Death by a Thousand Cuts

This is why you are so tired — Letter No. 28

My dear Bata,

You are not tired because life is hard.
You are tired because you have been slowly giving yourself away.

You are tired because you have given others too much power.
You have outsourced your mood, your swings—

Your actions are no longer yours but now belong to some girl called Happiness and some boy called Melon. You have allowed external forces to dictate your internal state, and now you wonder why you feel unstable, unsettled, and perpetually drained.

You are tired.

Not because of one great tragedy.
Not because of one catastrophic failure.
But because of the accumulation of small things—small demands, small disappointments, small irritations—that never quite leave you alone long enough to recover.

My dear Bata, you have given others too much power.
You have given your time, your attention, your emotional energy to other people’s behaviour, other people’s moods, other people’s expectations. And in doing so, you have allowed your peace to become negotiable, something adjusted depending on who is present, who is pleased, and who is not.

My dear Bata, you are killing yourself softly. You are experiencing what is called death by a thousand cuts.

Not that you will fall down and die—God forbid. But your energy, your zeal, your spirit is being drained, slowly but surely.

The phrase comes from an ancient method of execution, often associated with imperial China, where a person was not killed in one decisive act, but slowly, through many small incisions over time. The cruelty was not just in the pain, but in the prolonging—the slow erosion of life, dignity, and strength. It was not just death, but the experience of being worn down before it came.

And that, my dear Bata, is how many people die.

Not destroyed in a moment but diminished over time.
Not broken by one event but worn down by many.

This is why you are overwhelmed.
This is why you are stressed.
This is why you are tired.

Your Ma says you just got your driver’s licence. Congratulations. She says you have been driving a thousand miles, dropping this one and that one wherever they want to go. Which is good, except you come back home late and bone tired. She thought it was temporary—the excitement of finally being in control, of showing your friends, “see me, see what I can do with this large piece of metal—man versus machine.”

But no.

You let them trash your car. You told them not to eat in it; they refused, and you let them. You lose sleep when they don’t call. One day you are speaking, the next you are not, because this person said this or that.

You are too easily swayed.
Too easily moved by the shifting winds of other people’s opinions.

Once upon a time, people were tired because they worked with their bodies.
They farmed. They carried. They built.

Nowadays?

You are tired because your mind never switches off.
Like your phone, you are permanently on:

Always available.
Always checking.
Always reacting.

That is the problem.

Scripture says that Christ knew what was in humans and therefore did not entrust Himself to them.

Entrust: to place something valuable into someone else’s care; to hand over access, influence, responsibility, based on trust.

Dear Bata, why do you assign responsibility for something as important as your soul—the seat of your emotions, your will, your decisions—to people you do not even trust? And yet, you give:

Your time—to people who do not honour it.
Your energy—to situations that do not deserve it.
Your emotions—to dynamics that do not sustain you.

And so the cuts come.

A thousand of them.

Each one is small.
None of them deadly on their own.

But together?

Exhaustion.

Even Christ, in His compassion, did not give Himself indiscriminately.

And yet, you do. You entrust yourself indiscriminately.

However, I do not want you to take this as a call to retreat from people, or to isolation, but to discernment.

Guard your heart.

Because if you do not guard it, you will spend your life reacting rather than living, responding rather than choosing, surviving rather than becoming.

And that, my dear Bata, is a far quieter tragedy than any single catastrophic fall.

Greet your Ma.

With love always,
Your Auntie,
Bassey

---

If this letter has unsettled you, good. It was meant to. To help me keep writing, please consider subscribing. Thank you!