A Quote by Rosa Parks
I had no idea that history was being made. I was just tired of giving up.
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People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically... No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
[I]t just makes me tired even thinking about it. It reminds me of that feeling I had before I left. Like my lungs were made of lead. Like I can't even think about starting to care about anything. Like I either wish that they were all dead, or I was, because I can't stand the pull of all that history between us. That's before I even pick up the phone. I'm so tired I never want to wake up again. But I've figured out now that it was never them that made me feel that way. It was just me, all along.
I have an investment in not being crazy. I have a real investment in seeing things straight. This runs counter to that investment, so it required giving up an idea of myself, the idea being that I had control.
I'm tired of being what everyone else has made me," I said. "I want to be myself." "Don't be a child." I looked up, startled and angry, though of course there was nothing to see. "What?" "You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe. Accept that and be done; I'm tired of your whining.
People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
Sometimes in love it just gets to the point where I have to give up. I have to give up trying and I have to give up believing because I know things won't change. To me, giving up isn't being weak. Giving up is being strong enough to let go.
It's something that you pick up at a history class in college, the idea that history and time is something to which we can't even hold a candle to. We, as human beings, are just a small element in the overarching sweep of narrative history. That really had a profound effect on me, that realization.
Was it the act of giving birth that made you a mother? Did you lose that label when you relinquished your child? If people were measured by their deeds, on the one hand, I had a woman who had chosen to give me up; on the other, I had a woman who'd sat up with me at night when I was sick as a child, who'd cried with me over boyfriends, who'd clapped fiercely at my law school graduation. Which acts made you more of a mother? Both, I realized. Being a parent wasn't just about bearing a child. It was about bearing witness to its life.
I had given up my seat before, but this day, I was especially tired. Tired from my work as a seamstress, and tired from the ache in my heart.
I never had the vaguest idea whether any of it had anything to do with me, especially being a sixth grader. When I got older and traveled, I'd read about the history of where I was going. I'd be like, "Oh, history is kind of interesting."
I'm tired of screwing up. I'm tired of being down. I'm tired of myself. I'm tired of bein' down.
What! Would I be turned back from doing a thing that I had determined to do, and that I knew to be right, by the airs and interference of such a person, or any person I may say? No, I have no idea of being so easily persuaded. When I have made up my mind, I have made it.
I grew up with an absolutely horrible, debilitating stutter, and it was what caused me to retreat into myself and caused me to have very few friends and not want to socialize, and it made me absolutely terrified of giving reports in school. It was awful. It wasn't until I was 19 that I had intensive speech therapy. I had it for two years and it really helped, though I will say when I'm tired, the stutter comes out, even now.
I had parents who believed I could do anything - and I know how that made me feel. I think both my parents, having careers in the medical profession, feel they are helping people on a daily basis, and that was inculcated in me as a value. I had to struggle with giving up the idea of becoming a doctor myself.
People have said over the years that the reason I did not give up my seat was because I was tired. I did not think of being physically tired. My feet were not hurting. I was tired in a different way. I was tired of seeing so many men treated as boys and not called by their proper names or titles. I was tired of seeing children and women mistreated and disrespected because of the color of their skin. I was tired of Jim Crow laws, of legally enforced racial segregation.
I'm sick and tired of this stuff. I'm sick of them doing it. I'm sick and tired of it working. I'm sick and tired of the media carrying the ball and running with it. I'm sick and tired of the assumption. We've gotten to the point where [Donald] Trump was actually talking about a serious problem that not everybody faces. The idea that some people don't face this, he is being accused of being insensitive and he's actually talking about how the VA has let those people down and we need to have a program of improvement where we deal with this a little bit better than we have been.
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