Tired Is Good

I haven’t blogged much this year. Writing was my go-to remedy in dealing with life’s stresses. But I think in the past few years, it became a contributing factor to many of those same stresses – the fallout of making it my profession and also part of my social life. The stage found me though and I find the same ease when I go up in front of a mic as I once used to, when faced by an open screen or blank page. It’s evolution and I’m glad for an alternate source of expression and insight.
I do however, want to start writing again, the way I used to be able to – sharing openly, blindly and as honestly as possible. It has always felt good to share. I am however, tired.

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2016 has not been the terrible year for me that it appears to have been for others. 2012 was that year for me, the year my engagement ended and shattered life as I knew it. 2015 was dark though I didn’t know it when it began. I entered 2016 in such a daze I didn’t even realise how far down a rabbit hole I had plunged. I’ve been looking back at my posts from this time and they’re so empty of the passion, the hope, the searing emotions that characterises my writing of the past 11 years. It made me question my own identity, my sense of self.

There was thankfully, light at the end of the tunnel and yes, it really was as sudden and dramatic as that. I had started to believe that I might need medical help. What turned up though, surprised me in its mundanity – a thyroid deficiency. My first reaction was to feel grateful that a cause had at least been identified but it was a grim sort of gratitude. I have a memory of my mother crying all night after she was diagnosed with a thyroid deficiency and the doctors told her she’d have to take a pill for the rest of her life. But in the days that followed, I discovered a lot of people in my life, already on the same regimen. The turning point was when my mother explained that the pill was not medicine but something that would supplement what my body didn’t produce as well.

Why did this make me feel better? Because it was saying there was nothing wrong with me, no yawning darkness inside that had to be fought. It was a simple matter of a chemical deficiency that could be rectified. Last month my dosage was reduced. And even if it hadn’t been, the months since the diagnosis have been so much better.
The world hasn’t changed from outside. But I don’t get up in the morning, struggling to hold a single thought that can pick me out of bed and go through the motions of the day. I am not wildly happy all the time, not even happy that much. But there is enough to keep my days going well. The question of “Why bother?” doesn’t occur to me most of the time. This is a big change from when WHY BOTHER marked my every breath and action for more than a year, maybe longer. For this one reason 2016 for me has been reprieve, release, healing, a flight to freedom.

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I had an encounter with my ex a few months ago. It was strange. Not terrifying or disturbing like I had feared. Just strange. I didn’t recognise him at first. And then when I did, there was a split-second moment when I realised the person standing in front of me had absolutely nothing to do with the person in my memories. It’s very, very strange to realise you don’t recognise the person you thought you would spend the rest of your life with, donate an organ to if it were ever needed and care for in your old age. For awhile after that, I questioned what the meaning was of love, life and relationships if one drastic action and some years could take a relationship from the focal point of your life to unrecognisable. I think I only gave up because I became too tired to go down that line of thought.

Tired is good. Tired is what I felt when in 2012, someone from my past asked me, “Have you forgiven me?”. In that moment of extreme fatigue, I put down my worries and my baggage and I never looked back again. So, I’m glad to be tired.

*Image via Antonina Bukowska on Unsplash

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Well look at that, I started writing and I’ve come all the way down to the end of a page. Looks like writing is my bicycling then. I feel gratitude like it’s the quality of mercy described in The Merchant of Venice – not strained but dropping like the gentle rain.

There is literature. And clarity. And food and friends. And writing and this blog. 2016 has been the supplement that my life needed.