Even My Hair Was Exhausted
My alarm beep, beep, beeps.
I throw back the covers and slide out of bed. I pad into the bathroom, pee, and look at my reflection in the mirror. I usually brush my teeth first, but the effort feels overwhelming. Instead, I walk into the closet to pick out my outfit for the day. That, too, feels like too much.
So I grab an old blue sweatshirt, lay it on the floor, and release my body to the pull of gravity. I can’t go back to bed—I’ll sleep. I just need a soft start. On my closet floor.
I. am. so. tired.
People have words for this: procrastination, lazy, unmotivated, burnout, exhaustion. Whatever you call it, I have known the feeling of overwhelming emotional, spiritual, and physical tiredness.
I learned what exhaustion looked like long before I owned it myself. My grandmas wore it quietly. My mom and grandmas would drive three and a half hours to help me as a young adult in college—arriving with snacks, sensible shoes, and an unspoken plan. They helped decorate college dorm rooms and early apartments, folding themselves into my temporary life for a weekend. Then, before turning around and driving home—because my mom needed to work on Monday—they would crash. A nap on the couch. A long exhale. Exhaustion personified. Love, expressed through showing up anyway.
I felt exhaustion later, in a different form, while parenting three children and working full time. That tired was layered. It wasn’t just lack of sleep; it was the constant hum of responsibility. The knowing that someone always needed something, and often, it was me. That kind of exhaustion doesn’t announce itself. It accumulates.
I felt it most deeply when I was teaching—not at the beginning, when adrenaline and idealism carried me, but about fifteen years in, when the days stacked up heavier than the hope. A friend once said summer break was like a weekend. June was Friday, July was Saturday, August was Sunday. And still, Monday loomed. Even when I taught summer school, I got the Sunday Scaries.
Exhaustion doesn’t always reset just because the calendar changes.
Years later, I met it again working at a local big-box distribution center.
Nine hours into a ten-hour shift. Every run timed. Fifty-pound bags of birdseed. Forty-pound buckets of cat litter. Run after run. I stand mid-aisle listening to my headset tell me to pick thirty packs of charcoal briquettes. I stop. I close my eyes. I let my head hang. I lean into the forklift—not to drive it, just to hold myself upright—and silently wish for enough energy to finish the run. And the day.
That kind of exhaustion is loud and physical. It announces itself.
I’ve also known the exhaustion of the last mile of the 26.2-mile marathon I ran to inaugurate my sixth decade of life. That exhaustion lived at the end. There was accomplishment waiting just around the corner. Pain, yes—but it was purposeful. Temporary. Finite.
Mental, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion is different. It’s quieter. More complicated. More incapacitating. There’s no finish line tape in sight.
When someone once said, “Even my hair feels tired,” I felt like I’d met a soulmate. Someone who understood why it sometimes took me two days to respond to a text. Someone who knew that tired doesn’t always show up as sleepiness—it shows up as withdrawal.
That’s how I felt at the end of my teaching career. I knew it was time to be done. Other events confirmed the timing—small things, like a worldwide pandemic—but I remember saying to a coworker, “You’ll know when it’s time.”
And then it’s time to try something new. And maybe, eventually, something new again.
These days, I don’t find myself staring at the closet floor like it’s an invitation. I still own the old blue sweatshirt, but it no longer doubles as a landing pad. I still get tired—because I’m human—but it’s a different kind of tired. It comes from living, not from being depleted.
I’m in a season of rest, reflection, and renewal now. I’ve learned that exhaustion isn’t a personal flaw; it’s information. And once you listen to it, you don’t have to keep hearing it shout.
I still believe in soft starts. I just don’t need to lie down to find them anymore. I stand up. I brush my teeth. I choose clothes without collapsing. And if I ever do need to slow things down again, I know it’s an option—not a warning sign.
That feels like growth.
Or healing.
Or at the very least, a solid sign that my energy—and my life—are finally pointed in the right direction.
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