The Fitness Addiction ad: I told her I'd been sleeping better.

Three months after my divorce, I found out my closest friends went on a two-week trip to Greece without me. Not because they told me. Because they posted photos all over Instagram. Diane and I have been best friends for twenty-two years. She and Tom, Mike and Carol, Jeff and Renee, three couples plus Paul and me. For fourteen years, we did a September trip together. I researched the hotels. Found the restaurants. Booked the excursions that weren't in any guidebook. Paul handled the airports and the car rentals. Paul and I divorced eighteen months ago. He'd been seeing someone from his office. She was thirty-six. After the papers were signed, the calls came constantly. Diane checking in. Carol dropping off food. Everyone saying "we're here for you, whatever you need." By month three, the calls slowed down. By month six, they stopped. Then I opened Instagram on a Wednesday morning. And there they were. All six of them. At a rooftop bar in Santorini. Diane holding a glass of wine, grinning. The caption: "The crew does Greece." The crew. Without me. I called Diane that afternoon. "Oh, Susan." That voice. The one that sounds like warmth but lands like a verdict. "We didn't want to make things awkward. It was sort of last minute. And honestly, we weren't sure you'd be up for it. You've just seemed so worn down lately." Worn down. She kept going. "And Greece is a lot, Susan. The heat, the walking, all those stairs everywhere. You've been so tired. We didn't want you to struggle and then feel bad about it in front of everyone." I sat there and listened. "It was for your own good. We didn't want you to be overwhelmed." Two weeks later they were all back. Tanned. Full of stories. And Diane called me. "Susan, I have exciting news. We're doing our big trip in September. The Mediterranean. And we'd love for you to help plan the itinerary — you always find those incredible little restaurants and the excursions nobody else knows about. You're so good at it." So let me get this straight. I'm not capable enough to ATTEND the Greece trip. But I'm capable enough to PLAN the cruise. I'm the free travel agent for the friends who left me behind. I said, "Sure, Diane. I'll put something together." Then I hung up and sat at the kitchen table for an hour. That's when something clicked. They didn't just leave me out of Greece. They left me out because they'd decided, without asking, that I couldn't handle it anymore. That without Paul, I was a liability. Something to be managed. But my itineraries? My restaurant reservations? My hidden-gem excursions? Those they still wanted. Because apparently I'm competent enough to plan a perfect trip. Just not to be on one. I started planning. Spent weeks on it. Found a private boat tour out of Amalfi that fit twelve people and wasn't listed anywhere in English. Got us into a cliffside restaurant in Positano with a three-month waitlist. Mapped out walking routes through Cinque Terre that skipped the tourist crush entirely. Sent it all to the group chat. Diane replied: "Susan, this is INCREDIBLE. You're amazing. This is going to be the best one yet." Then I booked myself a cabin on the same sailing. Same ship. Same dates. Upgraded. Balcony suite. And I told no one. A week later, Diane invited me to dinner at her house. "Just a little get-together," she said. "Nothing fancy." I showed up at six. The good china was out. Candles lit. All three couples already seated. They were exchanging looks when I walked in. The kind where everyone knows something you don't. After dinner, Diane cleared her throat. "Susan, we need to talk about the cruise." My stomach dropped. "We've all been talking, and we think it would be better if Paul and Amanda took your spot this year." Paul. And Amanda. The woman he left me for. "Paul reached out," Diane continued. "He and Amanda just got engaged. And honestly, we've all known Paul for sixteen years. It felt wrong to keep him out forever." Keep him out. The man who lied to my face for two years. Who kept the house in the settlement because I couldn't afford to fight him for it. He's the one they were worried about excluding. Jeff leaned forward. "Susan, I'm going to say what everyone's been thinking." Everyone. "Last September you were done by eight o'clock every single night. You nearly missed the boat tour in Croatia because you couldn't drag yourself out of the cabin. Paul made your excuses at dinner three nights running." He wasn't done. "We missed the shuttle in Montenegro because we stood at that port for an hour waiting for you to feel well enough to come down. An hour, Susan. Tom had to negotiate a taxi for all eight of us." He had dates. He had details. He'd been keeping score the entire time Paul and I were married. Diane put her hand on Jeff's arm. Not to stop him. To transition. She turned to me. That voice. "Susan, we love you. You know that. But since the divorce, you haven't been yourself. You're exhausted before the day even starts. The early mornings, the walking, the heat. And without Paul there." She looked around the table. "We just think it's better this way. You have to understand." Translation: you've become a tired, worn-out woman