Notes on exhaustion
Exhaustion isn’t a sign of failure. It’s an appropriate response to living under conditions designed to routinely strip away your humanity and that of others.
Exhaustion is your body slamming on the breaks in a non-stop race towards the ever-elusive safety, stability, ‘success’ or sometimes simply survival.
Exhaustion is the courageous voice in the room that dares to question the parameters of the situation.
Exhaustion is the kind friend, auntie or elder that reminds you that you are a human being made of flesh, soul and bones, not a robot running on AI-powered chips and batteries.
Exhaustion remembers the things you really long for that cannot be measured by your ability to tick all the things off the list.
Close up photograph of a lake surface with the water looking turquoise and soft ripples and sunlight reflecting on the surface
One of the biggest fears people have about getting in touch with their bodies is that they will be overwhelmed by feeling. That once they feel how tired they really are, they’ll never be able to get up again.
That’s real and common, because disassociation is a primary survival strategy under imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy (bell hooks). If we were deeply connected to our bodies all the time, the pain of this reality would be unbearable.
While dissociation helps us get through the day, our bodies won’t be able to exist like that forever. If we keep ignoring their signals indefinitely, they will eventually take over and continuing ‘as normal’ won’t be an option any more.
I’m not suggesting we stop everything and get overwhelmed by our feelings (although there’s nothing wrong when that happens). But we can learn the language of our bodies and take what they are telling us seriously rather than demonising ourselves and each other for having a human response to awful conditions. Meeting your exhaustion with some curiosity about what it might be telling you can be a great place to begin.
This isn’t easy but can be learnt, ideally in community.
If starting with yourself feels too hard, maybe the next time a friend tells you how tired they feel, how ‘unproductive’ they have been, how they just couldn’t get anything done that day, you can offer them some grace and seed the possibility that the exhaustion they’re experiencing might be pointing to an important truth that concerns all of us.