Exhaustion
1 January 2021: The street dogs have set up a commotion tonight. It’s New Year and paradoxically, the quietest night in weeks – since the lockdown lifted, the city noises have crept back. Construction, traffic, agitated night life even – the sounds that declare the city is alive. And yet, tonight is silent and still. It was overcast and muggy all this new year day. The smog lifted towards dusk and the city, exhausted, fell quiet.
Exhaustion, like this night, creeps up on you. It sucks slowly at the marrow of your soul and leaves your brain in a stupor.
At first, it didn’t seem like hard work – the optimism, the gritted teeth, the counting of your blessings each day. The year that passed us by with a growl and a threat – it took much more out of our deepest reserves than we realised. Some gave in to despair early on. The sudden isolation, loss of touch, hidden behind a mask – these were triggers for the gregarious as much as for the already vulnerable. Fatigue set in and never really left. Some of us took stock – of our cobwebbed lives, of our needs and wants and desires. We came up empty – the fast paced lives that we had once imagined to be our only reality, fell away from us like air-kissing friends. Some despaired. Some soldiered on. I don’t know what I would have done simply because I was rescued early on by serendipity. Just as the enormity of the lockdown hit us, a fierce and kind heart set me a goal and a target. It was couched in words I understood. Stop dicking around and write the damn book. One thousand words a day. Start today.
The next few months passed in a blur of revisiting, retraumatising, learning to heal again. The goal of one thousand words was a hard one – most days, I did not want to face the sordidness of my thoughts. I ranted and complained and wept but some instinct told me that this was my last chance – to vomit out the book I’d spent twenty years writing in my head. Oh yes, that too was said at that serendipitous meeting: make sure it’s fresh vomit.
The euphoria of completing a draft (kind heart said: lazy effort, needs work) was a high such as I’d never before experienced. I sailed through the tough middle months of lockdown, seemingly untouchable. The excitement kept building and nothing could bring me down. Three more drafts and then the moment of truth. I shared my words with a very few. The euphoria continued as they reached out with words of encouragement and support. Some called me brave. Others said my words were brutally honest. All agreed that I must stay true to the words and strong. But around the edges of my mind, there were the first inklings that I had finally run out of energy.
For years, I had fed the small flame of memory by refusing to forget, or to let go. That little fire kept me from freezing over. When the words became real, instead of fleeting thoughts in my head, the flame became a roar. It consumed all of my life for the months of the lockdown. It burnt bright, feeding off my reserves of strength. And then, the book was written: now the oxygen was cut off, and the fire died an abrupt death. The words found a new life, a new home and left me to wander the empty spaces where I had hidden them.
That is when the exhaustion hit. All that optimism leached away, all the excitement and the accomplishment, until I was brought to my knees with a tired body and a blank mind. It didn’t help that the feedback suddenly lashed out and bit. It wasn’t unexpected, the reaction from this one corner. I had braced myself and yet, held on to some hope – for understanding or at least, acknowledgement of shared truths. What came back was a miasma of accusations and allegations, a strident denial of my thoughts, my memories. There’s just one problem with hoping against hope: the odds are very long. And I never had much gambling luck. Still, this reaction grabbed and tore at what I hold closest to my heart – my memories. It was a defeated end to a year, that in my hubris, I had thought to have conquered.
3 January 2021: New Year is three days old as I write. I spent all of last week and this one second-guessing my thoughts, doubting my words, my memory. No longer strong, no longer sure of my book or myself. In short, the gaslighting from that corner worked. I learnt that the truth is often unacceptable, that words must be deleted and twisted if relationships are to work at some shallow level. I learnt, too, that perhaps that demand is too great a price to pay for hollow feelings.
The silence of new year’s night consumed my days. It seemed I might give in to the gaslighting. Trying not to think of a mangled, broken book was an exercise in self defeat. All it achieved was constant turmoil and angry tears.
Endless exhaustion. As if all those days and weeks and months of irritating optimism, (for I see now, shamefully, how it might have grated on the thin and stretched nerves of people around me) suddenly sent a bill, asking for payback. This was not the triumphant end I had envisaged for this strange year of extremes.
But then today, my balcony comes demanding attention. Seeds to be planted, mud to be dug: no time for regret or remorse, the lime plants aren’t going to wait around for happy days. I spend the day getting mud under my nails and being scratched by the vicious thorns on the limes – the only thanks I’m getting for transplanting them from plastic grow bags into a big roomy pot. I shall be patient. Surely one plant in my collection will bear fruit? Not the litchi nor the pomelos, not the mosambi nor the chikoo have obliged thus far. These new limes will, I know. I hope. Hope is everything to an amateur gardener and a teller of secrets.
Chillies, brinjals – tiny seeds scattered over dark composted mud. No guarantee of survival but did you ever see a seed that’s given up? Each one is a kernel of life and of better things to come. The sun finally breaks free of the smoggy sky as I scrub the mud out of my fingernails. The scratches have turned swollen and will be painful for the next few days. The empty pots are full of promise and the older residents too have turned a corner. I see a bud here, a tendril there. Change is coming to my balcony, and change is good.
This evening, scratched and muddied, I take a deep breath. The depression lifts. It feels like a new year after all.