There’s some­thing deeply in­con­ve­nient about be­ing ex­haust­ed when your life is go­ing well.

Re­cent­ly, I went to take a nap and woke up four hours lat­er. At some point be­tween clos­ing my eyes and wak­ing up con­fused about what day it was, my body had ap­par­ent­ly de­cid­ed that what­ev­er plans I had could wait.

No­body tells you that good things can wear you out. We talk about the ex­haus­tion that comes with grief, stress, heart­break and bad news. We un­der­stand be­ing tired when some­thing has gone wrong. But some­times life can be full of things you love and still leave you com­plete­ly wrung out.

And per­haps that is some­thing worth think­ing about dur­ing Sep­tem­ber, when con­ver­sa­tions about men­tal health and sui­cide pre­ven­tion re­mind us of the im­por­tance of pay­ing at­ten­tion to what is hap­pen­ing with­in us. We of­ten look for the ob­vi­ous signs that some­one is strug­gling, but ex­haus­tion can be hard­er to recog­nise when it comes wrapped in a busy sched­ule, ex­cit­ing plans and a life that looks per­fect­ly fine from the out­side.

Late­ly, I have been do­ing a lot. Work, sports, friends, com­mit­ments, op­por­tu­ni­ties. A lot of things that I chose be­cause I want­ed them. A lot of things that have gen­uine­ly made me hap­py.

And some­where in the mid­dle of all that, I got tired. Not sad. Not mis­er­able. Not se­cret­ly falling apart. Just tired. That dis­tinc­tion sounds sim­ple un­til you try ex­plain­ing it to some­body.

The world around us doesn’t ex­act­ly make slow­ing down easy. Every­thing feels ur­gent. Every­body wants every­thing now, and there al­ways seems to be some­thing wait­ing for our at­ten­tion. Mes­sages need re­spons­es, dead­lines need meet­ing, plans need mak­ing, and op­por­tu­ni­ties come with the un­spo­ken pres­sure to grab them be­fore they dis­ap­pear.

Be­ing busy has al­most be­come a mea­sure of how well we’re do­ing. A full cal­en­dar can look like a suc­cess­ful life, even when the per­son car­ry­ing it is qui­et­ly run­ning out of en­er­gy.

A few days ago, I was talk­ing to some friends about an op­por­tu­ni­ty I re­al­ly want­ed. I had been ex­cit­ed about it. I still am. But the more we talked about what it would take to fit it in­to my al­ready-full life, the more over­whelmed I be­came.

Then I got emo­tion­al. Which was, frankly, an­noy­ing.

I wasn’t emo­tion­al be­cause I didn’t want the op­por­tu­ni­ty. It was ac­tu­al­ly be­cause I did want it, and I was sud­den­ly look­ing at every­thing else al­ready tak­ing up space in my life and won­der­ing where I was sup­posed to put one more thing.

My friends told me some­thing I didn’t want to hear. They said I was do­ing too much. They said I might burn my­self out. They told me not to take it on.

Part of me want­ed to say, “But I want to.”

That’s the strange thing about ex­haus­tion when life is go­ing well. There’s noth­ing ob­vi­ous to blame. No­body has hurt you, noth­ing ter­ri­ble has hap­pened, you’re not mis­er­able. In fact, you might be hav­ing some of the best mo­ments you’ve had in a while.

But you start run­ning on emp­ty while en­joy­ing your­self. And be­cause the things fill­ing your time are good things, it be­comes very easy to keep go­ing.

There’s al­ways an­oth­er thing to do. An­oth­er per­son to see. An­oth­er com­mit­ment to keep. An­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty that might not come around again. An­oth­er thing that makes you think, “Well, I can’t say no to this.”

So you keep say­ing yes, un­til one day you re­alise that you’ve be­come the per­son who needs a four-hour nap af­ter go­ing out for the day.

There’s a par­tic­u­lar kind of guilt that comes with be­ing tired when you have noth­ing to com­plain about. You start think­ing about all the peo­ple who have more on their plates, peo­ple work­ing longer hours, rais­ing chil­dren, car­ing for rel­a­tives or deal­ing with cir­cum­stances far hard­er than yours. You think about how lucky you are. You tell your­self that you should be able to han­dle it.

But ex­haus­tion isn’t a com­pe­ti­tion. Some­one else hav­ing more to car­ry doesn’t make your load dis­ap­pear. And maybe you can han­dle it. But be­ing able to han­dle some­thing and hav­ing the en­er­gy to keep han­dling it are two dif­fer­ent things.

We tend to treat rest like a re­ward. Fin­ish every­thing first, then rest. Get through the busy pe­ri­od, then rest. Help every­body else, meet the dead­line, take the op­por­tu­ni­ty, show up, keep mov­ing, and even­tu­al­ly there will be a lit­tle cor­ner of the day left over for you.

The trou­ble is that “even­tu­al­ly” has a fun­ny way of nev­er ar­riv­ing.

There will al­ways be some­thing else.

That is why I have been think­ing about in­ten­tion­al rest. Not col­laps­ing in­to bed be­cause your body has fi­nal­ly staged a coup. Not tak­ing a day off on­ly be­cause you have reached the point where you can­not func­tion. Ac­tu­al rest, cho­sen be­fore you des­per­ate­ly need it.

There’s some­thing un­com­fort­able about choos­ing not to do some­thing when you could do it, es­pe­cial­ly when that some­thing is good, es­pe­cial­ly when you want it. But our en­er­gy has lim­its, even when our en­thu­si­asm doesn’t. There are on­ly so many hours in a day, and even­tu­al­ly the body starts keep­ing its own ac­counts.

Some­times that looks like falling asleep for four hours when you meant to take a quick nap. Some­times it looks like get­ting emo­tion­al over an op­por­tu­ni­ty you gen­uine­ly want­ed. Some­times it is sim­ply sit­ting some­where qui­et and re­al­is­ing that you don’t want to go any­where.

None of those things mean that life is bad. It sim­ply means that the hu­man body isn’t a ma­chine, and maybe that’s the part a lot of us are still learn­ing.

We’ve been talk­ing a lot late­ly about self-care. But self-care doesn’t al­ways mean treat­ing your­self to a fan­cy get­away or soak­ing in a lux­u­ri­ous bath. Some­times, it’s just ad­mit­ting when you need a break and tak­ing one. Some­times it means leav­ing a mes­sage unan­swered for a lit­tle while, turn­ing down an in­vi­ta­tion or ac­cept­ing that you can­not fit one more thing in­to an al­ready crowd­ed day.

That isn’t lazi­ness. It is pay­ing at­ten­tion.

Dur­ing a month ded­i­cat­ed to men­tal health aware­ness and sui­cide pre­ven­tion, per­haps we should al­so make room for the qui­eter con­ver­sa­tions about how we are liv­ing. Not on­ly whether we are cop­ing with a cri­sis, but whether we have giv­en our­selves any space to breathe be­fore reach­ing one.

This col­umn is sup­plied in con­junc­tion with the T&T Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion.

Head­quar­ters: 118 Duke Street, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad

Email: ttb­wa1914@gmail.com

Phone: (868) 624-4675

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