we'd have to work around. And they got him back with a younger model. I looked at Diane. At this woman whose boat tour I'd tracked down in a forum written in Italian. Whose cliffside dinner reservation I'd spent forty-five minutes on hold to secure. I picked up my wine glass. Took a sip. "I understand," I said. I drove home. I didn't cry. I was past that. I sat in the kitchen with the lights off. They didn't know I already had a cabin booked on their ship. Balcony suite, one deck above theirs. Paid for with the money from my half of the retirement account. The only thing I got in the divorce that was actually mine. I'd booked it the night Diane asked me to plan their itinerary. Before the dinner. Before Paul and Amanda's names were even mentioned. I was going to surprise them. Show up and let them realize they should've invited me. But now it was different. Now I wasn't surprising anyone. I was proving something. To Diane. To Jeff. To every person at that table who sat there and nodded while they replaced me. To Paul. Who would see me on that ship and know exactly what he walked away from. But I needed to show up right. And here's the part I sat with in the dark for a long time. If I showed up on that ship the way I was, they'd be right. I'd be done by eight o'clock. I'd miss the walk in Cinque Terre. I'd stand at the bottom of those stone stairs in Positano and let all of them watch me not manage it. Because Diane wasn't entirely wrong. I was tired. I'd been tired for years. Not normal tired. The kind sleep doesn't touch. Eight hours and I'd wake up with this heavy, low-grade fog already sitting behind my eyes. By two in the afternoon it was thick. I'd lose words mid-sentence. Stand in a room and forget what I'd walked in for. And the physical stuff. I'd come back from a walk and need to sit down before I did anything else. I was choosing the elevator when nobody was watching. Carrying the lighter bag. Stopping on the stairs. Not because something was wrong, exactly. Just because my body had less of something it used to have, and I'd been calling it age so long I'd stopped questioning it. The thing was, I'd tried to fix it. I'd tried every supplement with "energy" in the name. B12, magnesium, CoQ10, iron, adaptogens, a wellness powder that cost eighty dollars and tasted like chalk. I'd tried cutting things from my diet, adding things to my diet. I'd walked every morning whether I wanted to or not. My kitchen counter looked like a pharmacy. Every single one of them did the same thing. A little shift in the first week, a flicker of something, and then nothing. The fog came back, the tiredness settled back in, and I was out another sixty, eighty, a hundred dollars. I'd told myself this was what the divorce had done to me. And some small voice had started agreeing with Diane. Maybe I couldn't manage it anymore. Maybe this was just who I was now. Seven weeks until embarkation. The next morning I called Emma. My daughter. Twenty-four, working in healthcare research, the kind of job where she reads clinical papers the way other people read the news. I told her everything. The Instagram photos. The "you're so good at organizing" call. The dinner. Jeff's speech. Diane's voice. "Without Paul there." And the part I could barely say out loud — that Paul and Amanda were taking my spot on the cruise I'd planned. Emma was quiet for a long time. Then she said something I wasn't expecting. "Mom. How long have you actually been this tired?" "I don't know. A few years." "Before Dad left?" I thought about it. "Yes." "Everyone kept telling you it was the marriage. Then everyone told you it was the divorce. Nobody ever asked what was actually happening inside your body." I sat down. "Do you know what creatine is?" she asked. "It's a gym thing. Powders. Not for me." "That's what everyone thinks. And it's wrong." She explained it the way she'd come to understand it through her work. Your body runs on a molecule called ATP — the quick-burst fuel your cells reach for every time they move, contract, think fast. Your body makes ATP using creatine, which it stores in your muscles and your brain. When you're young, your stores are full. But after your mid-thirties, your body starts making less of it. By your mid-sixties, most people are running on a fraction of what they had at forty. Without ever knowing. "That's the part nobody talks about," she said. "It's not just muscle. It's the fuel your cells run on for everything. Walking. Climbing stairs. Getting through an afternoon without hitting a wall." And underneath that, she said, was the muscle piece. After fifty, you lose lean muscle every year unless something is holding it there. And once the muscle starts going, everything goes with it. The endurance. The getting-up. The engine. "That fog you've been living in, Mom. The exhaustion sleep doesn't touch. The way your body just runs out by two in the afternoon. That's not the divorce. That's not your age. That's a system running low on something specific." "So what do I do." "You give your body what it stopped making enough of on its own." Creatine. Not a trendy thing — she was almost apologetic about how unglamorous it was. One of the most studied compounds in the entire supplement