*With apologies to the Bangles, particularly Susanna Hoffs, who was the person I wanted to be when I was 12.
(I wanted to be a lot of people who weren’t me when I was 12).
A photo of sunrise in my little valley, taken this morning. It was cold and it was sunny, and I took the time for some photos, because it is what I do when I am overwhelmed and need some psychological distance to move forward in the whelm. Somehow looking at things from behind a camera lens allows me that psychological distance.
I’m currently writing about the silence of fatigue and it’s hard. I’ve been stuck on it for a while, and I’ve been stuck because it is hard to either describe the silence, the causes of the silence, or hard to admit to the reasons behind the silence. The older I get, I find, the more silent I become, and surely this is the opposite of how it usually works?
I’ve even become silent here. I think about it a lot and still. All I come up with is more silence.
I don’t know what that’s about except, perhaps, I think, when you are not believed, belittled, ignored, a nuisance, a burden, all the things people with multiple, interconnected, chronic illness experience (and ‘financial burden’ and ‘time consuming’ is a common negative ascribed to the chronically ill in the literature, particularly the medical literature), it just becomes an exercise in futility, just another tiring thing, to try to explain again, that no, the arthritis is not too bad, the neuritis is not too bad, the latest torn ligament is healing, the iron levels are getting back to normal, the cluster headaches only happened three days in a row instead of a month, the drugs only make me sick one day a week now, etc., but yes, I am still so very very, always, tired. One of these things is not a lot. All of them, over and over, is.
Over and over and over. I had a gastro bug last week, and if I were someone without chronic illness I would have taken the week off and gone to bed while I recovered, but I don’t have that privilege because I tore a ligament in my foot the week before that and I could have spent a few days on the couch icing my swollen foot while it recovered, but I actually couldn’t because the week before that I was up most of the nights with nerve pain, after which I could have taken it easy to get back some sleep deprivation, but I couldn’t because…
Warren has just had the first half of a root canal procedure done, and he’s taking the rest of the day off work because he’s finding it hard to concentrate, and of course he is, and of course he should, but also? The privilege of being unwell rarely enough to afford to do that just makes me so angry. It isn’t fair to him, but I can’t help it – I’m so tired I can barely remember what day of the week it is, but I have still had to try and work and walk the dog and get the washing pile under control and think about my meeting tomorrow, and get the dinner on, try to write another PhD sentence, because all of the paragraph above. I’m just jealous of how he can rest a body to wellness, and so frustrated that my own struggles are minimised because I am able to (I mean, what is the alternative?) carry on.
It’s an exhausting way to be in the world, and nothing much to do about it except to keep plodding, silently, on.
(2+2) equals the wind 
So, so true.
And the nasty thing that the tiredness makes klutziness makes hurt-yourself-in-new-and-creative-ways-ness makes sleep-even-worseness.
sending very gentle hugs – may the shit stop hitting quite so many fans all at once.
LikeLike
And that post (or at least the middle three paragraphs) should be in your thesis in some way. Because the irony is that fatigue isn’t silent. People notice that you are tired/struggling/etc, and then helpfully tell you to “take a break” or “go get some rest” – as if a restorative break is something that you can do at will. The idea that it’s really not an option is very hard to accept.
LikeLike