Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
I’ve often wondered whether I will ever get better again, or whether constant fatigue is my new reality.
Logic says that it will. There’s nothing identifiably chronic about my health. Yet logic also dictates that this should have been over by now too. In fact, if everything was dictated by logic, I don’t really think I should be sick anyway.
For every positive marker, there is a countersign which confuses everything. For every better night sleep and blood test score, there is an accompanying new debilitating pain and wave of fatigue. It can be practically impossible to really understand what’s going on. Yet spending more time worrying about it will also make me sicker.
There is something that feels particularly cruel about my situation. I see many people with more chaotic, unhealthy lives that are totally vivacious. They can live without a care in the world, and often can be the ones that love to give advice on how to stay healthy.
I also see people who have taken great liberties with their health and then collapsed as I have done. These folk can often fall into bitterness, disguising their regret for ignoring the warning signs.
After a few years of questioning myself, I’ve come to the conclusion that I didn’t actually do much ‘wrong’. My years preceding burnout was me doing an incredible amount of inner work. My health and fitness were areas I put a particularly high focus. There were no big issues that I was ignoring, or big emotional problems I was hiding in the closet.
Yet despite this, my burnout has taken me down a trek of emotional turmoil, whilst my body feels in its most broken condition ever. Looking back, I’m not sure there’s anything I would have particularly changed. On a sober assessment, I think most things were out of my control.
I’m aware that there are ways to rationalise this. The latest recovery wave is going harder and deeper to the core. Although it may be counterintuitive, this is a sign that my body has the capability to deal with things that earlier on it simply could not. Returning health and vivacity to my skin and nails somewhat back this up. So does literature on the pattern of burnout recovery.
Yet there is also a part of me that wonders whether this is more a fool’s hope, rather than rationalised thinking. Am I wisely putting my faith into the universal law of nature, or am I simply a gambler, constantly convincing one’s self that the pay off is coming soon?
It is one of those moments where the truth doesn’t actually matter a whole lot. Giving up would be dooming myself to a negative option either way, so there is little choice in continuing, come what may.
I am not sure if this stoicism is particularly hopeful. But at least it keeps me going.