grace, and a smile. Nothing funny about dragging yourself through tasks you can’t afford to put off, because rest isn’t free and pain relief costs more than your monthly food budget. Nothing funny about watching the days pass while your dreams gather dust in the corner… each one marked "someday" like a cruel joke.

This isn't living. It's enduring. And it feels inhumane.

The truth is, millions of people… people like me… are forced to survive inside a system that was never built for us. A system where poverty is pathologized and illness is punished. Where if you’re not born into money or luck, you are expected to rise against gravity with nothing but the boots you’re told to strap up. But how do you strap on boots when you can't even afford socks? How do you rise when the weight of survival has already bent your spine?

I am not alone. I know this. My story echoes in the throats of so many others… tired mothers choosing between groceries and gas, disabled adults navigating bureaucratic mazes just to be believed, children growing up too fast because joy was not in the budget. We are not lazy. We are not weak. We are human beings caught in a storm of inequality that spins faster than our feet can move.

Money, we are told, doesn’t buy happiness. But what a privileged sentiment that is.

Money doesn’t buy happiness? Then why do I and billions of others feel like joy is something locked behind a glass case we can’t afford to break? Why do we see it in others’ lives… lives wrapped in comfort and choices and options we have never been given? Money doesn’t buy happiness, they say, but they always say that from the safety of a couch they didn’t have to sleep on for months. They say it from behind full fridges, flexible schedules, clean clothes, and stable teeth.

But money does buy something. It buys the right to be treated like a human being.

It buys dignity. The dignity of being listened to by a doctor who doesn’t rush you out with a pamphlet and an empty apology. The dignity of getting help without being humiliated first. It buys time with providers who actually read your chart before they walk in the room. It buys appointments not months away, but tomorrow.

It buys care before your body falls apart… not just after the damage is done.

Money buys choices. Choices between medications, between treatments, between paths forward that don’t involve crossing your fingers and praying that this won’t be the time a generic drug fails you. It buys the second opinion. The third. It buys the right to say “this isn’t working” without being met with “well, that’s all we can offer someone like you.”

It buys food that doesn’t hurt. Real food, with nutrients and colors that heal. It buys water that isn’t tainted. Air that isn’t moldy. Housing that doesn’t make your body sicker just by existing inside it. It buys the mattress that doesn’t destroy your spine and the therapist who stays longer than six sessions. It buys relief.

It buys sleep. Not the kind interrupted by roaches, sirens, or racing thoughts of bills you can’t pay. But real, healing sleep. The kind that people who aren’t panicked get to have. It buys rest without guilt. Recovery without the risk of eviction. Safety without the sting of shame.

Money buys silence… silence from bill collectors, silence from hunger, silence from the humiliation of asking again, again, again. It buys noise too… the laughter of your children in a house where you’re not scared of being kicked out. The rustling of grocery bags filled with everything you need, not just the cheapest you could find. The sigh of relief that comes from finally, finally exhaling.

It buys the power to say “yes” to healing and “no” to things that hurt. It buys presence.

Presence at your kid’s school event because you don’t have to work two jobs. Presence with your body because you’re not dissociating from pain you’ve been forced to ignore. It buys the freedom to dream.

Dreaming should not be a luxury. Surviving shouldn’t take everything you have. And yet here we are, told to be grateful for scraps while the rich laugh behind gates we paid for.

So don’t tell me money doesn’t buy happiness.

It buys the conditions in which happiness can even breathe. It buys the humanity that poverty strips away. It buys back your right to live.

Money buys safety. It buys reliable transportation so you don’t miss appointments.

It buys homes with heating and plumbing and doors that lock. It buys food that isn’t laced with preservatives or scarcity. It buys options when tragedy strikes… a funeral service, a burial, a life insurance policy that doesn’t leave your partner destitute. It buys shoes that fit your child, clothes that don’t shame them at school.

It buys bug spray when your apartment is infested or keeps it from being so, and flowers for a friend who’s dying. It buys a warm drink to share with your daughter when the world outside feels cruel.

Money buys memories. It buys date nights that rebuild a marriage under strain. It buys road trips that remind a family they’re alive, not just surviving. It buys freedom… the kind that lets you say no when you need to rest, or yes when an opportunity knocks.

When they say “money doesn’t buy happiness,” what they really mean is, we have enough, and we don’t want to think about those who don’t.

