The Rise and Fall of the Library Troll

The head of the Communications Department, Janine, fixes her big eyes on me and says, “I want you to think about whether you are really sick, or just tired.”

I look down, embarrassed. My employment benefits include two weeks of paid sick leave, but apparently I don’t deserve to dip into that pot yet. I’m not sick, just tired: True or False? This is my first full-time job after college, and I’m intimidated by corporate culture, with its meetings and its coffee machines and, especially, its strict nine-to-five schedule. Janine and I stand in the sunny department foyer. In my peripheral vision, I scan for somewhere to lean, but the maze of low cubicle walls lies beyond my elbow-reach. I also scan for any uplifted faces of eavesdropping coworkers. Have they heard my low voice saying I’m exhausted and need a sick day? Have they heard Janine’s high-volume response? In the corners of my eyes, swatches of hair and skin bob behind monitors; I imagine those heads shaking dismissively and thinking, She’s not sick, she’s just tired.

I was not one of those well-lit cubicle monkeys. My office was a dimmish, fluoresced room with no windows but plenty of pretty publications about land management, biodiversity, and environmental justice. I was the librarian for an environmental organization. I didn’t have a degree in library science, but then the conservancy didn’t have much of a library, so I figured we were even. The conservancy worked with local environmentalists to preserve nature and benefit local economies. For privileged upper-class Americans, saving the habitats of charismatic megafauna is a no-brainer. I saw the big cat photos in the conservancy’s conference rooms and thought how lucky I was to be helping protect such beautiful creatures. Sure, I made only $24,000 a year, but those felted noses looked so boppable! For some people, though, the cats were in their backyards, with felted noses smeared with livestock blood. Those people often had to choose between environmental conservation and survival. Although I didn’t realize it yet, I would soon need to make a similar choice.

I had this library position because my boss from a previous job now worked in the conservancy’s science department, and he’d put in a good word for me. He’d told Janine that when I helped him with his post-doc research, I was tireless walking the field mice trap lines. He’d told her how my appendix had flared up in the middle of the woods, but, a couple weeks after the surgery, I returned to the trap lines. Now here I was, suggesting Janine scramble to find coverage for the library because I was a little dink who wanted to rest.

What I wanted to tell Janine (and the eavesdropping cubicle monkeys) was that I was tired because I’d been in pain for several years. Every day I felt as if I had the the flu. Sometimes it was a minor flu. Sometimes it was a major flu. The ache ebbed and swelled throughout the day, often accompanied with burning veins, cheeks, and eyeballs, usually with syncopated stabbing pains keeping time in the background. These “Fits,” as I called them, were way worse after exercise. What counted as exercise, you ask? Some days, walking fifteen minutes to the metro was exercise. Other days, doing laundry was exercise. On the worst days, brushing teeth could be a workout. My Over-Exertion Line shifted constantly, and it often tripped me.

Shelving books was bad. Librarian work involved a lot of lifting, with simultaneous bending and holding. I’d long ago learned that this particular combination of muscle movements triggered the Fits. Why that particular cause-and-effect, though? I didn’t know. My strange fever-less flu filled me with both wonder and apprehension. I felt this ferocity as I meandered up and down the stacks, carrying books about cause-and-effect on our planet.

I couldn’t explain this to Janine. I’d already told several doctors about the Fits, and after they’d run basic blood panels that showed nothing beyond a low white cell count, they’d declared there was nothing wrong with me that antidepressants wouldn’t fix. Without a diagnosis, my Fits were just embarrassing idiosyncrasies. In the first couple years of the Fits, I’d destroyed three digital thermometers by hurling them into walls. I was mad because I never ran a fever over 99 degrees, despite the intense flu-feeling. I was mad because not only had men in white coats told me I was crazy, but electronics in white plastic were giving me the same glassy stare. In response, I stopped seeing doctors and stopped taking my temperature. The Fits became such a regular part of my life that they no longer seemed like a good excuse to retreat to bed. My Normal Line was shifting—and tripping me.

I look at the keyboard. My hands are clawed, and my forearms flex, keeping the pain pooled down there so my head is free to think. A few minutes ago, I placed a too-large pile of books on the desk, and now my neck tingles, like a thousand baby spiders hatching in my occiput. This means a Fit is coming. Stupid, stupid. If I’m going to stay in this forty-hour-per-week job, I need to be smarter about managing the Fits. The yawns start. These, also, are a sign that the weird flu-not-flu is coming. I stare with hate at the digital clock on my taskbar. 2:00. 2:01. 2:02. Oh god I want to be horizontal so bad. Even just a half-hour lie-down will help this Fit pass faster and easier. Going home for the rest of the day will help even more, but I’ll need to ask Janine for permission, and I can’t do that again.

