I’m tired | Opinion | THE COUNTRY

Years ago, more than 15, I interviewed the actress Belén Rueda at her home, a wonderful chalet on the outskirts of Madrid. The fact that a star of her brilliance opened her house to a journalist was already unusual at the time and is impossible today, but that is not what she wanted to tell you. I don’t remember the movie that Rueda premiered or what issues we talked about, sitting on the carpet in her living room because the interviewee was more comfortable that way. But Belén, warm without burning as she is, confessed something to me that stuck in my mind. She told me that she was tired of being tired and that she had decided not to be, even though she was. That shook me alive because the same thing happened to me. At Rueda’s house, like everyone else, they also cooked beans. She had buried her 11-month-old baby due to heart disease and, as a separated mother, she was raising two little girls who wanted to play with Mom when she came home from work and complained that she was always exhausted. Just like mine.

I remember Belén now that, according to those who name these things, we live in the era of great exhaustion, permanently drowned in a frenzy of hyperconnection in which the boundaries between work and private life are blurred and in which, when it arrives rest, you are so exhausted that your body rebels, knocks you down and, in order not to look bad with anyone, you look bad with everyone. Above all, with yourself, you see how life goes by without living it. No. I am not comparing people, situations or payrolls. Of course, Rueda’s fatigue, no matter how many early mornings, bad meals and stress he experiences on filming, is not comparable to the mortal fatigue of those who get up at five in the morning, every holy morning, for the minimum wage. Deep down, however, we are talking about the same thing. Of the lacerating sensation of living to work and not being owners of our lives. Since that morning at her house, I have interviewed Belén a couple of times, in big hotels and between one promotion confrontation and the next. Every time I see her, face to face, on screen or overwhelming her staff with her imposing facade on the red carpets, I remember what she told me and I want to think that she has really achieved it. Stop, temper, command in her square. I have not succeeded.

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