The Debt Came Due
Notes From a Crash
Fred Rossi
Mar 30, 2026
There is a version of my life that exists in my memory like a photograph from a trip I’ll never take again. In that version, I wake up and get out of bed without negotiating with my body first. I drive to work. I talk to people. I solve problems. I go home. I am tired in the way ordinary people are tired, the kind of tired that a night’s sleep fixes.
That life is gone.
What replaced it has a name. Long COVID. ME/CFS. Post-exertional malaise. The clinical language is clean and distant, which is probably why it fails so completely to describe what it actually feels like to live inside this body right now.
Here is what it feels like: I am in a crash.
What a Crash Is
People who don’t have this illness hear the word “crash” and picture something dramatic. A sudden collapse. A trip to the emergency room. Sirens.
A crash is not that. A crash is slower and more total.
Post-exertional malaise is the medical term for what happens when someone with ME/CFS or Long COVID exceeds their energy envelope. The body doesn’t just get tired. It breaks down. It stops regulating itself. And unlike ordinary fatigue, which responds to rest, PEM doesn’t resolve with sleep. It compounds. Every small expenditure of energy, whether physical, cognitive, or emotional, costs more than it would in a healthy person, and the debt accumulates in a way that rest can only partially address.
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Thoughtful blog post by someone with #LongCovid & #MEcfs. Initially focuses on describing the PEM effects of working 3 days in a row before discussing how the whole illness(es) & the effect it's having on his life is making him feel emotionally
centerleftstack.substack.com/p/the-debt-c...
#PEM
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