I often wondered if it was my own fault I was exhausted. I couldn’t figure out how to stay asleep at night. On an average night, I couldn’t get sleepy until 2:00 a.m., and then I’d wake up again at 4:00 a.m, my brain pinging to alertness each time I tried to drop off again. Sometimes I couldn’t sleep because of the Bad Feeling, which was my code word for a pulling and shaking in my cells, like they were all linked together being strummed by a violin bow. Sometimes I’d give up and wander around the apartment. Sometimes I’d stare at the ceiling and wonder if these symptoms were punishment because I was bad in a past life. This self-blame carried over into that sunny Communications office, depleting my ability to stand up for myself. I nodded at my and Janine’s toes in silent agreement that I’m not sick, just tired.

Turns out, I was not just tired. A correct diagnosis was seven years away, though, and correct treatment even further in the future. If I’d known that, I might have decided I couldn’t wait that long. I might have walked off the roof of the building. As it was, though, I just sighed and walked back to the library.

2:03. I pull my eyes from the clock to my desk: Inter-library loans (ILLs) must be processed. Books must be re-shelved. Which pile to start with? The ILLs, because those can be done with minimal head movement. In the last couple years, the worst Fits have been accompanied by motion sickness. I’ve been motion sick from hanging up clothes, folding laundry, emptying the dishwasher. I’ve also been motion sick from squatting and stretching in the library stacks. So, ILLs it is, then. As I type, I aim my yawns so their airborne spit flecks don’t stain the monitor. I drink water to replenish those flying fluids. The Fits surge and then simmer, but I still want to be flat. I sit cross-legged on the chair, because this position feels closer to horizontal. It feels easier on my heart and breath. I’m pretty good at letting The Fits run in the background like bad hold music, but they’re still distracting.

Cross-legged, I swivel on my chair (keeping my neck in line with my torso—because motion sickness) and scan the empty library. My broad L-shaped desk faces the door and blocks off what I think of as the Librarian's Nook. No one but me ever enters the Librarian’s Nook. Under the desk are newspapers for recycling. Thick, soft piles. Almost like. . . blankets. . . I slide off the chair and yank the newspapers out from under the desk. I push back the Tic Tac colored computer wires until I have cleared a space under the desk about the length of me, in a loose fetal position. The newspapers form a pillow, and my jacket is a quilt, and last Sunday's sports section is an extra coverlet for my shoulders. I lie still and wait for my body to normalize. Thank goodness thank goodness. I’m not here to sleep, but rather to enjoy the feel of my blood and tissues settling into a more manageable angle. Exhaling, I blink at the grey-brown carpet fibers. Up this close, they look like dusty pubic hair, but my horizontal brain finds their coils mesmerizing and soothing. I could do this daily to help manage the Fits: True or False?

Now seems like a good time to talk about the Americans with Disabilities Act. The product of decades of activism by people with disabilities, the ADA was not actually signed into law until 1990. It requires that employers make reasonable accommodations to hire employees and serve customers with disabilities. Companies can easily weasel out of this requirement, however. The onus is often on the wheelchair user or blind person to flag inaccessible facilities and insist on ADA compliance. For people with invisible illnesses, especially with marginalized, contested systemic disorders like fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue, the ADA is arguably even less accessible. If I’d had even a small mat inside a closet to lie down on for an hour in the middle of each day, I’d have been a thousand percent more comfortable on the job. And much faster with the ILLs. But I never considered asking management for this accommodation. I assumed they’d laugh in my face. I didn’t have cancer or a broken back or anything legitimate! In my pit of self-blame, I figured that if I were really tired, I would sleep at night, instead of lying in bed playing word games with myself and focusing on the breath hitting my nostril edges.

My exhales flutter the dusty rug coils. I’m horizontal; I’m in heaven. 2:10. Or thereabouts. I can’t see the clock from my newspaper bed. Someone enters the library. I hear feet stop in front of my desk. Surely they will see I am not here, turn around, and leave to come back later. Except this person must really, really need me, because this person walks around my desk and actually enters the Librarian's Nook. No civilian has ever entered the Librarian's Nook! The violator is Shelby from Development. I recognize her by her long calves, high heels, and pantyhose. On the second floor everyone wears business attire, because they deal with donors.