They say it from behind the insulation of comfort, with their bellies full and their options wide. They say it like it’s wisdom, like it’s profound. But it’s not profound…. it’s cruel. It’s convenient. It’s a lie the system taught them to believe so they wouldn’t question why so many are forced to suffer just to survive.

Many of them… of course not every single one… but many… have never had to choose between a root canal or a winter coat. Never had to pray the free clinic still had room. Never stood in front of a pharmacist with a prescription in hand, knowing their bank account had $4.13 and no miracles coming… Because saving is nearly impossible… They’ve never rationed meds. Never bled through old clothes because pads were too expensive.

Never had to say, “I’m fine” when they were breaking in five places.

But I have. And I know the truth.

This system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as it was built to work… to keep the wealthy comfortable and the rest of us exhausted, ashamed, and too overworked to fight back. We are punished for being poor, for being sick, for being anything other than efficient little machines. We are told to smile through agony, to express gratitude for our own erasure. We are praised only when we keep quiet.

I rage against it.

Because I’ve watched people die waiting. I’ve watched them give up after being turned away again and again. I’ve seen people criminalized for needing help, their pain pathologized and their trauma reduced to “noncompliance.” I’ve watched the system drain every ounce of their hope and blame them when they collapse.

And still… still… we are told to work harder. Be more positive. Think good thoughts. Try yoga.

Manifest wellness. Budget better. As if healing is just a Pinterest board away. As if structural inequality can be solved with a planner and a prayer.

No.

I am not ungrateful… I am furiously undone. I am not lazy… I am bleeding from the wounds this system carved into me and called “my fault.” I am not broken… I am breaking under weight I was never meant to carry alone.

It should not cost this much to be alive.

If you’re tired, it’s not a moral failing. It’s evidence. Evidence of the burden you’ve been carrying in a world that demands too much and gives too little. If you wake up exhausted, ache in your bones, or feel numb inside… you are not broken. You are not weak. You are surviving inside a system that was never designed to honor your softness, your slowness, or your soul.

If you’re angry, that’s not shameful… it means you’re awake. It means your spirit has not gone entirely silent. It means some small part of you still knows that things could be different, that they should be different. Anger is the sound a heart makes when it has been silenced for too long. It is a natural response to injustice. And in a culture that feeds off silence and compliance, your anger is sacred.

And if you are still here… still breathing, still hoping, still loving in small, radical ways… you are a miracle. Let me say that again: you are a miracle. Not in some sweet, sentimental way.

But in the most revolutionary sense of the word.

Because everything around you was built to extinguish your light. Every structure, every policy, every quiet cruelty disguised as “normal” was designed to drain you of your fire. And yet… here you are. You still care. You still dream.

You still reach for beauty in spite of it all.

And that? That should terrify the system. Not because you’re dangerous, but because you’re becoming ungovernable by shame.

You see, once we stop blaming ourselves… and start blaming the truth… we become impossible to silence.

The truth is: money is the root of survival in this world. Not by nature, not by divine law, but by deliberate design. Human beings… brilliant, flawed, imaginative human beings… once had the chance to choose another path. We could have built a world that prioritized mutual care.

We could have created economies based on abundance, on shared labor and shared rest.

We could have chosen to measure worth by integrity, by kindness, by how we treat the most vulnerable among us.

But we didn’t. Or rather, the powerful didn’t. Somewhere along the line, greed became gospel. Property was hoarded. Hierarchies were built like fortresses.

And capitalism ( though not 100% evil, but a pretty large portion…) the machine of endless extraction… began to consume everything in its path.

Community was replaced with competition.

Generosity was branded as weakness. And scarcity? Scarcity became profitable. We didn’t just normalize suffering… we industrialized it.

And so now, we live in a world where housing is a luxury, not a right. Where healthcare is a privilege reserved for the insured and the fortunate. Where rest is criminalized and burnout is worn like a badge of honor. Where children grow up thinking their worth is something they have to earn, and adults die quietly because they can’t afford to be seen.

This machine… this system… isn’t broken. It is functioning exactly as intended. And that’s the horror of it.

But here’s the hope: it doesn’t have to stay this way.

We, the tired, the grieving, the overlooked… we are not powerless. We are not voiceless. And we are not alone. In fact, we are the majority.

We are the nurse who works two jobs and still can’t pay rent. The single mother navigating food stamps with shame she should never have been taught to carry. The disabled artist who creates magic but gets denied basic care. The trans teen who is told they are too much just for existing. The elderly man who worked for fifty years and now sits in silence, wondering if the world ever really saw him.

