Being Strong Is Exhausting
Or: Burnout Is The Cost of Relentless Overexertion
Image Description: Little Kelly sits on a brown sofa chair with a striped crocheted blanket hanging over the back. She wears a light green short-sleeved shirt, jeans, and sneakers. She has blondish hair, blue eyes, and a determined face while sitting with arms crossed.
One of the lamentable challenges of living with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis since age two (and the severe joint damage that progressively restricts my strength and motion), is that everything has always been harder to do. Getting up, washing and toileting, dressing, and every mundane daily physical activity involves more strategy, energy, and exertion to accomplish.
Just doing the regular things humans need to do to get through their day wears me out. So doing more than that (like working full time jobs for 25 years) was truly a grind because I already didn’t have energy for it.
Pushing Through Exhaustion…
Recently I was catching up with some other friends who have the same condition from early childhood and we swapped stories about being exhausted all the time, yet still pushing through this severe fatigue to do things like traveling to visit family, going to all of our medical appointments, fulfilling commitments and responsibilities — plus now and again trying to squeeze in some fun and enjoyment purely for ourselves.
In order to propel ourselves through these activities, we pull strength from some deep well buried within our disabled bodies. It is a place deeper than the chronic pain, unrelenting fatigue, and physical limitations where some small scrap of energy can be located. We use our strength and fortitude to show up as much as possible despite pain, fatigue, and physical limitations.
…Leads to Burnout
Recently, I had to admit that this finite source with my last amounts of saved energy has largely vanished. Being strong has exhausted me because it has pushed me well beyond my limits. The well has not been replenished and it has run dry.
