14.09.2026 Diary XIV Tiredness

14.09.2026 Diary Page XIV

Some tiredness passes not with sleep but with being understood.

Monday. I am tired.

Even writing this is a little tiring. Because I use the word “tired” so much that it seems to have lost its meaning. I am tired in the morning, tired at noon, tired in the evening. Tired after the weekend, tired after a holiday, tired even after a long sleep.

Today I wanted to open this word up a little. Because when I say “I am tired” I am not describing only one thing.

Tiredness that passes with sleep

The first kind is the simplest. The tiredness of the body.

A long day, little sleep, a lot of movement. This tiredness is honest. You know where it comes from, you know how it will pass. A good sleep, a little food, a little rest. By the time you get up in the morning it is gone.

I miss this tiredness sometimes. Because it has an end.

Tiredness that does not pass with sleep

The second kind is sneakier. It does not pass even when I sleep.

I get up in the morning having slept eight hours and I feel as if I have not slept at all. Inside my head is foggy. Thoughts are slow, words come late. I read a sentence and its meaning arrives after a while.

I do not exactly know the source of this tiredness. I think part of it may be about ADHD itself. The effort I spend through the day to hold my attention in one place, the extra motor I run to do what others do easily. The brain never goes into idle. As if it is always going uphill.

Part of it is about sleep itself. I go to bed late because at night my mind finally goes quiet and I do not want to leave that silence. Then the alarm goes off in the morning and the quality part of sleep is cut short.

One side of this tiredness may be things I do not know. Iron, thyroid, sleep pattern. I also know that I should not put it all down to ADHD without asking a doctor. I am writing this as a note to myself too.

The tiredness of looking okay

The third kind is the hardest to describe.

The tiredness of trying to look okay all day.

Trying not to show that my attention has wandered in a meeting. Pretending to remember something I have forgotten. Looking extra prepared to make up for being late. Speaking energetically while tired. Looking as if I am focused on a single subject while ten things turn inside my head.

This has a name: masking. You do not remove the symptom, you make it invisible. And the energy you spend on making it invisible comes from somewhere.

When I come home at the end of the day, that weight I feel sometimes comes not from the work I did but from the mask I carried all day.

When I take off the mask on my face my tiredness becomes visible. But what makes the tiredness is the mask itself.

The tiredness of deciding

The fourth kind may be a tiredness familiar to everyone who runs their own work.

Decision fatigue.

I make so many decisions through the day, small and big, that by evening even the question “what shall we eat” feels heavy. Deciding the direction of a strategy, deciding the figure of an offer, deciding how to answer an email. Each of them takes something from the mind.

In ADHD this can be even more marked because ranking among options is hard to begin with. Every option stands at the same height. To choose one I have to weigh all of them one by one.

Emotional tiredness

The fifth kind, maybe the deepest.

The tiredness of feeling.

Getting caught on someone's sentence and thinking about it for hours. Feeling unseen. Feeling not understood. Getting angry at an injustice and carrying that anger inside all day. Being angry at myself.

This tiredness is not in the body but it is felt in the body too. As a weight in the shoulders, the jaw, the middle of the chest.

A few days ago I wrote about being understood. About how tiring not being understood is. Today I understand this a little better. Some tiredness does not pass with sleep. It passes with being understood. Or at least with understanding yourself.

Which one is mine

Looking at these kinds today, I asked which one is mine.

The answer: all of them. In different proportions, on different days.

But telling them apart is useful. Because when I said “I am tired” I was always looking for the same solution: sleeping more. And when it did not pass after I slept, I got more tired. After a point I even got tired of my own tiredness.

Now I can ask different questions.

Is my body tired? Let me sleep.

Is my mind tired? A little emptiness, a little wall, a little time without screens.

Is my mask tired? A place, a person, an hour where I can take off my mask.

Are my decisions tired? Let me make tomorrow's decision today, lighten the morning.

Are my feelings tired? Let me write. Let me tell someone. Or at least myself.

Being ashamed of tiredness

There is one more thing.

I am ashamed of being tired. Especially of the question “what did you do that made you this tired.”

This question does not always come from outside. Sometimes it comes from inside. I did not do a big job today, I did not run anywhere, I did not lift anything heavy. Why am I so tired?

Because invisible work tires too. Holding attention, carrying the mask, deciding, feeling. None of these appears on a list. But by the end of the day all of them have taken something from me.

If I cannot see the reason for my tiredness, maybe my tiredness is not nonexistent. Maybe its reason is invisible.

This evening

This evening I will not do anything big.

I will try to go to bed early. Maybe I will not manage, at night my mind will again go quiet and I will not want to leave that silence. But I will try.

I finished this entry before going to bed. Even writing a tiredness down by its name lightens it a little.

Monday. I am tired.

But this time I know which tiredness it is.