I Am Always Tired and I Have No Energy Left for My Marriage

Tuesday night. I made chicken piccata. Or I think it was Tuesday. It might have been Wednesday. The days are blurring together again. Anyway I made it, the chicken, and I stood there at the stove and I could smell the lemon and the butter and I thought, this is nice, this is a nice thing I am doing, and then I looked over at the couch and he was already asleep. Mouth slightly open. Phone still in his hand. The TV was playing something with explosions. I stood there with the spatula and I just... stared at him. Not angry. Not really. Just this feeling like I was looking at him through glass. Like he was in a different room than me even though we were in the same room.

I ate half my dinner standing at the counter. The chicken was dry. I don't know if I cooked it too long or if I just couldn't taste it properly. I threw the rest away and then I felt guilty about wasting food so I stood there at the sink and cried. Just a little. Not dramatic crying. Just leaking. That's what it feels like sometimes. Like my body is slowly leaking.

I am always tired no energy marriage. I type that into my phone sometimes. Not even into Google yet. Just into my notes app. Like if I write it down enough times someone will see it and know what to do. But no one sees it. It's just me and my phone at 2am, sitting on the bathroom floor because the bed feels too far away and also too close to him. The bathroom floor is cold. I like that. It wakes me up just enough to feel like I'm still in my body.

I wasn't always like this. I need to remember that. Or I need to say it out loud so I believe it. I used to stay up until midnight laughing at stupid videos with him. I used to want to go places. I used to dance in the kitchen while I cooked. I don't know where that woman went. I keep looking for her in the mirror and I see someone with dark circles who looks like she is waiting for something to be over. But what? The day? The week? This life? That sounds so dramatic. I'm not dramatic. I'm just... empty. Bone-deep empty tired that sleep does not fix. I sleep eight hours. Nine sometimes. I wake up and it's like someone has poured cement into my blood. Everything is heavy. Everything takes effort. Brushing my teeth takes effort. Smiling at the grocery store clerk takes effort. Being nice to him takes so much effort and I don't have it. I don't have it anymore.

He's good. He's a good man. I want to say that because I know how this sounds. I know how exhausted wife sounds. Like I'm blaming him. I'm not. He's patient. He doesn't yell. He just... stopped asking. Stopped asking how my day was in a way that meant he really wanted to know. Stopped reaching for my hand during movies. Stopped trying to talk at night because he knows I'm too tired to talk to husband at night. And I am. I am too tired. But also I miss him. I miss us. And I don't know how to say that without sounding like I want him to fix it, because I don't think he can. I think this is inside me. This no energy in marriage. This thing that is eating me from the inside out.

We sit on the couch together now and it's like we're in parallel universes. He watches his shows. I scroll on my phone. Sometimes I look up and I catch him looking at me and I don't know what he sees. I don't know if he sees me at all anymore. Or if he sees a ghost. I feel like a ghost. I float through my own life and I watch myself do things and I think, who is that woman? Why is she moving so slowly? Why does she look like she's carrying something invisible?

I googled it last night. 2:17am. why am I always tired even after sleeping. The first result was some medical thing about sleep apnea. I don't have sleep apnea. The second was about depression. I closed the tab. I'm not depressed. Or maybe I am. I don't know. I don't want to be depressed. I want to be fixed. I want someone to tell me there's a vitamin I'm missing. An iron deficiency. Something simple. Something with a pill. Because the alternative is that this is just me now. This is just who I am. Exhausted all the time married woman. That's my identity. That's my whole thing.

I found a forum once. Women talking about being too tired for my husband. Hundreds of replies. "Same." "Me too." "I thought I was the only one." I read the whole thread and I felt sick and relieved at the same time. Sick because it was all so familiar. Relieved because I wasn't inventing it. But also hopeless because none of them had answers. They were all just... surviving. Is that what this is? Surviving?

I don't want to survive my marriage. I want to live in it. I want to want him again. Not just physically. Though that too. I want to want to tell him about my day. I want to want to hear about his. Right now I just want everyone to be quiet. I want the world to be quiet. I want to lie down and have no one need anything from me for approximately one hundred years.

He fell asleep on the couch again tonight. I didn't wake him. I covered him with a blanket and I stood there and I looked at him and I felt this wave of... something. Love, maybe. But love from very far away. Like looking at a photograph of someone you used to know. And I felt guilty for feeling that. Because he's right there. He's right there and I can't reach him. No energy left for relationship. That's what I typed into my phone. Just those words. No context. No essay. Just the truth in five words.

I think about leaving sometimes. Not actually leaving. I don't want a divorce. I don't want anything different except to feel different. But I think about what it would be like to be alone in a hotel room. No one to talk to. No one to disappoint. Just silence and a bed that is only mine. And then I think about him waking up alone on the couch and not knowing where I went and I feel like the worst person in the world. Because he doesn't deserve this. He doesn't deserve a wife who is a shell. Who is chronic tiredness affecting marriage in real time, every day, and can't stop it.

I read something tonight. I was on the bathroom floor again. The tile is so cold in April. I don't know why I'm always on the bathroom floor. It's not comfortable. Maybe I just need a room with a door that locks. Anyway I was googling again. marriage falling apart because of exhaustion. low energy ruining my relationship. feeling empty and tired in marriage. Just throwing words into the void hoping something catches. And I found this article. a woman had written exactly what I was feeling. I clicked it. I don't know why. I don't usually click things. But something about the title. Or maybe I was just desperate enough.

I sat there and I read the whole thing. The whole thing. And I kept thinking, how does she know? How does she know about the couch? How does she know about the dry chicken and the leaking and the way you can love someone and also feel like they're a stranger you're letting down? I read it twice. The second time I read it out loud, very quietly, so he wouldn't wake up. My voice sounded strange. I haven't heard myself talk that much in weeks.

She didn't have answers. The article. It didn't end with ten tips or a product to buy. It just... ended. With her still tired. Still married. Still figuring it out. And I sat there on the bathroom floor and I felt something I haven't felt in a long time. Less alone. Just slightly. Like someone had reached through the internet and touched my shoulder and said, I see you. I see you and I don't know how to fix it either but I see you.

I'm not fixed. I want to be clear about that. I'm sitting here at 3am and I'm still exhausted. Still empty. Still married to a man on a couch who I don't know how to reach. But I feel slightly less alone tonight. And maybe that's enough for now. Maybe that's all I get. I don't know.

I should go to bed. The bed is so warm. Too warm. I don't deserve warm. That's stupid. That's the tired talking. Everything is stupid when you're this tired. Everything is too much.

He's snoring now. I can hear him through the wall. It's a nice sound. It used to be my favorite sound. I would lie awake just to listen to it. Now I lie awake and I listen to it and I feel... I don't know. Far away. But also like I want to crawl inside it. Inside his sleep. Inside his peace. He sleeps so easily. I don't remember what that's like.

Maybe tomorrow I'll make the chicken again. Maybe I'll wake him up this time. Maybe I'll say, hey, I'm drowning, and maybe he'll know how to throw me a rope. Or maybe I'll just sit on the bathroom floor again and read that article again and remember that someone out there is sitting on her bathroom floor too.

I don't know. I don't know anything. I'm just... here. Still awake. Still tired. But breathing. Still breathing.

The light in the bathroom is too bright. I should turn it off. I should go to bed.

I don't move.