world. Decades of research. Originally in athletes, but more and more now in adults over fifty, where the evidence is showing improvements in energy, lean muscle, strength, and even cognitive clarity. "The research in older women specifically," she said, "is harder to ignore than most people realize. This isn't bro science. It's published trials. Women in their fifties and sixties, walking better, feeling stronger, thinking more clearly. Not because they suddenly started training like athletes. Because their cells finally had the fuel to do what they were always supposed to do." "But I've tried supplements. They never stick." "Because none of them addressed this. You were taking things for energy symptoms. Nobody touched the actual fuel system underneath." Then she said the sentence I haven't been able to get out of my head since. "You've been managing the tiredness after it hits. Not restoring what your body was running low on in the first place." "Seven weeks," I said. "Is that enough time?" "Order tonight," she said. "Don't wait." I tried to do it cheap first. Of course I did. I ordered a tub of creatine powder from the pharmacy website. It arrived in two days. The scoop. The measuring. The gritty water that turned cloudy no matter how long I stirred it. I lasted four days. It sat on the counter, and I walked past it every morning and didn't touch it, and then one morning I moved it under the sink and told myself I'd try again later. I called Emma and told her it wasn't working. "Mom. What did you buy." "The powder. The regular kind." "That's why. It's not the creatine — it's the format. You need something you'll actually take every single day. Consistency is everything with this. A tub you dread opening in the morning isn't going to get you consistent." She sent me a link. A brand called OMNI. Creatine gummies. Three small chews in the morning with a glass of water. That was the whole ritual. She'd found them after looking specifically for something that had the right dose — three grams of creatine monohydrate, which is where the research on older adults sits — without the powder friction that makes people quit inside two weeks. Doctor-formulated. Third-party tested by Eurofins, which mattered to her after she'd seen what was going around online about which creatine gummies actually deliver what the label says and which ones are basically candy. COA available. Clean label — vegan, no dairy, no gluten. "The gummies didn't exist when creatine research started," she said, "but the creatine inside them is exactly the same molecule. Same dose. None of the reason to quit." I ordered that night. They arrived three days later. I opened the bag standing at the kitchen counter. Three gummies. A tall glass of water. Next to my coffee. That was the whole thing. I'm going to be careful here, because I've been burned by hope before. I know what it feels like to want something to work and see things that aren't there. So here's what I actually watched. About a week in, I got through the whole afternoon without hitting the wall. Not a softer wall. No wall. I was at my kitchen table at four o'clock doing things, and I looked up and realized I'd been going since morning without stopping to recover. I sat with that for a minute because I couldn't remember the last time it had happened. By day ten I was sleeping differently. Not perfectly — but less like I was falling into something and more like actual rest. I'd wake up and not spend the first twenty minutes arguing with myself about getting up. Three weeks in, I went for a walk and didn't need to sit when I got home. Just came in, took off my shoes, and kept moving. A month in, I reorganized the back room. A project I'd been walking past for six months. I came downstairs afterward and caught myself in the hallway mirror and I stopped. There was something present in my face that had gone somewhere. Not younger. Just there. Five weeks in, my neighbor stopped me in the driveway. "Susan. What are you doing? You look like you did five years ago." I told her I'd been sleeping better. Seven weeks. Embarkation day. Barcelona cruise terminal. I arrived early, walked the whole terminal end to end, and wasn't winded. I was on the Lido Deck with a glass of prosecco when I saw them arrive below. Diane first, already flushed, fanning herself. Tom behind her, red-faced at the check-in counter. Mike and Carol. Jeff and Renee. And behind them all, Paul and Amanda. Paul was carrying most of what she'd brought while she adjusted her sunglasses. He looked tired already. Twenty minutes later, Diane appeared on deck. Hair coming undone. She froze when she saw me. "Susan?" She blinked. "What are you doing here?" "Same cruise. Same sailing." And then she just stopped talking. She was looking at me the way you look at someone when the picture in your head no longer matches the person standing in front of you. "You look," she said. "You look different." "I feel different." She stood there a second longer than was comfortable, then said she needed to find her cabin. I didn't move. I had nowhere to be. And a very good glass of prosecco. First port. Cinque Terre. The villages are stacked on cliffs connected by narrow stone paths. No cars, no