FATIGUE

I was sunk all day yesterday in a feeling of fatigue so overwhelming that I could scarcely bring myself to get up from the couch. I barely glanced at the Sunday newspapers--we get two of them at the weekend--and the only relief I found was in working on leftover crosswords from the Friday and Saturday issues. Crosswords, for me, an inveterate word lover, are the ultimate distraction.

We do keep up with a semblance of our exercise practice in this weird circumstance in which we find ourselves. In normal times, I make my regular visits to the gym and follow a workout routine with my friend and mentor, Charles. Now, with gyms closed, we have dug out some old weights from the back of a closet where they lay neglected over many years and brought them back into service for at least a relatively light workout. And we take walks pretty much every day, a mile or two, in the hilly area around our home.

So it's not that I have been a total couch potato, but there is still no physical reason for this debilitating fatigue. It's not like I have been doing anything to make me tired. I suspect, then, that I have been burying a good deal of fear these past couple of weeks, both for my family and myself, and a good deal of grief for the loss of many of those daily rituals that underpin the structure of my life.

It's perhaps my rejection of those feelings, my stubborn refusal to allow them to color my response to the pandemic that is at the root of the fatigue I have been observing, and that overwhelmed me yesterday. I was listening with half an ear--well, one ear--to a television broadcast in which the interviewee was at pains to remind the audience that the suppression of emotional responses can produce unwelcome physical effects.

It's not that I'm unaware of this phenomenon--but apparently I still need to be reminded once in a while. It seems I should spend more time in awareness, less time burying the inner life as I escape into the distraction of the crossword! That inner life goes on without me, even if I choose to pay it no attention.