As you may know, I’m a chronically fatigued human being. I’ve lived with a debilitating long-term illness since I was a teenager, and the early years of living with my condition were incredibly tough. However, even with all the struggle and suffering I still have to manage today, I know I’m one of the lucky ones. My health has slowly and gradually improved over the last few years, and my quality of life today is now a million miles away from what it once was.

Through careful adjustments, I’m now able to work part-time, from home; something that I’ve built up slowly, in line with the improvements in my physical health. And although there are so many invisible challenges that come with this, the transformative effect it’s had on my illness experience is clear to see.

The problem, however, is that as my capabilities have expanded, so have my ambitions. And when, after so many years of waiting, you finally have your goals somewhat within your reach, it can be extraordinarily difficult to pace yourself and be realistic about what you’re capable of… particularly when you’re dealing with a fluctuating illness where there’s only so much you can control.

My best friend Izzy and I were having a good old natter about all of this one day. The conversation had been provoked by me, as usual, saying ‘yes’ to yet another commitment even though it meant taking on more than I could realistically handle, then ending up confined to bed in a frazzled state of overwhelm as a result. If you’re a chronically ill person reading this, I’m sure you’ll know this particular feeling well… that cold, sinking feeling of dread as you realise you’re somewhat out of your depth but have no choice but to try and keep afloat whilst minimising the consequences.

Now, one thing you should know about Izzy is that she’s seen more of my unfiltered illness journey than anybody else in my life. Another thing you should know is that she’s prone to coming out with pure metaphorical wisdom at the most unexpected moments.

“Pippa,” she said on this particular day, midway through her cereal bar, “you’ll end up like a Turtle of Overexertion.”

I waited. The gal was going somewhere with this.

“It’s like if you were walking along through life wearing an empty backpack, and every time you picked up a new commitment or said yes to something, you added it to that bag. And because you’re able to keep on walking forward and you can’t yet feel the weight of it, you decide that it’s fine to pick up ‘just one more thing’ and pop that in your backpack too. But if you keep on adding one thing after another the way you have been, without taking anything out, there may come a day when the backpack suddenly gets way too heavy. And then it’ll tip you backwards, you’ll fall, and you might not have enough energy left to get back up again. So there you’ll be. Splat on a floor, like a Turtle of Overexertion.”

After a few minutes of astonished laughter at that detailed mental image she’d painted, it dawned on me that as always, she was right on the money.

Each of us are wearing our own backpacks in life, and our own beliefs about how we want (or need) to fill them. We all begin with a baseline weight that we’re carrying on our backs, but as we set off walking through day-to-day life, we slowly begin to pick up more and more along the way.

And thanks to the world we live in, I personally think that no matter how full our backpacks already are, we’re conditioned to think they could and should be even fuller. It can be easy to look at others and think that they’re carrying much heavier loads than ourselves. In turn, this can lead us all to pick up more than we can realistically handle, attempting to emulate this problematic idea of success that we’ve internalised: the idea that overexertion is something we should be striving towards, rather than something we should avoid at any cosy.

These days, we’re often expected to be all of the things, all of the time, regardless of the toll it takes on our own wellbeing. In working-age people in particular, it can sometimes even seem like a competition over who’s dealing with the most… whose backpack is the heaviest to bear.

As a result of these beliefs, our own loads quickly begin to double in weight, becoming even more cumbersome to carry. And even when that’s the case, many of us are still trying to cram even more stuff into the space we have left. No matter how heavy our backpacks become as the inevitable challenges of life arise, it can seem as though we have no choice but to keep on walking forwards if we want to keep up with everybody else.

When my health first began to improve, simply metaphorically wearing an empty backpack was enough for me; there was a point where even the material of it against my skin would have been too much to bear. But it wasn’t long before I tentatively began to pick up my first items and pop them on my back: first my charity fundraising, and then this very blog, which at the time was just a little hobby to explore my love of writing. These things caused the weight of my backpack to change for the first time, but only very slightly. As long as I was careful, metaphorically walking with this weight on my back still felt pretty doable.

When opportunity knocked, however, it took a slightly more considered decision to add the weight of an internship, my first ‘proper’ job since becoming ill, to my backpack. This one significantly increased the weight I was carrying, and for the first time, I felt my knees buckle. However, the extra load did get easier to bear with time, even when that internship evolved into a permanent and longer-term role and set me on the path to the career I’m lucky enough to have today.

So, around now you would think that my backpack was plenty full enough. It might not have been as full-to-the-brim as a non-chronically ill person’s would have been, but I was carrying more than I ever thought I’d be able to, and I was still managing to take steps forward, enjoying life wherever possible and keeping the overexertion to a minimum. That should have been more than enough, right?

