I'm So Tired of Being the One Who Has to Be Strong

I’m so tired of being the one who has to be strong.

So tired of being excluded, quietly, strategically—like my presence is inconvenient. Like my insight is too much. Like my honesty is a threat. Like my way of showing up doesn’t fit inside the boxes they’ve built to feel in control.

Everyone else who didn’t get into the course has now been offered a place.
Everyone except me.

How can that not feel personal?

I don’t know what more I could have done. I showed up. I took on the feedback. I changed. I reflected. I listened. I held myself in my adult even when I was being misunderstood, projected onto, judged.

And I still wasn’t good enough for them.

I didn’t shout. I didn’t attack. I didn’t fall apart.
I just kept trying.

And now I’m left here, again, trying to make sense of why it always ends like this.
Trying to hold myself together while the people in positions of care turn away and call it professionalism.

The tutor who criticised me—harshly, unfairly—was the one who assessed me.
And now she’s had the final say.
No accountability.
No feedback.
No explanation.
Just silence.

And I’m meant to swallow that? I’m meant to be graceful about it?

I’m meant to be “resilient.”

I am resilient. But I’m fucking tired.

If I wasn’t this grounded, this emotionally aware, this supported—I could have spiralled. This could have undone me. And they wouldn’t have even noticed.

Because they never looked properly in the first place.

I’m tired of hoping. Tired of being the one who’s always “strong enough to handle it.”
Sometimes I want someone to say, “This isn’t right. You deserved better.”
Sometimes I want someone to fight for me, without me having to constantly fight for myself.

But here I am, again. Naming the thing no one else will name. Holding the grief. Holding the rage. Holding the integrity they should have modelled, but didn’t.

And still, I’ll keep going.

But not because they gave me strength.
Because I am strength.

Because I am tired—but I’m still here.

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