“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.” – Sylvia Plath.
We wear fatigue like a second skin. Watch as it melts over flesh, seeping into the crumbly crevices of our bodies. Feel as it settles deep in the marrow of our bones, heavy and aching—yet quiet—like a lingering whisper.
Fatigue will try to rip the skin off our bones, bloodying our hands as we fight off the final morsels of exhaustion that cling stubbornly to the little gaps between our heartstrings. Fatigue can dull the brightest and happiest of moments—rob us of the child-like wonder that we all speak of missing, yet never try to reconnect with.
I am tired. And it fills the silence in awkward conversations, creeping into the still air. God, I’m so tired. I slept so little last night. I want to go home. Sometimes, I mean it. Sometimes, it slips off my tongue so naturally—as if it’s my way of greeting—it catches me by surprise.
We wear our fatigue like a medal. Watch as it hangs at the junction of our throats, glinting menacingly when the light hits it just right. Feel as it sits heavy on our sternums, drawing gazes towards it, magnetic.
The truth is, we love to complain. We love to talk about how exhausted we are. How the world—in all of its obtusely jutting, jarring ugliness—has worn us down to nothing but shreds of ourselves. How little sleep we get, how little time we have, how cruel the world can be.
Everyday, there is a new article about a shooting. About a war-torn country. About a missing child. About a new disease. About an economic crisis. About grief. Sorrow. Loss. Pain. Cruelty. And it grabs us in a chokehold, squeezing until we are blinded by our ignorance; and our first line of defense is always our fatigue.
Compassion Fatigue: the cost of caring for others or for their emotional pain, resulting from the desire to help relieve the suffering of others.
Our fatigue confines us—behind bars of restraint and close-mindedness. We are too scared to live the hues of life that have been untouched, unexplored. We are too scared to give parts of ourselves to people other than ourselves—too scared to peer into the lives of others in fear of falling in too deep.
Our fatigue silences us—robs us of our voices as we watch injustice unfold right before our eyes everyday. We are too absorbed in the little details of our own lives to dedicate even a fraction of our attention towards others. We are too absorbed, we simply stand by as dystopian fiction becomes reality. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy: what was once profane is now profound, and what was once profound is now profane.
I realized that people are not inherently evil at a very young age. Took the little moments of warmth: the way the cashiers at the grocery smiled at me and asked how my day was going, the way people cried when they watched sad movies and laughed when they watched happy ones, the way we are all uniquely ourselves yet filled with the same substance of human.
We are all here to live. And as humans, our lives are too short to be spent hidden, lurking in the shadows of fatigue.
We were born equipped with a palette of diverse emotions—spanning all colors and shades. Go out and read a heart wrenching book that’ll make you cry for hours. Watch a good movie that will make you laugh out loud. Fill yourself with indescribable, suffocating rage. Meet new people. Fall in love with who you’re with, where you are, what you do. Reconnect with the inner child that lives within you. Try new things. Be unapologetically you.
We wear our fatigue like a coat of armor. Watch as it hides us from the world—from the emotions we are all too terrified to feel. Feel as it drains us of our ability to be human, simply incorporating us into an endless sea of society and not individual.
Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. And let go of your fatigue. Shed.
And watch as the color spills back into the world. As the life slowly drips back into your veins.
Trust me.
Love,
A fellow survivor of fatigue.