Shelby’s fancy toes are right in front of my face. I am frozen with terror. She’s writing me a note. I hear the post-it rip off the pad and the pen squiggle. Her white ankles shift as she leans onto my desk to write. The ankle scene plays out sideways because I am still resting my head on the newspapers, lying on my right shoulder, trying not to give myself away by crinkling the sports section aka the extra coverlet.

My first instinct is to stay frozen until she leaves. Her narrow calf gently rolls the chair aside so she can better reach my desk. Now my nose is even closer her pumps. Oh for shit's sake, is she writing a novel up there? And then I think: What if she drops the pen? She'll bend down to retrieve it and find herself face to face with me, the sloppily-attired library troll. Shelby’s knee kinks a little and my heart skips a beat. I’ll be found out for sure! In a split second, I decide it's better to come clean than be discovered hunkering like a fugitive.

Yes, I tell myself, It’s all about attitude. So here we go. I throw off the sports section and roll onto my elbow “Excuse me,” I say, to Shelby’s knees. "Did you need something?"

The knees pump backwards. As I stand up the knees turn to thighs, a skirt, a blouse, and finally Shelby’s pale face. I see her eyes swollen with shock, and then I see nothing but spots. I keep talking. “I was just having a quick lie-down,” I say, facing the general direction where I think Shelby stands. It’s hard to play it cool when you're a seeing person who can’t see, but nonchalance is vital here. Perhaps with my blase indifference, I can brainwash Shelby into not spreading the story around.

"I was. . . I was just writing you a note," she says. Her voice sounds too calm for someone who has just survived an ambush by the library troll. This disappoints me. If I had to be caught napping under newspapers while wearing jeans and with the remains of a french twist falling out of my hair, I would at least like to have startled her half to death. I guess her coolness is why she's in donor relations. The spots clear. Shelby, if not pale and shaking, at least seems semi-speechless.

I say, “I don’t want your note go to waste,” and take the sticky paper from her hand. “Here, let me read it. . . Why sure, you can reserve an LCD projector for next Tuesday at 9:00.”

Shelby never ratted me out to Janine. Maybe, though, I needed someone to rat me out. To shake me out of my denial and passivity. To let management know I was a bit desperate. Maybe I would have been fired for napping under the librarian’s desk. But maybe, just maybe, Janine would have realized that I was indeed sick, not just tired. I might have gotten permission to close the library for forty-five minutes. To have an official lie-down under High Country News. As it played out, though, I just kept clenching my fists and tensing my forearms and letting the Fits run in the background, until I could go home and groan in private.

As months passed, through my pain filter the framed photos of big cats looked less colorful, the noses less boppable. I realized I could save ecosystems, or I could save myself. I quit the conservancy, even though I was broke. My salary had barely covered my rent and groceries. Sure, I’d also been paid in nose-bop fantasies, but the exchange rate between those and US dollars was surprisingly low. Fortunately, I was privileged to have parents with expendable income. Many people disabled by chronic illness are not so lucky. I didn’t feel lucky, though. I felt guilty about being a grown—possibly hypochondriac—adult dependent on her parents. Without a diagnosis, I didn’t deserve to rest, right? The universe seemed to agree, because soon it handed me another job. This one paid me four times as much as the conservancy—for a part-time position. The catch? I was now in the world of defense contracting. I figured my NGO ideals and liberal bleeding heart would have to hibernate until I became un-broke, in both my bank account and my body.

I startled myself by liking my new job in The Dark Side, and by being good at it. Perhaps the secret was being able to nap more—under my own duvet, not the sports section. I didn’t have dedicated sick leave like at the conservancy, but between my outsized salary and reduced hours, I didn’t need it.

Until I did. My twenty years of defense contracting have been punctuated by occasional lapses into disability leave. I have a diagnosis now, but my illnesses are treatment-resistant, because I damaged my body through years of pushing myself to work. I still regret not using those two weeks of conservancy sick leave, the way other people regret lost loves.

-Christina Campbell

Christina Campbell co-founded the singles' advocacy blog Onely.org while earning her MFA in Creative Nonfiction at George Mason University. Her essays about marital status discrimination have appeared in The Atlantic and elsewhere. Her essay And Sarah His Wife, about mental health, misogyny, and colonial America, won the Michigan Writers Chapbook Contest. An excerpt from her memoir-in-progress was a finalist for Craft’s Creative Nonfiction Award. She lives in Northern Virginia with her infrared sauna and two semi-geriatric cats.