Perpetual State of Tired
During my great purging event last weekend I happened across a series of spiral bound notebooks, all college ruled, fill margin to margin with cramped, neat cursive...each page covered in the careful and occasionally hurried scrawl from my teen years. The hand looked foreign to me...despite hours of careful letting technique being foisted upon me in grad school, my handwriting has long since gone to pot. Pages of the eerily legible text. And though the script itself was foreign, the thoughts they forged were not.
A tiredness. A weariness. Sometimes sheer exhaustion. I am aware I have always been a bit of an overachiever. But in high school, even through college and grad school, it was never a question of if I was taking on too much. I just did it. Four years...up at 5:45, take the bus downtown, sit through seven hours or so of classes, back on the bus, home by 4:30, dinner, homework. Assuming I didn't have practice for forensics, a play or some other extra curriculum mind you. Weekends at the ubiquitous part time job. And helping out at masses, whether as a reader, singer or Eucharistic minister. And forensic meets or the occasional volunteering. Senior year was even more strained. The normal class load was followed by an hour or so rehearsal for a senior project. After which I headed to the library to kill another hour doing homework prior to a stage management commitment for a local theatre group. Most weeknights I wouldn't even return home til well after 11pm.
I must have been a bit crazy.
And I was always tired. Busy.
And understandably exhausted. Sunday mornings between masses I would sit next to my mom while she sold scrip for fund raising. Everyone who knew us inevitably asked how I was. "Tired" Always that one word. "tired"
It drove my mother nuts.
In grad school the pace quickened and I would find myself driving home some mornings at 5am after a full night of work solely to shower and change before heading to class all over again. Many of those days are blurred in to a haze of coffee and nicotine. Some of my best work, or so my professors claim, were from nights I so lacked any lucidity as to not remember how I even produced the work when I saw it the next morning.
Like butter spread over too much toast, as one dear hobbit may claim.
But I was productive. I was always working. A procrastinator to the end, but always working, always thinking.
And now? I feel worn to the point of breaking. I wake up after a full night's sleep feeling not the least bit rested. I'll catch myself dozing during breaks at work. The feeling of tiredness is not something new to me. However, this exhausted lethargy without any expenditure of energy to arrive there is new.
It's almost as if my metabolism finally threw its arms up in defeat. Though perhaps that already happened years ago and I was too busy to notice. Now in the down time, in the quieter moments, without the work to cloud the true weariness, now perhaps I'm finally noticing what my body may have been trying to scream at me for years now.
Maybe it's time to suck it up and see a doctor.
A tiredness. A weariness. Sometimes sheer exhaustion. I am aware I have always been a bit of an overachiever. But in high school, even through college and grad school, it was never a question of if I was taking on too much. I just did it. Four years...up at 5:45, take the bus downtown, sit through seven hours or so of classes, back on the bus, home by 4:30, dinner, homework. Assuming I didn't have practice for forensics, a play or some other extra curriculum mind you. Weekends at the ubiquitous part time job. And helping out at masses, whether as a reader, singer or Eucharistic minister. And forensic meets or the occasional volunteering. Senior year was even more strained. The normal class load was followed by an hour or so rehearsal for a senior project. After which I headed to the library to kill another hour doing homework prior to a stage management commitment for a local theatre group. Most weeknights I wouldn't even return home til well after 11pm.
I must have been a bit crazy.
And I was always tired. Busy.
And understandably exhausted. Sunday mornings between masses I would sit next to my mom while she sold scrip for fund raising. Everyone who knew us inevitably asked how I was. "Tired" Always that one word. "tired"
It drove my mother nuts.
In grad school the pace quickened and I would find myself driving home some mornings at 5am after a full night of work solely to shower and change before heading to class all over again. Many of those days are blurred in to a haze of coffee and nicotine. Some of my best work, or so my professors claim, were from nights I so lacked any lucidity as to not remember how I even produced the work when I saw it the next morning.
Like butter spread over too much toast, as one dear hobbit may claim.
But I was productive. I was always working. A procrastinator to the end, but always working, always thinking.
And now? I feel worn to the point of breaking. I wake up after a full night's sleep feeling not the least bit rested. I'll catch myself dozing during breaks at work. The feeling of tiredness is not something new to me. However, this exhausted lethargy without any expenditure of energy to arrive there is new.
It's almost as if my metabolism finally threw its arms up in defeat. Though perhaps that already happened years ago and I was too busy to notice. Now in the down time, in the quieter moments, without the work to cloud the true weariness, now perhaps I'm finally noticing what my body may have been trying to scream at me for years now.
Maybe it's time to suck it up and see a doctor.
posted by Unknown at
9:27 PM
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