Yesterday while at the fair for ARC, I was talking to an ARC Vista about flashlights. Being a disaster readiness fair, she had some of the ARC crank up radio/charger/flashlight/time machine gadgets. I told the story about arguing with T about flashlights in the house; wherein I believed there were plenty they just needed love and she wanted to buy more. Thus, I bought her one of the aforementioned gadgets for Christmas. It sits in the window in the living room, an inconvenient place for a flashlight. I suppose it was a joke, but it is a useful product. Anyway, I was talking to the Vista and I pulled out my maglite from my belt to explain my flashlight preparation. I realize this means I’m a dork, and I hadn’t really thought of it that way before.

R emailed me this:

Last night I talked with my friend Cabout what it was like when
she lost her parents. One of the things she spoke about the most was
the fatigue. She said that the weight of the emotions (loss,
confusion, new comprehension of her own mortality) was so heavy that
she just didn’t have the energy for anything. For a while she
communicated with friends mostly by text message because conversations
were too much work.

Apparently it’s typical for people who haven’t been through the
process themselves to expect you to want and need their support right
off the bat, and then expect you to get over it within a few weeks or
months. According to C, that’s backwards. She needed people to
give her space in the beginning, then be gentle and understanding when
she was still grieving a year later.

I was thinking about it this morning when I woke up, specifically about the word fatigue. It means something slightly different than tired to me, and I think it is the right word for something I’ve been trying to explain. It isn’t sleepy so much as it is worn out. I haven’t been able to work many extra hours lately, despite wanting to. There just hasn’t been enough waking time.

I’ve thought, written, and talked much about my inability to measure stress most of the time. Particularly of interest is that which might be called traumatic stress. Fatigue is probably the best indicator I have to having had a ‘hard day.’