(Image from The Wooden Tarot)
Health and healing is the most infuriating journey I have ever been on. When the journey started I didn’t even understand that I was sick because the main symptom was (and continues to be) crippling fatigue. (There was also A LOT of vomiting in the beginning, sometimes it shocks me to remember how used to that I had gotten.) I’ve struggled off and on with depression since I was in middle school so I associated what I was experiencing with depression because there can be physical symptoms with depression. But the fatigue I was struggling against means that I have spent years averaging five days a week when I can barely get out of bed. That level of illness is also really lonely.
At very long last I’m doing better. But in some ways doing better has been as much of a struggle if not more. The first thing that I noticed was that despite the fact that I have been feeling better I’ve lost an alarming amount of fitness. It’s not like I was a gym rat before I got sick but I find myself getting winded walking up a single flight of stairs. I used to love to go on long walks and I’ve been lucky to be able to walk a mile and it had better be flat, hills are not my friend. When I was sick I had this idea in my head that I would find a treatment or a cure and that would be it, it would all be over. I quickly realized that once I got the illness under control I would have to build back up everything I lost of the years. Also healing doesn’t happen over night. I’ve gone from being able to work one hour a day at most, to two, and now on a good day I can work four hours. I have yet to do that five days in a row (which would be an actual part time job!) but I’m getting there.
The other part of it is that while sick I wasn’t just deprived of the ability to work. I was also deprived of everything I enjoy, of everything that makes me who I am as a person. So I made a point to use my energy on a mix of things. I was getting back to the gym, I was sewing, I was doing this, and I was working more. The last couple weeks have been hectic and stressful and I realized that I have mostly stopped writing, I have stopped sewing, and I don’t remember the last time I went to the gym. Then I caught some kind of bug from my stepson (it sounds like almost everyone in the school district got it) and I was knocked out. He was sick for two days, I was sick for two weeks.
I’m realizing that there may never actually be an end, it might just be a new normal. It often feels like my new normal, what I need to be able to effectively function day after day, is in direct conflict with what our culture says I should be doing. When I start focusing all of my available energy on work I start getting sicker again. There’s this little part of me that wonders if this isn’t happening to everyone, if it wasn’t already happening to me before I got sick. Burnout is a real thing that everyone experiences and I guess I just have the gift (ha) of burning out faster and more dramatically than the average bear.
We are all in desperate need of change. We should all have time every day for work, for taking care of ourselves, our families, and our relationships, for doing the things that make us human. It’s different for everyone but I would say that most of the things that make us human do not involve a screen (she says, while typing words on a screen to be read on a screen). I think that it feeds your soul to do something with your hands, to create something that you can touch and say “I did that”. Gardening. Sewing. Woodworking. Crafting. Plumbing. Whatever nourishes you. But how can anyone do that working forty hours a week, commuting an hour each way, to pay for a house you never get to see and support children you hardly know? How were we ever convinced that this should be normal?
For me the most depressing thing somehow is that the resources exist. Working long hours has become a status symbol, even if your work is already done. We all know someone (or have been in the position) of being done with our work and trying to look busy because we can’t leave until five. Can you imagine telling your boss, “I know it’s only three but I’m done with everything on my to do list so I’m going home to paint.” Yeah, that wouldn’t go over real well. But if wealth were more reasonably distributed and spent, if the obscenely wealthy were required to pay their employees a reasonable amount, if you could support yourself with a parttime job, the world would be a better place. It really would. For me this isn’t about socialism or communism it’s about living how humans are supposed to live. The world just feels more depressed and more stressed out and more disconnected every day. We all need to get up as a group and scream “this is unacceptable and I won’t do it anymore!” But we don’t have the time, we have to work to keep a roof over our head. So things aren’t changing.
Screaming in the Dark 