elevators. Just ancient stairs carved into rock and alleyways barely wide enough for two people to pass. The tender dropped us at the dock. I went up the stone steps at my own pace and didn't stop once. Not because I was pushing. Because I didn't need to. Behind me, I could hear it. Jeff at the bottom, looking up at the climb. "This is insane. Who builds an entire town with no ramp?" Diane stopped halfway, one hand on the wall, breathing hard. Amanda, all of thirty-six, sat down on a step. I was already at the café at the top. Ordering an espresso. Amanda arrived twelve minutes later. Flushed. Paul was behind her. He saw me sitting there, not a hair out of place. He stopped. For a moment, neither of us said anything. Then Amanda reached for his arm. "Babe, I need to sit down." He looked at me one more time. Then turned and followed her to a table across the piazza. Diane arrived after that. "You seem comfortable," she said. Tight voice. Polite smile. "I am." She didn't say anything else. That afternoon I walked the coastal route through Monterosso — the one I'd mapped for their group, marking the shaded rest points and the spot where the trail opens to a view of all five villages at once. I was sitting at that exact spot when I heard voices below me on the trail. Diane and Amanda. Moving slowly. Diane was holding a printed copy of my itinerary. MY itinerary. The one I'd spent three weeks building. They didn't see me. Amanda said, "Whoever planned this route really knew what they were doing." Diane didn't respond. Day three. Amalfi Coast. The private boat tour I'd tracked down in a forum written in Italian. Not in any guidebook. Twelve people max. I'd booked one spot for myself. The group had taken the rest because I'd put it in their itinerary. I arrived first. The captain walked me along the coast before the others showed up. Twenty minutes later, the group arrived. Paul saw me and stopped. "Susan? You're on this tour?" "I found this tour, Paul." He opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at Amanda. Amanda adjusted her sunglasses and said nothing. That evening, the group was at the pool bar. I was two loungers away, reading. Tom walked over. Tom had always been the quietest of the husbands. He sat down on the edge of the lounger next to mine. "Susan, I need to say something." I put down my book. "That boat tour today. The walking route yesterday. The fact that you're even on this ship." He paused. "You planned every good thing that's happened on this trip. And you're the one who wasn't supposed to be here." He looked back toward the bar where Diane and Jeff were ordering drinks. Where Paul had his arm around Amanda. "And I watched you go up those stairs in Cinque Terre ahead of a woman of thirty-six. Paul saw it too. He just won't say it." He got up and walked back to the group. I picked up my book. But I didn't read. I sat there for a long time thinking about what Tom said. That I'd planned every good thing on this trip. And I was the one who wasn't supposed to be here. Emma would've loved that. Night four. Captain's dinner. I put on the black dress I'd bought two Septembers ago and never worn. It fit the way it fit the day I bought it, but that wasn't really it. I was standing up straight in it. That was the difference. Amanda was next to Paul. She'd barely touched her first course. Paul looked up when I walked in. He looked at me for a long moment. Then at Amanda. Then back at me. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. After the first course, a woman at the next table leaned over. Late fifties. Elegant. She'd been watching me, she said, since we boarded. "I have to ask," she said. "You've got the kind of energy I stopped expecting to have in my forties. What are you doing?" So I told her. About my daughter. About the fuel system nobody had told me about. About creatine stores that decline year after year after fifty, quietly, in a way no one checks and no bloodwork flags. About the fog and the wall at two in the afternoon and the stairs I'd been avoiding — not because something was broken, but because my cells were running low on something specific and nobody had ever pointed at that particular thing. About the fact that I'd tried to manage the tiredness for years. That none of it had touched the actual system underneath. She wrote it in her phone. A man two seats down — a physician, it turned out, traveling with his wife — looked over. "Say that again," he said. "My wife's been exhausted for three years. Her doctor keeps telling her it's stress and to get more sleep." "It might not be either of those," I said. He got out his phone. Diane watched all of it. She picked up her wine glass. Took a long sip. Set it down. Looked straight ahead. Amanda had stopped shifting in her seat and started listening. Paul was watching me. Not Amanda. Me. Positano. Day seven. The tender dropped us at the marina. Stone steps climbing straight up the cliff face. I went up with one hand on the railing, and not because I needed it. Amanda stopped a third of the way, red-faced. Diane was leaning against the wall below her. Paul was somewhere between them, carrying everything. I was at the top. My table overlooked the water. Sunset lit the whole coast