I'm just so tired

I feel like there is this need to explain, a need to help you understand what it's like to live inside my head. For those that struggle with this battle, you already know it, but for those that don't, I'm so thankful you've never experienced this and I pray wholeheartedly that you never do. These words are just that, words, they cannot fully express the depth of it, but I hope it helps you get a glimpse of understanding.

It's almost as if my mind is off on this tangent, that I am helpless to stop. It's not that I don't want to, it's not that I don't know that the things that are going through it are not right, not what I want, not what I believe. So each day, I wake up and my first thought is how it would be better just to go back to sleep because that's how I can disappear without having to really disappear. However, I know it's not the right thing to do, so I fight to get myself out of bed. My mind tells me that I don't care what i look like, how I dress, but then it also tells me that people will judge me if I don't look right. Again, going back to bed sounds like a much better place to be. However, I know that all of those things are wrong, not healthy, not normal, so I fight through and I shower, and dress and put make up on and look decent. By this time, I have done mental battle with myself, with the enemy, and I'm tired.

Then it's time to eat, I'm not hungry, or I am, and I just want cake. I'm diabetic, cake is bad, I've gained 20+ lbs, cake is bad. I fight this battle of do I eat, do I not eat, what do I eat? Seems small, insignificant even, but in my current world, it's not. It's huge and I'm tired.

Then it's time to leave the house, this is where anxiety gets the best of me. If I leave, there will be people, that's the most exhausting part. The part where I have to pretend that I don't have racing thoughts of self harm, disappearing, wanting to run and hide and cry anything that doesn't involve people. This is the part where I obsess about what I will say if some one asks me how I'm doing, how I'm going to smile when inside I'm dying. How I'm going to pretend to be okay and not feel like I'd prefer to be swallowed into the dark abyss that follows me. I formulate escape plans, try to come up with ways to get out of whatever it is I have to leave the house for. By this time my heart is pounding, my head is spinning, my stomach is in knots and going back to bed seems like the best option. However, I do none of these things, I fight, and I claw, maybe take a Xanax to do what I know I am supposed to do. Which means that all day long is a battle, the time that I am away from home I am fighting an internal mental battle to be okay and I'm tired.

I get home, and usually the bed wins because I'm tired. I wake up and my sweet husband is usually home. He's the one person I never feel like I have to pretend with. He knows I'm not okay and that 's okay. He knows my battle and understands it and loves me through it. We watch some mindless tv, but I can't really focus on it because my mind is racing. Racing through all the things I did wrong during the day, racing through all the things I should be doing, racing through all the ways I can make tomorrow better, racing through different ways I can disappear, racing through all the things that could help me feel, just feel, even if they're bad things, all the while, racing through all the ways that what I'm thinking is wrong. Racing through all the things that I know Jesus says about me, racing through all the ways that the enemy is trying to win, racing through all the right things, the right things that seem so hard and I'm tired.

Then comes bed time, only I can't sleep, I'm tired, but my brain won't shut up, it won't stop. I make myself a drink because it slows it down, but it also starts new thoughts about how I have to be so careful to not self medicate, how alcoholism runs in my family and I can't let that become and issue as well. Eventually, I make my way to bed, take my sleeping pill that helps me stay asleep if I can fall asleep. Most nights my brain wins, and I'm lucky to get 3-4 hours of sleep which means my poor husband doesn't get much either with my tossing and turning which starts more thoughts and I'm tired.

Morning comes and I do it all over again.

This kind of tired, is not the kind of tired that goes away after a good nights sleep if I can get one. This kind of utter exhaustion is from fighting a never ending mental battle to stay alive. Do I know all the things that I should do? yep, do I want to do those things? yep, however, right now I just want to make it through the next 10 minutes.