{"id":4486,"date":"2015-12-05T18:10:12","date_gmt":"2015-12-05T23:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/jenniferfitz\/?p=4486"},"modified":"2015-12-05T18:10:12","modified_gmt":"2015-12-05T23:10:12","slug":"inside-tired-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jenniferfitz\/2015\/12\/inside-tired-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Tired World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The other morning I dreamt my editors here at the Catholic Channel had me to dinner, then put on masks and pulled out fake guns (brief moment of wondering: Um, those are fake, right?) and told me to blog something about my life. \u00a0It was more amusing and complex a dream than just that, but for blogging purposes, that was the essence of it.<\/p>\n

The reason for my recent absence from the internet is simple: Normal weekly absence for teaching, have a cold, Thanksgiving, have a cold, can\u2019t remember what, have a cold . . . the days start to add up. \u00a0Nothing serious. \u00a0No drama. \u00a0Just day after day of having to decide where the priorities are, and deciding that my kids come first.<\/p>\n

So I wanted to talk about what it is to be hit by the tiredness of chronic illness, because it\u2019s not like people think.<\/p>\n

1. I almost never talk about it.<\/strong>\u00a0 It\u2019s boring and complicated and I have a hard time explaining it. \u00a0Also, when I talk to you, I feel great. \u00a0Maybe light-headed and exhausted, but seeing you or hearing what you have to say is one of the best things that happened to me all day. \u00a0So yeah, I\u2019m doing great at that particular moment, because you the person asking me \u201cHow\u2019s it going?\u201d have just made it so.<\/p>\n

2. Stamina is different from peak performance. \u00a0<\/strong>Back when I was a middling competitive cyclist, if I wanted to place well in a race I had to sit in the pack most of the time, because over the course of the race there was no way I could ride as fast, cumulatively, as the best riders out there. \u00a0But at any given moment, sure, I could break into a sprint, or a semi-sprint that didn\u2019t even look like I was trying that hard. \u00a0What you can do for a minute is different than what you can do for an hour.<\/p>\n

What chronic illness looks like is racing on a micro scale. \u00a0Physical exertion, the kind that gets you moving and your blood pumping and your body out into the world, is fun stuff. \u00a0Exhilarating. \u00a0It isn\u2019t necessarily a slog. \u00a0You step out, work it a bit, have a great time, then go rest and recover.<\/p>\n

What this means to those of us living the micro-race is that we look perfectly normal when people\u00a0see us, because we\u2019re enjoying our sprint-minutes, or our brisk-walk-on-bright-morning minutes.<\/p>\n

Maybe people who\u2019ve never taken pleasure in physical exertion can\u2019t understand this. \u00a0But those of you who have, you can.<\/p>\n

3. Tired takes you by surprise. \u00a0<\/strong>Everyone gets tired. \u00a0You stayed up too late, or you worked hard, or you had a difficult week, or you\u2019re getting over that cold, or you have toddlers: You\u2019re tired. \u00a0You can point to the thing that\u2019s making you tired, and know that you\u2019ll recover and be back to normal.<\/p>\n

Tired with chronic illness comes on in one of those guises, because there\u2019s always something in your life you can point to as a possible explanation, but then one day you realize that it\u2019s not normal-tired.<\/p>\n

Normal people don\u2019t store a sleeping bag in their car so they can nap during the kids\u2019 ball game. \u00a0 Normal people don\u2019t dread the exhaustion of sitting for a couple hours at an enjoyable theater performance, make themselves go anyway, and halfway through start looking around for someplace to lie down. \u00a0Normal people don\u2019t have to make rules like only running one load of laundry a day, because they don\u2019t have a history of running one-and-a-half loads and then just not being able to pull off getting that second load moved in and out of the dryer and the shirts hung up.<\/p>\n

Tired World Confuses Outsiders Because it Confuses the Person Inside It, Too<\/h3>\n

One of the nearly universal characteristics of chronic illness is that it isn\u2019t steady-state. \u00a0Just when you think you\u2019ve pegged the new-normal, normal changes. \u00a0Better or worse, both happen. \u00a0 You think to yourself, \u201cOh, that\u2019s going to just exhaust me but I have to do it,\u201d and then it turns out nope, actually conditions conspired in your favor and it all went very well and you feel just fine. \u00a0(For you, anyway.) \u00a0Or you make some commitment that is entirely within your normal scope of abilities, and it inexplicably fails.<\/p>\n

Things fall apart, or fall together, in strange ways. \u00a0Suddenly you\u2019re getting exhausted every day at 3pm, and since you work at home you can take a nap and you\u2019re good. \u00a0If you live a scheduled life, this means that things that happen at 1pm and 5 pm hold together fine, but anything that normally occurred at the new witching hour are just gone. \u00a0You the inhabitant of tired world are left scratching your head, wondering why you manage x & z just fine, but y\u2019s out the window and you aren\u2019t sure when you lost it or how.<\/p>\n

The types of tired betray you, too. \u00a0There\u2019s a difference, we all know, between tired of filling out tax forms and the tired of jogging around the neighborhood. \u00a0Both of them will induce genuine fatigue even in people who enjoy those activities. \u00a0(Such people exist. \u00a0I kid you not.) \u00a0You can be too tired for one and raring to go on the other.<\/p>\n

Part of the maze of traveling through\u00a0tired-world is discovering something that was never really a problem before now just owns you. \u00a0 Lately I can go all day without coughing, then something makes me cough, and the effort of it leaves me so tired I have to lay down for a while.* \u00a0And then I\u2019m fine.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know why it\u2019s so tiring. \u00a0No symptoms of an actual pulmonary illness (and yes, that\u2019s a pulmonologist-verified claim). \u00a0Just another interesting day in tired world.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

*For something amusing, visit TV Tropes on the Incurable Cough of Death<\/a>. \u00a0Note that visiting this Wiki will lead you into link after entertaining link, which could end up costing you a lot of time. \u00a0If you\u2019re a writer, it\u2019s an excellent education. The site includes a number of morally-problematic tropes, so proceed with caution.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"File:Henry<\/p>\n

\u00a0Artwork: Henry Meynell Rheam [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other morning I dreamt my editors here at the Catholic Channel had me to dinner, then put on masks and pulled out fake guns (brief moment of wondering: Um, those are fake, right?) and told me to blog something about my life. \u00a0It was more amusing and complex a dream than just that, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[205],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disability-chronic-illness"],"yoast_head":"\nInside Tired World<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The other morning I dreamt my editors here at the Catholic Channel had me to dinner, then put on masks and pulled out fake guns (brief moment of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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