We are everywhere. And we are rising.

Because even beneath the layers of exhaustion, something ancient stirs in us. A knowing. A remembering. A whisper that says: this is not what we were meant for.

We were meant to live in relationship… with each other, with the land, with ourselves. We were meant to rest. To create. To be held in times of grief. To be celebrated simply for being alive. To grow slowly and fully. We were meant to grow old with dignity, to raise children with ease, to fail without fear of falling into poverty.

We were meant for wholeness.

And yet, how many of us are merely surviving?

How many lives have been lost… not just physically, but spiritually as well… because we were too poor to be safe, too tired to dream, too traumatized to reach for help?

How many songs were never sung because the singer had to pick up a second shift? How many stories died inside their authors because the rent was due? How many inventions, poems, dances, meals, friendships, and futures were erased in the name of “being realistic”?

That is the real theft. That is a real violence. A world that robs us of our tenderness and calls it progress.

But here’s what they don’t teach you in school, in church, or on the news: the moment you start to believe that your exhaustion is not your fault… you begin to heal. You begin to see that your pain is political. That your sadness is sacred. That your rage is righteous.

You stop apologizing for being tired. You start asking: tired from what? Tired for whom?

You stop blaming your body for slowing down.

You start asking: who benefits from my burnout?

And suddenly, what once felt like a personal failure begins to look like collective grief. You begin to understand that your suffering is not a solitary event… it is part of a larger story. A system-wide ache. A cultural epidemic. And in that understanding, something radical happens.

You find your voice.

You speak out, even if it trembles. You look around and see others like you… and instead of competing, you connect. Empathy becomes your guiding light. You start offering softness in a world that values hardness. You create space.

You share what little you have. You stop hiding your hurt and let it be seen, let it be witnessed, let it become the beginning of something braver. You let others do and be the same.

Because that is how it starts: not with revolution on the evening news, but with quiet defiance.

With showing up in your truth, even when it’s inconvenient. With refusing to carry shame for what was never yours to carry.

So if you’re tired, I beg you… don’t turn that tiredness inward. Let it be a signal. A summons.

A sacred sign that you were never meant to carry all of this alone.

And if you’re angry, don’t let anyone convince you to swallow it. Your anger is holy. It is the evidence that your soul is still alive.

And if you’re still here… still showing up in your life, still loving in small and stubborn ways… please know… you are already changing this world.

Not because you have power in the traditional sense. But because you are beginning to see the truth… and name it out loud.

And that, is where all healing begins.

So let them be afraid. Let the system tremble at the sound of our voices rising. Because once we remember that we are not broken, but betrayed… once we realize that our tiredness is not a weakness, but a refusal to be dehumanized… we become unstoppable.

Not all at once. But in waves. In ripples. In generations.

We are the proof that humanity cannot be erased. We are the medicine we’ve been waiting for. We are the miracle. And we are certainly not done.

Lastly, I’d like to say…

There is a kind of grief they don’t write poems about. The kind where no one died, but everything you needed was just out of reach.

The kind that turns dreams into landfill. That keeps you alive but empty. Breathing but buried.

That’s the grief of being poor in America.

This country stages an opera of success… glamour, wealth, curated feeds of joy… but beneath the glitter is the graveyard of everyone who was too tired, too sick, too broke to keep pretending. The ones who tried to play the game and realized too late the rules were rigged. The ones who smiled through cracked teeth and stitched their hopes back together every night only to unravel again in the morning.

And the world watched. And the world clapped.

It clapped for the influencers who “started with nothing” but had parents who paid their rent. It clapped for the survivors who turned trauma into TED Talks. It clapped for the few who made it out and forgot to look back. It clapped while we drowned.

We are told to be inspired by these stories of suffering turned success. But what about the ones who didn’t get that arc? What about the mother who skipped chemo to feed her kids?

The teen who dropped out to work double shifts? The trans woman who couldn’t afford the hormones that would’ve saved her life?

What about them?

Where are their parades?

We don’t talk about them. Because if we did, we’d have to admit this system isn’t tragic… it’s intentional. We’d have to grieve publicly, collectively, angrily. We’d have to demand something better. And that threatens the fantasy. The myth of meritocracy. The pageantry of upward mobility.

