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Based both on my sporadic dating history and my wanderlust, I never expected to settle into a serious long-term relationship right out of college.
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.
One might say living is simply a series of discoveries and adaptations.
Convalescence is learning to become kin not only with uncertainty but also with boredom, the frustration of non-doing.
Our life together now has an openness and receptivity absent from the middle years. We laugh more readily at our foibles; we don’t hesitate to ask each other for help.
