I am tired.

I was able to donate blood for the first time this week, the first time in 17 years, due to anemia. 470 mls doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a lot when don’t plan, and start your period the next day.

There is not enough broccoli or spinach in the world at the moment. I know–I’ve bought out every grocery store in Portland of both of them. I tell you that as a warning for what comes next. I am blatantly hypoxic and anemic. But here I am, in all that low oxygen, low blood pressure glory, spilling my truth, because I don’t care about being PC. I don’t care about hurting feelings. This is my brain. These are my thoughts.

Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the presidential nomination race this morning. I feel like it’s a full on failure of women. That’s not accurate. But it feels accurate. I don’t want to put unnecessary pressure on her, but she was the best person in the race to run our country. I want a woman in the White House. I want someone running our country who has some semblance of an idea of what it’s like to be a woman in this country and how to make it better for us. Not just white women. Women of color, trans women, non-homonormative women. She was competent, willing, and sadly enough, totally incapable of beating Donald Trump. Not because of her inadequacies, but because of America’s. And all of this right now has me feeling that America either hates, or is scared of women.

Someone told me recently that women shouldn’t be in leadership rolls. Like, anywhere. The White House, the church parish council, the Senate, the Youth Camp Board. He told me women aren’t “made” to lead. It’s not what we’re designed by God to do. This is 2020. I’m in tears. Not because he’s right, but because people actually believe it, and the democratic presidential nomination proves it.

I’m so tired.

I’m tired of being sold short. I’m tired of being demeaned. I’m tired of being ridiculed. I’m tired of being minimized. I’m tired of not being believed. I’m tired of having to fight to even be seen. I’m tired of being presumed inferior. I’m tired of not contributing in a full way. (I don’t want to say meaningful way, because giving birth, raising children, and other historically traditional female rolls are incredibly meaningful and fulfilling. My point here is that it pushes women into only those rolls and stops us from providing, helping, and contributing to others and society in other ways which we may also excel in.)

I’m so tired. I’m so tired of it being so obvious and yet still incomprehensible to so many.

So yeah, this might be the low oxygen, the low blood pressure, but I think it’s more like thousands of years of ridicule and persecution that’s brought me to boil.