orange. I didn't check my phone. Just ate slowly. Ordered dessert. Didn't negotiate anything on the menu, didn't calculate, didn't stop and wonder if I had enough in the tank to get back down. It was just a beautiful dinner. I'd booked this reservation three months ago. For them, originally. But I'd kept the spot when they gave my place to Paul and Amanda. When I got back to the ship, Diane was in the atrium bar. Nursing a sparkling water, no dessert, still managing every bite. "Where did you eat?" she asked. I told her. "We tried to get in there," she said. "Fully booked." "It was lovely." She looked at me for a moment. "You always seem so rested," she said quietly. "How do you do that?" I just smiled. Last night on the ship. Farewell dinner. Diane found me on the upper deck afterward. Ocean black. Stars everywhere. She sat down. We were quiet for a while. "I've been so tired, Susan," she finally said. "For years. I keep thinking it's the stress, or not sleeping right, or getting older. My doctor says everything looks fine. But I hit a wall by two every afternoon and I'm done by eight and I've tried everything and nothing sticks." "I know exactly what that is." She turned to look at me. "People keep asking about you. The woman from the captain's dinner. The doctor whose wife is exhausted. That couple from the Positano tender who stopped you on the gangway." Silence. "Susan, what have you actually been doing? Two months ago you were apologizing on group texts for canceling plans. This week you went up those stairs in Cinque Terre ahead of all of us." So I told her. About the fuel system nobody talks about. About creatine stores declining after fifty, quietly, a little more each year, until your cells are running on a fraction of what they had at forty and your body is doing its best with what's left. About the fog and the wall and the stairs — not symptoms of aging, but symptoms of a system running low on something specific. About the fact that managing tiredness doesn't restore the thing underneath it. About three gummies in the morning with a glass of water, and the fact that it was never really about willpower or stress or the divorce. She typed the name into her phone right there on the deck. Then she said, "Why didn't you tell me before?" I stood up. "You didn't ask before," I said. "You told." "Safe travels home, Diane." I walked back to my cabin without looking back. Here's what I know now. For fourteen years, I planned those trips. Found every restaurant, booked every excursion, mapped every route. After Paul left me for a woman half my age, they didn't just leave me out of Greece. They posted it on Instagram. Then called me to plan their next one. Greg said I was in bed by nine. Diane said travel hadn't been the same since the divorce. They gave my spot to my ex-husband and the woman he left me for — and kept the itinerary I built so she could enjoy it. So when I booked myself onto that same ship, I had two choices. Show up exhausted, foggy, done by eight, and prove every one of them right. Or show up rested, clear, and stronger than I'd been in years — and prove I was never finished. OMNI didn't make me a new woman. It gave me back the one who was always there, underneath everything that had been running low for years. And here's the part that still gets me. Everyone was so sure it was the divorce. I was sure it was the divorce. Every supplement I tried was pointed at the symptom. Nobody pointed at the system. The exhaustion. The fog. The wall at two in the afternoon. The stairs I'd started avoiding. The engine that had gone quiet. Those were never separate problems. They were the same thing — a body running low on the fuel it had been slowly losing for years. A little more each season, in a way that's invisible until one day it isn't. And every day I spent managing the tiredness instead of restoring what was underneath it, the gap got a little wider. That's the part nobody tells you. It doesn't pause while you think about it. If someone has made you feel like you've become a burden. If they've replaced you with someone younger and handed you the planning. If you've been doing everything right and still hitting that wall every afternoon. If you've tried supplement after supplement and the tiredness always comes back. It might not be the stress. It might not be the divorce. It might not be your age. It might just be a system running low on something specific that nobody ever restored. OMNI is a small operation and they third-party test every single batch through Eurofins before it ships, which means they run out more than they'd like. If you go to order and they're out of stock, get on the restock notification. It's worth the wait. And there's a 30-day money-back guarantee — every penny back, no questions, if nothing changes. Three gummies. A glass of water. Every morning. That's the whole thing. Diane asked what I'd been doing. She'd already spent years tired, foggy, done by eight, watching the people around her decide what she was and wasn't capable of anymore. I'd already gotten mine heading the other direction. (Names and photos have been changed for privacy. Results vary, and creatine builds up gradually with daily use over several weeks.)