There comes a moment in life when tiredness stops being physical.
And becomes existential.
It doesn’t happen all at once.
It happens slowly.
Amid responsibilities, losses, silences and years of holding up too much.
It happens when you discover that you have spent decades being strong for everyone.
What weighs on you at this age isn’t only obligations
At this age, it isn’t only obligations that weigh on you.
The decisions that can’t be undone weigh on you too.
The marriages that changed.
The divorces that split a life in two.
The children who no longer need the same things.
The parents who are starting to depend on you.
The body that changes even though the mind still feels young.
And nobody prepares you emotionally for that.
Because for years we were taught to produce, to care, to respond, to solve. But very few of us learned to support ourselves psychologically while life was changing shape.
Emotional silence has a price too
There are women who go through menopause feeling that they have disappeared from themselves. Not only because of the hormones. Also because they have spent years putting everyone else before themselves.
There are men who discover too late that emotional silence can make you ill too. That functioning is not the same as being well.
There are couples who love each other but no longer know how to find each other. Because after many years together, desire stops being automatic and starts to need conversation, presence and honesty.
And hardly anyone talks about this in any depth.
There is a lot of talk about love at the beginning. Very little about how to sustain intimacy after twenty years of sharing a life, a routine, tiredness and wounds.
The grief nobody sees
There is also grief that nobody sees.
Grief for who you used to be.
For the body that changes.
For time.
For ageing parents.
For dreams that will no longer come true.
For the version of you that always believed that “later on” you would live differently.
What you look for at this age isn’t quick answers
At this age, you no longer look for quick answers.
You look for something harder:
Peace of mind.
Clarity.
Emotional truth.
Spaces where you don’t have to pretend to be strong all the time.
Because after a certain age, you understand something important:
Life doesn’t always need to start over. Sometimes it just needs to be inhabited differently.
And perhaps true emotional maturity isn’t about having everything figured out, but about learning to hold complexity without losing yourself.
If you recognise this tiredness in yourself, there is no need to wait until it becomes unbearable. I work with adults who have been functioning despite everything for a long time, and who want to start inhabiting themselves differently. In person in Vigo, or in an online session from wherever you are.