However, we’re still living in a society where the way we perceive disabled people still seems conditional based on our output and how well we emulate the actions of the non-disabled public around us… even in this inaccessible world that simply wasn’t designed for us. And with overexertion becoming dangerously normalised in this day and age, it implies that for chronically ill people to be successful in this world, we should be carrying loads heavier than those we can safely manage. We’re led to believe we should be making increasingly bigger strides forward… no matter how much our muscles cramp up in complaint.

However, I can’t blame only the world around me for adding one weight more than I could safely manage to my own backpack. Because when something you’ve always wanted is within reach, who isn’t going to seize it with both hands? My blog gained traction, and the writing opportunities began to materialise. Each individual engagement only added a small weight to my load at a time, but when they began cumulating, once again my knees began to buckle, and the load started to pull me backwards.

I began to feel completely consumed by all that I’d taken upon myself, and somewhat unfathomably, I could never shake the feeling that it still wasn’t enough. It was as though the more I proved myself and began to achieve, the higher my expectations rose and the more critical of myself I became. And when this began to infringe on my condition management, such as being too anxious to fall asleep more often than not, I knew it was time to re-evaluate what the heck I was doing.

So, when any of us reach this point, I suppose the obvious solution would be to just take something out of the backpack, making it easier and less cumbersome to carry. But when you’ve worked so hard and waited so patiently to fill your backpack with the things you love and that give you purpose, it’s much easier said than done to let something go intentionally. It can make us feel as though we’re regressing, rather than moving forward… even when this simply isn’t the case.

Often, the time we should spend thinking how to lighten the load we’re carrying is actually spent thinking about how we can cram even more things into that increasingly confined space. And even I can see that that’s a problem.

I don’t mind telling you that my backpack has been full to the brim recently, and I’ve been struggling to bear the weight of it. I’ve been working way beyond my means, feeling the threat of burnout, and frequently struggling with feelings of overwhelm. And I know first-hand that even when we’re all doing the best we can with what we have, it can still feel as though we’re not enough.

But… if one day the weight of the backpack were to win, and you were to end up stuck on the floor and unable to jump back onto your feet, would you live to resent the decisions you made? The consequences of chronic overexertion are not to be messed with, and if we’re not careful, there could well be a situation where even an empty backpack touching your own body would be too much to bear, too.

Sometimes, it takes the threat of a situation like this to approach things more mindfully. So, instead of constantly trying to increase our capacity, perhaps we should focus on prioritising what makes it into our backpack, and learning to turn our heads at the other stuff instead. As for what’s already part of your current load, perhaps we can learn how to arrange them more harmoniously, and make them a slightly less hefty weight to carry. Maybe a big part of the entire process is simply recognising that regardless of how you perceive those around you, your best is plenty good enough.

I suppose my take-home point is that we all have different capabilities, and we’re living in different circumstances, and yet this isn’t always reflected in the different loads we’re carrying. We shouldn’t be adhering to this ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to productivity or constantly pushing ourselves in pursuit of more. Really, I reckon we should focus on our individual situations and ensure we’re keeping ourselves safe and healthy, rather than putting pressure on ourselves and striving for overexertion to try and be what society deems as ‘enough’.

As for me, I’m slowly learning how to streamline what I want from life and how all the different components of my backpack could combine to work together; without the need for constantly taking on additional loads. I still have a long way to go, but I’m getting there. It’s all about the baby steps.

My goal is to remember that it’s not cheating to take time out. Our backpacks don’t have to be surgically attached to us 24/7: we can pop them down and walk away for a short while, and we can even temporarily take things out of them, should we need to. Easier said than done, I know, but it’s not impossible. And for goodness’ sake, may this be the time that we all learn that resting up and taking care of ourselves is an equally significant part of the process.

Messing with your health is a risky game, and take it from me, the consequences just aren’t worth it. And if that realisation is the alternative to ending up splat on the floor, like the Turtle of Overexertion that my best friend conjured up so vividly, then personally I think the time has come to act upon it.

I don’t want to compromise on any of my ambitions, but I’m striving to take much better care of myself in the process.  And I reckon that’s a goal that everybody carrying their own loads in this day and age could benefit from keeping in mind too.

So here’s to a new beginning. Rather than only championing our achievements, let’s champion the efforts we make to look after ourselves as well. Your worth as a human being is not defined by whatever weight you’re carrying in your backpack. I hope you know that you are enough, exactly as you are.

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