Kathryn AllanTHE WEIGHT OF MATTERIt is February 2015 and the world is in deep freeze. I am thirty-five years old. Dressed in a black wool winter coat and an oversized hat and scarf, I stand at the corner of a bank parking lot in downtown Hamilton. At 5'10" tall, I feel like I tower over most of the people walking past, who, thankfully, have their heads down against the wind. There is a building site across the street from me, and the bright, bitter winter air is full of jack-hammering and the pneumatic huffing of trucks. I am having a panic attack. Crying as discretely as possible, I wait for my partner to pick me up from a doctor's appointment. I fight against the agoraphobia that tells me to start running for home as fast as I can. Rationally, I know that I am okay. But understanding that there is no danger does not help. I am stuck. I stand there for ten minutes, tears freezing on my cheeks. I could go into the bank, which is quiet, warm, and familiar, but someone might notice that I am upset. I cannot survive a politely asked, "Are you okay?" I stay outside, my toes curling away from the icy grey sidewalk as I shake from the unwanted adrenaline coursing through my veins. The next day I begin to write poetry. oh this weight I carry is making me thin Tired: this is how I am feeling at the moment of this sentence (whether it is the time of my writing it or of you reading it, the truth of the statement remains the same). But this word tired, which I often use to describe how I feel, is inaccurate. At best it is a clumsy translation of the leaden slowness that wraps itself around my bones and stops up my brain. I am never completely rid of this tiredness. There can be days, or, on rare blissful occasion, a week or two of time that I am able to ignore fatigue to where it fades into the background of my life. Usually, though, it pulls at my coordination and mucks up my concentration. There are many days that I simply cannot move beyond being tired. On those days, I imagine that I am an avatar of a sharper, livelier, more real self. I stress about whether or not I am okay. I lose time.
this is a weight with no matter I conceive of myself in parts: my legs hurt, my stomach aches, my head pounds. Whether it is the constant exhaustion that causes the pain or if it is the pain that causes the constant exhaustion, I am unsure. I cannot remember which came first (but, I stop to remind myself, the anxiety was always there). I was twenty-five years old when I started experiencing a slow but steady decline in my health. By the beginning of my twenty-sixth year, my "not feeling well" had turned into a full blown health crisis. I was in the doctor's office every other week with some new complaint. Repeatedly, I met with a stream of medical professionals that dismissed me ("you're just stressed") and neglected my well-being ("we don't have time for over sensitive people like you"). Even after a week-long hospitalization, doctors shrugged their shoulders, patted my head, and sent me back home with no answers. There is no official language of the land of unnamed illness I live in. oh this weight I call myself I long for the neat words of diagnosis. In my life, I have received some: bipolar II, depression, PTSD, anxiety disorder. (And here you think, aha, she's just crazy! I wish it was that simple.). A few ring more true than others but I cannot be sure which fit anymore. Things shift. I do know that what is wrong with me is not all in my head. Being tired is far more disruptive than panic attacks and I was not this way before. I can still remember what it was like to not have to measure out my energy in shallow spoons. The trouble is that whatever makes me so tired and sick, that keeps me from living as much as I would like, is something that cannot be seen. The source of my tiredness might as well be a spectre. I am haunted and blood tests do not reveal ghosts. raw precious and fluid I get lost inside the small rented house that I infrequently leave. Being tired is tiresome not only to myself but to those people around me. I used to belong to a large community, I thought, but when I became sick most everyone went away. Now I can count my friends with a few cramped fingers and I constantly worry that one lonely hand is not big enough to hold on to them. I am folding inwards faster than I can reach out. I have love in my life but it is not enough because no one person can be expected to carry the whole world for another (though I am forever grateful that he tries). I want to sear the air with my suffering and swallowed fear. I want to make visible, somehow, all of the lost days. Instead, when I am out, I wave away months of loneliness and unsettled nights as if they were nothing because I refuse to let the tiredness to always eat up my present. I want to fill out and breathe in those vital times when I am connecting with other people. Here I am, I say. In those moments I glow. weighed down It is February 2016 and I am beginning to thaw. I look for understanding in intangible spaces. I make another search of the internet to find out what might be wrong with me. Ten years in, I suspect that I have one of those vaguely defined ailments, like chronic fatigue syndrome, that mostly affect women and so too few people care enough to figure it all out. I spend an embarrassing amount of time googling my name and the titles of the works I have published. I want to see if anyone has read my writing. I need evidence that I exist. Now I am only sure of this: I am tired of being tired. I am done with the uncertainty of what comes next. I am over the cancelled visits with friends. I am finished with my uncut hair and stooped shoulders. There must not be another day where I make myself invisible in my distress. I cannot carry this burden any further. So I am setting it out in careful keystrokes that comfort with each quick click. I am wrapping it up in paper that is thicker than my skin. This is an invitation to anyone who is weary and anxious and alone. I see you. I hope that we find one another across the vast distances that divide us. We can meet where words fall with the weight of matter.
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