Fatigue

by Jennifer Acker

Our conditions needed constant tending. Our mutual vigilance, our active caretaking—these things were new. We had to work hard to learn them. We have had to change and adapt and discover in real time what it means to need each other intensely and routinely. To each suffer and struggle to support the other. It’s not how we imagined our marriage. And yet, over the past four years, this interdependence has become the aspect of our relationship we most cherish.

Fatigue, I learned, is not the absence of energy, just as sadness is not the absence of happiness. Fatigue is a force unto itself; it sucks you dry like a dentist’s tool and punches you in the solar plexus. You lack reserves. You feel raw, unpeeled. Small barbs wound deeply; the self-pity adds up. The suffering of both loved ones and complete strangers strikes so much more deeply than before. But crying gives you a headache, so you try to avoid it. Sometimes you can’t try hard enough and your voice cracks and you go to a dark, speechless place.

The space between us continues to be porous, grateful, and adoring. Our needs are not in competition but in partnership. Our needing each other has created a fierce and loving noticing. Because there is no love without noticing.