In her columns, our collaborator Nathalie Plaat calls on your stories. To open November, she wanted to hear your fatigue and know your talismans and other “white pebbles” to take to your island. The “News from you” section offers an excerpt chosen from your responses.
There was a time, long ago, when the sweet melancholy of November was loved and celebrated. I was expecting it. I welcomed him. The little deaths of nature were a source of creativity, in a transitional space where words, bearers of meaning, served as comforters. I became a poet. My winter refuge. My cave of silence and hushed well-being.
I can still recreate this space, but it’s more difficult. You have to decide to neglect something else, housework, work, sport, property… I won’t neglect my children, but they have also learned to play on their own.
Faced with the difficulty of finding my refuge, I get tired. Sometimes I feel solicited from everywhere, like a mother cat nursing a big howling litter. Sometimes I hold my breath thinking about my next vacation, where I visualize the great joy of doing nothing. Nothing at all. Sometimes I say “fuck all” and go swimming. I uninstalled Messenger from my mobile devices. I know that I offend those who would like to see me, but my fatigue requires silence to live well. If I take care of it, it can be an ally: it tells me when to stop before I collapse.
Breaking down has happened before. It’s been called compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma, the famous burnout of those who work in a helping relationship. There was work, of course, but life too: loved ones who die, a separation, the waltz of my own issues, all that! The little deaths…
Other voices, other fatigues
My current fatigue is mainly composed of a “end” of responsibilities and a disappointment in adult life. I wonder how it happened, suddenly they count on me to take on lots of important responsibilities, I become the parent everywhere, in good object/bad object mode. I still feel like a young woman, but I turned 50 this year. I feel that things are expected of me and I want to answer that it does not belong to me. It tires me. I can’t contain everything all the time. I would like to be left alone.
I’m exasperated. Often. All this ordinary violence that I witness everywhere wears down my ideals. My fatigue can make me disillusioned, cynical, very dark. I give up where before, I would have fought. My fatigue chooses its battles and it has chosen to write to you this morning, to thank you for talking about it.