Earned Tired

September twenty-fourth. There's a specific kind of tired that starts in your forearms and works outward until it reaches your opinions, your plans, and eventually your ability to decide whether you want to stand up. Simone and I hit that last night at the climbing gym, right around the point where we both slid down the wall and just stopped.

She called it 'earned tired,' which I think is her way of making it sound like an achievement rather than a defeat. I wrote it down because it's exactly the kind of thing Simone says that sounds obvious until you realize you've never heard it before. We sat there for a while. Neither of us made a move toward our bags.

the exhale after

At some point she turned and said something, I can't even remember what, in that completely flat voice she uses when she's too tired to bother with a setup, and I stared at the wall across from us and nodded. It was a very good conversation. I think we were there another twenty minutes.

she had something to say about it

I've been thinking, in the two-day lag since, about Carol's postcard still on the counter. The one about learning something new. I keep wondering if tired is part of the deal, whether the something new always has a Tuesday-night version of this, the floor version, the arms-done version. I haven't written back yet. But I think I'm getting closer to knowing what I want to say.