But I remember them. I carry their names in my chest like prayer beads. I see them in myself. In every time I’ve had to ask for help with trembling hands. In every job I couldn’t keep because my body gave out. In every dream I’ve buried because rent came first.

I remember.

And I refuse to make my pain palatable just to be heard. I refuse to soften the truth to fit your algorithm. I refuse to call this “resilience” when it’s really survival under siege.

This is not normal. This is not okay. And no amount of inspiration porn will make it so.

So I will scream until someone listens. I will write until someone reads. I will remember until forgetting is impossible.

Because this grief is real. And this rage is holy.

And if no one else will mourn the broken and the dead who broke before living the life they wanted…. I will.

Oh, how I grieve for every single one of them.

I grieve for the little girl who wanted to be a dancer but was too busy raising her siblings… who spun silently in the kitchen when no one was watching, whose tiny feet memorized the rhythm of sacrifice long before they learned the steps of joy.

I grieve for the young man who dreamed of being a comedian but grew old under fluorescent factory lights, trading laughter for labor, watching the seasons pass through breakroom windows as the world slowly forgot the brightness in his eyes.

I grieve for the mother who wanted to sing, whose voice once shook the walls with beauty but now sings only lullabies of survival. Silence became her second language, not by choice, but because dreams don’t pay rent in this world.

And I grieve… God, how I grieve… for every soul who whispered, “someday”, and never lived to see it come. For every person who postponed their joy until it shriveled in the waiting. Who hoped, quietly, relentlessly… and still ran out of time.

This is not melodrama.

This is reality. This is the invisible toll we all pay in a world that rewards endurance over well-being, silence over truth, profit over people. It is the cost of normalizing struggle, of institutionalizing inequality, of turning human lives into ledger lines.

And the most painful part?

We still have the power to change it.

We are not powerless. We are not voiceless. We are not scattered and alone.

We are many. We are weary, yes… but we are wise. We are fractured—but not broken beyond repair. We are tired… but our tiredness is sacred. It means we are still here. Still trying.

Still daring to care in a world that dares us not to.

So I ask… gently, but urgently: can we please try to be different?

Can we stop pretending that this is normal?

Can we stop defending systems that require our exhaustion just to function?

Can we look each other in the eye and say, “You deserve more,” and then live in a way that proves we mean it?

This is not about dismantling everything overnight. It’s about making the radical decision… again and again… to choose humanity.

It’s about noticing. It’s about listening. It’s about asking questions and making room.

Can you tip a little extra when someone looks bone-tired?

Can you pause and ask, “How are you, really?”… and mean it?

Can you offer a ride, a moment, a meal, a chance?

Can you challenge the cruelty, even when it’s dressed up as “policy” or “tradition”?

These things seem small, but they are not. They are seeds. They ripple. They soften hard places.

They interrupt systems. They declare, in quiet rebellion: I still believe in kindness.

Empathy is contagious. So is courage.

I’m not asking for utopia. I’m asking for effort.

For imagination. For willingness. Because a better world isn’t some abstract fairytale… it is a possibility we get to choose, day after day.

Yes, I am sick. And yes, I am tired. But my spirit?

My spirit is incandescent with ache and hope.

My voice is tremulous with fury and tenderness.

And I will not go silent.

Let my exhaustion be a flare in the dark. Let my pain be a prophecy of what must come next.

Let this be the line. Right here. Right now.

The line where we say: enough.

Enough of pretending burnout is a badge of honor. Enough of the myth that some lives matter more than others. Enough of the belief that rest, joy, and healthcare must be earned.

We are more than what capitalism says we’re worth. We are not machines. We are not liabilities. We are not problems to be managed or data to be mined.

We are people… with needs, with dreams, with dignity.

And we deserve a world that remembers that.

I dream of that world every day. Of neighborhoods stitched together by compassion instead of competition. Of clinics that heal without humiliation. Of families that laugh because they’re no longer bracing for the next blow.

I dream of a world where your worth is not something you prove… it’s something you are.

Where no child goes to bed hungry. Where no adult dies because they were too poor to be seen. Where kindness is not the exception… it is the culture.

I dream of us doing better… not perfectly, but honestly. With trembling hands and open hearts. Because we can.

We can choose again. We can build again. We can disrupt the sickness.

We can write a new story… one where no one has to be this sick, this tired, this discarded, ever again.

And it begins with one sacred truth:

This life… this world… doesn’t have to be this cruel.

Let’s say F*ck That… and choose something else.

Together.