I’ve felt bad for a long time. I am no longer able to keep up with what is seen as the daily motions of life the way I used to; I am exhausted by small events, I need days of recuperation for my longer periods at school and I rarely get that time to recover. I know there is something wrong with me, something internally isn’t functioning the way it should but I don’t know what. It may be mental, it may be physical, it may be a combination of both. But I don’t really have the time to worry about or fix it, I have school and work and other obligations. Even if I did have time, the waiting period for doctors is prohibitive in and of itself, not to mention the cost.
I booked an appointment with a specialist in June and I won’t get to meet with them till January. And that appointment might be a bust, they might not find anything or we may realize an entirely different part of the body is responsible for what I am experiencing and I’ll have to wait another 6 months to meet with someone new. And if after all that time and money they don’t find anything, what will that mean for me? For the very real feelings my body has, for the very real struggles I am experiencing?
I need a doctor’s note. I need an outside opinion that yes, I am in fact really and truly too tired to perform this task, I am not lying to get out of doing work. Institutions don’t trust people to be honest about their physical pain or accommodation needs and that can lead to an internalized self doubt about our experiences. We begin to doubt our own body and what it’s telling us since that message is incompatible with societal expectations of performance. Am I just lazy? Do I just need to exercise more? Can I even risk exercise if it might leave me unable to function the next day? Or am I just being melodramatic and I should just push through the pain and exhaustion?
There is an idea that only certain people have the “right” to be tired. You must work a certain number of hours, a certain number of jobs, have a particular condition (diagnosed by a professional that costs thousands of dollars), or have a body that appears physically unwell in some way. And even then, sometimes those valid reasons are still not enough. We live in a world that expects a lot from us physically with little access to figuring out why some of us struggle to meet those expectations. We are often expected to run like machines but never break down, never need a system overhaul, never need maintenance. If society expects machines, what will become of us defective products?
Unruly Bodies 
I am sorry you have not been feeling well. I think that this idea that we are “expected to run like machines but never break down” is very common. Especially pre-covid, I remember getting sick and being applauded for “toughing through it” and still going to school and still going to work. Even Halls cough drops have messages on them that seem to be encouraging of getting through a work day sick. When in reality, forcing your body to work when it is telling you not to work is bad for yourself and can pose as a health risk to others. The lack of accomadations for ill people is alarming.