The Pain after the Gain
I’ll be the first to admit that I love to sleep. And my family will be the second to admit this fact, seeing as most of the time during summer they’re the ones rousing me from this peaceful state at nearly eleven in the morning to make sure that I do, in fact, see some daylight during the months of June and July.
But I didn’t understand the full, miraculous recovery that sleep can provide the exhausted human body until I arrived here in Beijing.
It was actually the first night I was in Beijing that I began to feel the first of many exhausted states. This type of exhaustion is what one of my friends calls “headache exhaustion,” the type where one’s body has been physically drained and one’s mine has been overwhelmingly exposed to infinitely new sights and sounds. In a previous blog I talked about how tired my eyes have been at the end of the day, but that’s just been one of many symptoms of this headache exhaustion.
On these nights, when I finally crawl into bed around midnight after a day of adventuring or working in the lab or both, I hit the switch next to my bed to turn of the lamp, and I stare at the ceiling for what feels like hours. This moment is usually the first opportunity I have to reflect on the historic sights I’ve seen and the phone calls I’ve made with friends and family and the new techniques I learned in the lab. I consider what all I’ve seen during the day that I most likely won’t see again in this lifetime, what all I’ve eaten that I won’t have back home, what all I’m missing out on back in the States, and how my perspectives are unendingly and irrevocably changing with each passing day. All those thoughts and images and hypotheticals and sensations swirl through my head, causing a dull pain right behind my eyes as I study the patterns of my ceiling. It’s only a minor inconvenience, and certainly a microscopic price to pay for the incredible sights, sounds, tastes, and feelings from my days, but it’s a type of exhaustion I’m not used to on a regular basis.
As previously stated, the first night I that this headache exhaustion struck me full forcedly was the night of my arrival. After having tossed and turned for nearly fourteen hours straight on the flight from Dallas to Beijing, my body was ready to collapse onto the nearest non-floor flat surface and sleep for the next twenty-four full hours. The deep lack of rest my body felt coupled with the intense processing power my brain required to adjusting to seeing and hearing Chinese at every turn combined into the perfect causation storm for the most intense headache exhaustion I felt that week. Still, though, I felt that core-sucking tiredness to a lesser extent every night after that.
These days, it’s mainly the weekend nights that drive me deepest into the state. Ava, another intern, and I walked a full marathon this weekend going from a tea market to the oldest hutong (a historic-styled neighborhood) in Beijing, Dashilan, on Saturday and then from the Lama Temple to the Temple of Heaven Park to the Bird’s Nest at the Olympic Park. Shoes that have never given me blisters before left large rubs on the back of my ankles, muscles I didn’t even know I had were sore the next day, and step counts I have only reached one or two other times in my life were met again by the end of both days (35,000 steps for each day, in case you were curious).
While this headache exhaustion can be a burden in the moment, having experienced it many times since I’ve been here, I’ve decided that it’s one of the most rewarding parts of being here. In those times staring up at the ceiling, reflecting on my day and engrossed in the minor throbbing of my head, I realize how lucky I am to have a body that’s capable of carrying me so far and allowing me to experience fully every place I visit and every new thing I try. I realize, and not for the first time, how lucky and fortunate I am to have been selected for what is truly shaping up to be the world’s best internship, and I’m so thankful for all the help I’ve received in my lifetime to get me to this point in the process. I’m thankful to have a friend my age here who is as fearless as she is smart about travelling to such foreign places, and I’m even more thankful and grateful for those already here who are willing to give up their time to help me, whether by showing me around a place I’ve never been before or by simply helping me order a meal. And I am eternally lucky and appreciative of those back home who are willing to check up on me and fill me in on the happenings of the western hemisphere at odd hours of the day and night for both of us.
This deep-seeded exhaustion is one that’s almost entirely new to me. The over-stimulation I experience every day coupled with the exponentially greater rate of new memory intake here is enough, I imagine, to wear out just about anybody, and I am so thankful that I get to be the recipient of such a rewarding, reflective, and accomplished feeling.
