Exhaustion is a clever chameleon. She looks different depending on the time of day and the defenses at her disposal.
She’s bright-eyed in the mornings, despite the pang at the back of her pupils begging to go back to bed, if even for just a five-minute snooze.
Early rays of gold prompt her out from underneath the covers and guide her to her home office; the only room in her apartment that’s veiled in sunshine, until the giant star calls it a day. The natural light stirs awake something like motivation, but just enough to get her fingers moving across the keyboard.
We’re the kind of friends who can go months without seeing one another and pick up right where we left off. Then, sometimes, our visits become more frequent, depending on our schedules.
When I call her into the kitchen, her brown tresses are all over the place; flyaways poking out in every direction. She has the most beautiful hair, and it’s a wonder how it stays so healthy in these various stages of chaos.
She can’t pause writing if she wants to keep her momentum up, so until at least noon she works in whatever she slept in the night before, be it a matching lounge set or a sweatshirt and boy shorts. Her teeth and hair go unbrushed, her face unwashed. If she eats, it’s takeout for the extra jolt of dopamine that will inevitably fizzle out and lead to a crash she physically can’t afford.
“It’s a cycle I haven’t figured out how to break,” she tells me as I plate a blueberry muffin from Dunkin, her favorite. I sneak a peek as she plucks a fork from a drawer while I cut the pastry in quarters. Under her eyes are purple-blue half-moons. She quickly covers her mouth as she yawns so big it makes her entire petite frame shiver. But when she drops her hand, she’s smiling. She loves the morning, even if she only sees it through foggy eyes.
The motivation to get words on the page she’s sourced from the a.m. sunshine is short-lived and has all near depleted by noon. Exhaustion operates on a very specific schedule, even when battling sleep deprivation.
“Time to put my face on,” she says with a sigh and a nod, gesturing me to follow her into the master bathroom. Despite the bottles of cleanser, containers of cream, and serum dispensers, she skips her skincare routine altogether and, instead, reaches for a stick of concealer, which she sloppily swipes along her under eyes to cover up the aforementioned purple-blue bags.
She catches me staring in the doorway. “They’re genetic,” she says, not looking at me but at her reflection, dabbing the area with a makeup sponge. It’s not a false statement, but it isn’t the whole truth.
Exhaustion doesn’t talk about how tired she is. Bottling it up is embedded in her as a “the news never sleeps” journalist, member of hustle culture, and woman. Her to-do list doesn’t help, nor the emails piled so high in her inbox she can’t possibly keep track of them all, let alone reply to every single one.
I know she tries her best. She’s gotten pretty good at the juggling act. She just hasn’t learned how to add sleep to her cascade.
“I’m ready.” She taps my arm gently, bringing me out of my zoning. She’s done the bare minimum because time is not on her side. She never stops what she’s doing, only pauses long enough to accomplish some other task, and getting ready for a day already half gone feels trivial. So does making the bed, which is why the sheets remain in the same state of disarray they were in when she kicked them off hours ago.
The concealer did a decent job hiding the circles, though we both know they’re still there. Mascara, no eyeliner. Chapstick, not lipstick. Now her uniform consists of her stretchiest jeans and a hoodie; her dry-shampooed hair rests in a clump of a bun at the nape of her neck.
“Do you want coffee?”
Her stomach can’t handle caffeine, but on days like this, she’ll grab the cold brew that isn’t marked decaffeinated for a jolt. She’ll deal with the pains like she deals with everything else. Another thing on her to-do list.
Each sip makes her mind race a little faster and her fingers type quicker, but in the same way that the sugars from the muffin move through her system and eventually stop working their magic, so does the coffee by late afternoon. Now between sentences, she logs on to YouTube and feverishly opens new tab after new tab of videos she won’t watch. She checks various dot coms for interesting-sounding articles she won’t read.
The last hours of the workday drag and little gets done. We barely speak because I know she can’t hold a conversation. Not a meaningful one, anyway. There’s no work, there’s no play. There are attempts, but her focus is gone. There’s so much to do, and not enough time to do it.
There’s a tree outside the window behind her desk. It’s as big as her apartment building, and the branches extend into her line of vision. In the fall, the leaves turn bright orange and bleed a citrus glow into her space. She misses the color until Spring blooms swell pink, a sign of life she wishes she could feel through the smog. The smog could go away as soon as tomorrow if she lightened her load and took care of herself. Treated herself to a bubble bath, a cup of tea. Went to sleep sooner.
Every part of her body feels heavy, even her fingertips. She doesn’t even have the energy to call out to her husband in the next room, let alone drag herself off her computer chair.
I pass him on my way out and hear his phone ping.
She texted him instead.
Earlier this week, I shared a conversation with my dear friend, author Devon Loftus. If you haven’t read that one yet, I implore that you do.
We discussed her upcoming title, Dwell, and how our emotions are things that deserve exploration. In her book, Devon shares creative essays in which she brilliantly personifies an array of emotions in an attempt to understand them better. And without judgment.
This was my first attempt at doing the same.
Exhaustion and I have seen a lot of each other lately, and I found myself getting frustrated at her. “Wake up!” I wanted to scream into the void. I wanted to shake her back to consciousness.
But there are reasons why I’m exhausted, and reasons why I respond the way I do to this overwhelming feeling.
Through Devon’s guided practice, I was prompted to see Exhaustion for who she is: A person who needs a little extra self-care and rest before she can step through the fog.
Dwell will be available on April 18th. I hope you will treat yourself to this creative work and guided journal. As Devon articulated so beautifully in our conversation, emotions are “a universal language we all speak.” Why wouldn’t you want to fine-tune your dialect?
Meet Exhaustion
This had such a beautiful flow, Julia. I loved reading it. It really is such a clever way to confront an emotion!