The Hares Were Tired Too

 

The Pond at the Edge

The hares had lived too long with fright.

Every sound seemed to arrive with teeth. A twig snapping in the grass. A shadow moving across the field. The sudden lift of a bird from the hedge. Nothing had to happen for their bodies to believe something might.

They were quick creatures, made for running, but even running can become a kind of exhaustion when the whole world feels like a warning.

So one day, weary from trembling, the hares gathered together and decided they could not go on like this. They were tired of being startled. Tired of bolting. Tired of carrying a fear that never seemed to finish its sentence.

They made their way toward a pond at the edge of the meadow.

The water was still that morning, pale and quiet beneath the reeds. A few clouds drifted above it. The grasses leaned over the bank as if listening. The hares approached in a small, nervous group, their long ears upright, their bodies low to the ground.

They had come to throw themselves into the pond and be done with fear.

But before they reached the water, something moved.

The Smaller Frightened Things

A group of frogs had been sitting along the muddy edge, hidden among the reeds and floating leaves. They had not seen the hares coming until the hares were almost upon them.

Then, all at once, the frogs sprang.

They leapt from the bank in every direction, splashing into the pond with tiny panicked bodies. One vanished beneath a lily pad. Another flung itself into the reeds. Another hit the water with such urgency that ripples spread across the pond like startled breath.

The hares stopped.

They stared at the water, at the circles widening where the frogs had disappeared. These small creatures, who had seemed so settled in the quiet, had fled from them.

From them.

The hares, who had believed themselves the most frightened creatures alive, had frightened someone else.

For a moment, nobody moved.

The meadow stayed soft around them. The pond settled back into itself. A reed bent and rose again. Somewhere, unseen, a frog blinked from beneath the water.

And the hares understood something they had not understood before.

They were not the only ones who lived with fear.

They were not strange for trembling.

They were not alone in being easily startled by the world.

When the Story Turns Toward Us

This fable is often told as if its message is, “Someone always has it worse.”

Which is one of those sentences people offer when they are trying to help but have accidentally brought a casserole made entirely of dismissal.

Pain does not usually become lighter because someone points toward another pain. Fear does not politely pack its bags because a frog has also had a difficult morning. The body does not say, “Ah yes, excellent perspective. I shall now stop reacting.”

The gentler truth in this fable is not that the hares should feel ashamed of their fear.

It is that their fear was not proof of failure.

They had believed themselves uniquely weak, uniquely burdened, uniquely unable to live as other creatures lived. Then they saw the frogs leap away, and for the first time, they understood that fear was not only theirs. It belonged to bodies trying to stay alive.

That is where this old story begins to sound less like a pond in a meadow and more like life with chronic illness.

Especially when you have spent years trying to explain pain that other people could not see.

The Quiet Work of Proving

There is a loneliness that comes from being believed late.

Not the first loneliness, exactly. Not the loneliness of the first symptom, or the first appointment, or the first time someone suggests stress in a tone that somehow makes stress sound like a personality flaw.

This is a later loneliness.

It comes after the doubt has had time to settle in. Not only around you, but inside you.

When your pain, fatigue, sensory overload, dizziness, or limits are questioned often enough, you do not only defend them. You begin to distance yourself from them. Quietly. Gradually. Almost politely.

You soften your descriptions. You downplay your limits. You rehearse how to sound reasonable. You become careful with your own truth, as if it might be too much if spoken plainly.

Somewhere along the way, your lived experience becomes something you feel you need to prove.

Not because it was not real.

Because it was not received.

For many people living with fibromyalgia, this becomes a second layer of exhaustion. There is the body itself, already doing the full theatrical production of pain, fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep, and “why does standing up now require strategy?” And then there is the added work of managing how believable you seem.

You are no longer only managing symptoms.

You are managing perception.

What Doubt Teaches the Body

The body learns from patterns.

It learns from heat, hunger, injury, noise, overexertion, and stress. It also learns from people.

When pain is dismissed, minimized, or misunderstood, the nervous system does not simply register, “They do not understand.” It registers something deeper and more protective: “This is not safe to fully express.”

So the body adapts.

You begin to filter before you speak. You anticipate skepticism before it arrives. You soften your truth before anyone else can. Not because you are unsure, but because your system has learned that certainty is not always welcomed.

Over time, a quiet internal split can form between what you feel and what you allow yourself to acknowledge.

Your body says, “I need to stop.”

Your mind says, “Do we have enough evidence for that?”

Your body says, “This hurts.”

Your mind says, “Perhaps we should phrase that more gently for the imaginary committee.”

The imaginary committee, unfortunately, often has excellent attendance.

You may start thinking, “Maybe I am just tired,” or “Maybe I am overreacting,” or “Maybe I should be able to do more,” even when your body is clearly saying otherwise.

This is not confusion.

It is conditioning.

It is what happens when your reality has been questioned long enough that your mind tries to meet other people halfway, even when your body cannot.

The Shore Where Shame Loosens

The hares did not become fearless when they saw the frogs leap into the pond.

That is important.

The story does not end with the hares becoming brave, productive, inspirational woodland leaders with excellent morning routines. They are still hares. Their ears are still tuned to danger. Their bodies still know how to startle.

What changed was not the existence of fear.

What changed was the story around it.

For someone living with fibromyalgia, being believed late can bring that same strange mixture of relief and grief. Relief because something finally makes sense. Grief because the evidence was always there. The experience was always real. The cost was already being paid.

And sometimes, the last person to fully believe it is you.

That part can ache.

You may look back and see how many times you pushed through because you were trying to be easy. How many times you said yes because you did not want to seem dramatic. How many times you apologized for having a body with terms and conditions.

Terms and conditions, by the way, that nobody reads until there is a flare.

But self-trust can return quietly. Not all at once. Not as a dramatic declaration. Not with trumpets, a certificate, or a woodland ceremony involving frogs.

It may begin with a smaller question.

Instead of asking, “Is this valid?” you ask, “What is my body asking for right now?”

Instead of asking, “Can I justify this?” you ask, “What pattern am I noticing?”

Instead of asking, “Would someone else understand?” you ask, “What do I know from living inside this body?”

No courtroom. No defense. No explanation polished for public approval.

Just listening.

And from there, something begins to shift. You stop treating your body like an unreliable narrator. You begin responding to it as a messenger. Not always a convenient messenger. Not always a subtle one. Sometimes the message is simply, “Absolutely not.”

But still, a messenger.

The hares stopped at the edge of the pond because they saw another frightened creature and recognized something true.

They were not uniquely broken.

They were not imagining the danger their bodies had learned to expect.

And they did not have to disappear from their own experience in order to be allowed to keep living.

Sometimes the beginning of healing is not becoming fearless.

Sometimes it is standing at the edge of the water and realizing, with a tired little breath, that you were never the only one trembling.