Politics of Exhaustion

Being calm is a privilege. I’ve heard it over and over and over. Just breathe, calm down,  it’s not that important. 

Except nothing has ever felt not that important because what if it could lead to stability? For so many students at universities across the world, education isn’t something they experience out of joy or a confident choice. Often it’s in the hope that it will lead to a career, a path that has been more stable than what their current experiences have been. The sheer weariness of constantly trying to achieve something I am unsure of just to make my CV as irrefutable as possible.

Yes, I like writing, and so I did everything possible to write as much as I can, because that way surely I’ll end up writing and being stable? Very ill informed perhaps, considering that writing isn’t exactly a million dollar career and I’m still not certain that’s exactly what I want. One of the things which motivate so many of us is fear, the fear of not getting into a good university; I’m still not certain that’s exactly what I want. One of the things which motivate so many of us is fear, the fear of not getting into a good university and then when you’re here of not having a good time or having too much of a good time and not having something to show for it at the end.

This fear is all consuming. It begins as small, pedantic lists of opportunities to apply to and it builds. The lists become looming responsibilities of those roles, turn into antidotes to those looming responsibilities, progress into UCS sessions to learn how to breathe, calm down and remember it’s just not that important. Except you can’t seem to shift the feeling that it is. 

I do not have a home I can return to comfortably and I certainly do not have the luxury of taking a year out after university to ‘figure it all out’, unlike many of my peers. Initially not fitting in those bubbles, I wore it as something of a medallion, a resilience which meant I’d somehow be able to save myself from instability. 

Except slowly but surely I exhausted myself. Days merged together into a hazy blur; the fear of doing something and it going terribly wrong pinned me to my bed, continually worried, tired of my inaction yet unable to do anything.

‘After the Ball’, Ramon Casas (1899)

Above is a painting of a socialite exhausted by the artifice of her material life, inspite of our very different reasons for being tired, it humours me that I too have found myself slumped in such a way for hours on end. 

How much fuel do we have?  If someone has been surviving for so long instead of simply living do they have less fuel later on? Does it mean I’m simply too tired and this is it?

We don’t talk about being tired enough. I mean we do, actually - I think it’s probably every second sentence uttered in Cambridge. But do we recognise that these seemingly mindless complaints of being tried, are moving us closer to depression, anxiety and an unfathomable exhaustion? 

“do we recognise that these seemingly mindless complaints of being tried, are moving us closer to depression, anxiety and an unfathomable exhaustion?”

I’m less tired now. I hibernated somewhat last Easter term and decided that I could only do what I could only do. Meaning that excess responsibilities whether they could guarantee me that all important job or not, cannot be handled. I still feel guilty about this, I feel guilty writing it, but I also know that it took far too long to emerge from the depths of exhaustion to return myself there.

Being tired roots itself in your bones. It makes the ‘basics’ inconceivable. Making your breakfast, walking to your class, replying to your email: all of it becomes an unbelievable weight. When that feeling comes now, I take walks, I sit on benches and watch the sunset. I’m not sure they help but somewhere between romanticising that anxiety and walking back to my room, I feel slightly less tired. Cambridge has taught me a lot, and with a year to go will probably teach me more, but one of the biggest things I’ve had to take away is that being calm is a privilege, and one you must take before tiredness takes you.

“Being tired roots itself in your bones. It makes the ‘basics’ inconceivable.”

Your breakfast is important, your sleep is important and your peace is important.

This may sound silly, and like you’ve heard it all before (and you have), but perhaps you don’t realise the significance of it all until it becomes impossible. Let your faith that things will work out be greater than your fear.