The days have been too warm and exhausting, every movement requires effort. Even breathing feels like a beast of its own. It may seem effortless, a natural extension of our humanity. But today, these days, to me, it’s become more a feeling of choice than of subconscious effortlessness. On days when I am really physically exhausted, I can literally feel my own safeguards fall away. It’s as if my sense of safety is predicated on being well rested. It takes a lot of conscious effort on my end to just be welcoming. I don’t know if that simply means that my more unhinged self is my real self, this tired and constantly cranky version that feels like a massage is necessary almost daily.
This heatwave is killing me. And even when it’s cooled down, the sleeplag I’ve felt the past few days is simply catching up to my present self. I have this very strange thing where especially when I feel particularly exhausted, I also end up catastrophising and make everything seem nearly impossible to do. Everything seems impossible to me right now, whether is inviting guests over for dinner or keeping myself calm about my day to day or thinking about what to do in the future. That last part has been particualrly difficult for me, it’s been very confronting these past few weeks. I am running out of time, I think this. That the years I spend wasting away on ‘rest’ is another great way to cast away the youth I think I still have.
It’s called a burnout because your candle has run out of wax and string to burn through. It’s called a burnout because you lose whatever it is that keeps you creative, happy, excited, and joyous. Today, it feels like I am underwater again. Above me an ocean rests and civilisation traverses, below me is a deep unknown that only takes your voice as you beckon towards it. Around me, all around me, there sits but a pressure so everlasting. It doesn’t crush but it does press deep into my skin and through my meat and into my bones. I am held not in gentleness but in control, where my will seems not my own. Where my movement is restricted, where muscles have no say and must simply attend to keeping its shape than to be crushed by this pressure. But oddly enough, there is something liberating about simply riding the current.
If falling into the ocean is a part of my fate, then who am I to decide against it? Right now, I am carried by the current into deeper deeps and roundabouts and through other currents. And ever so often I am carried near the surface to be reminded of what must be done. I just want to close my eyes, to let fate take its course, to be moved instead of the fake agency and panic I am reminded of by the surface. I want to focus on the feeling of pressure and to equalise it. To stop it from running rampant like a rabid animal eager to take its teeth and to bite into my flesh. There is no world where I am happy, that must be a universal constant. There are no endpoints, no finish lines, no moments of really coming out and surfacing.
Every inhale is a beast. What I mean by that is that to me, right now, inhaling is a conscious effort. Being alive, keeping myself awake, moving, eating, they all feel like a beast that requires taming. My body feels like a beast that requires taming, discipline, like something that needs to be controlled lest it move like an actual beast. It takes a lot of energy to be alive, even more so when you don't feel like being alive is enough to be alive.
I am daunted by the future, daunted by the ideas of what I cannot become. I am an unforgivably stupid animal, terribly pessimistic, unhopeful, unwilling to give more energy to the world. It doesn't even have to be about making the world a better place. Today, I am exhausted, so exhausted that I really have nothing useful to say or to offer to someone else around me. Today, I feel very much like I am a burden that requires tending to. I am a plant whose roots have rotted and the effort it will take to save me is not something I can come towards. Right now, I feel like I need to be handed a chance to give effort. Like I want to prove myself again. But I already know that that will not cause me any joy or peace. Instead, it will be more exhaustion, more disappointment, and more unforigivingly crushing pressure. To be liquefied by water, maybe that is the fate that my soul is resigned to.