Not Weak

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me.

—Psalm 22:14

One winter, I got the kind of tired that you can’t recover from, almost like something gets altered on a cellular level, and you begin to fantasize about what it would be like to just not be tired anymore. You don’t fantasize about money or men or the Italian Riviera. All you daydream about is not feeling exhausted, about neck muscles that don’t throb, about a mind that isn’t fogged every single day. I was talking to my husband about it, complaining about being tired, but also bringing up the fact that lots of women travel and work and have kids. Everybody has a house to clean. Why couldn’t I pull it together?

He said, gently, ostensibly helpfully, something along the lines of “you know, honey, just because some other people can do all that, it doesn’t mean that you can or have to. Maybe it’s too much for you.”

One tiny, almost imperceptible beat of silence. And then I yelled, viscerally, from the depths of my soul, as though possessed, “I’M NOT WEAK!”

As soon as the words came out, we looked at each other in alarm. It seemed, perhaps, we’d hit upon the heart of something.