What do you do, when your energy is used up. What do you do, when your energy is used up and there is still day left and cats that need to be fed and children that need to be loved and you cannot even get up, because there is so much pain.
And oh, the medication does help, but it brings nausea and needs you to deal with all that too.

I never have an answer to that.

To what to do and what to think.

Because I´m so busy taking out loans from tomorrow and the day after and the week after and the month after and paying them back all the time, with interest.
How does one earn energy, a bit extra?
There is only so much rest in every day to take and only so much inspiration to feed me.

There is a life that needs to be lived and I am just too tired, the kind of tiredness, that cannot be solved with more sleep. The kind that´s bone-deep and starts gnawing on your insides. The one that comes out of your mouth, in words of hopelessness and yawns, when they aren´t appropriate.

I wonder, when I will have paid back the whole sum, when my life will be free again, not just a race between moments of action and moments of rest – a constant calculation, what I have to give, to get this one normal thing.

I´m just tired, I say, when people ask me about how pale I am or why I´m not enthusiastic about all the things one should be.
Just tired, I say, to give them something that´s relatable, aren´t we all tired sometimes, on occasion, a bit?

But there´s this other tiredness, the one that does not leave, not ever, the one that has moved in here and put her shoes down and has a favourite chair now.
I wonder, can i befriend her?
Can I make her feel more at home, maybe a tea? A piece of cake and another cushion?
Maybe she will be kinder then, not full of sharp edges that draw blood ever so often.

She smiles at me, showing her teeth and I inch all the cookies from the tin towards her, an offering of peace.

I say, I know you´re here now, I´ll stop ignoring you, I promise.

She takes small bites and crumbles on the floor and seems astonished by the mixed metaphors in my head.
I make her a cup of tea and build small castles out of the crumbs.

This too, is a life.