exhaustion prevails

he's an undefeated foe

i'm the underdog.

I wake up in the morning with two symptoms I dislike:  nausea and chest pain.  The chest pain is a tightness that's due to stress and the nausea is from the medication that's meant to lessen the stress.  I find this irony almost unbearable - the quest to find mental peace constantly interrupted.

 anxiety - breathe

a moment to step away

evaluate this.

So it's weird knowing, once you know.  I sit in meetings now, my heart racing, my mind spinning, and I'm asking myself, "is this anxiety or is there a real reason to feel this way?"  which, btw, causes some more anxiety.  Yesterday I was out for a walk and feeling exhausted - and KNEW it was my depression, KNEW it was my brain, but still felt it in my bones like I'd already been walking for years.  

This is not pleasant.

The basement looks like a bomb went off, and I'm super sad about losing the beautiful stone work fire place down there.  It pains me, but it had to be done.  I'm so tired of the constant whirling of fans and dehumidifiers, and long for the quiet my house once provided  My husband and I each got bonuses this month, that essentially pay for the basement issues, and not the kitchen we were both hoping for.  Life goes on.

This is day 5 of being on medication.  I feel nauseous every morning, but it goes away. It will be another two weeks or so until anthing different happens with my brain.  

the pain in my chest

and the extreme exhaustion

not the change of life.

An update to yesterday's post.  I called a medical professional and chatted for nearly an hour with a nurse practitioner.  I took an anxiety survey, depression survey, a bunch of other mental health things - and then we had a good chat about burnout.

Mine is likely caregiver burnout with a touch of the career burnout, tucked in.

My anxiety is high - it hasn't bothered me in a long time - and my depression is low-to-medium, likely caused by the anxiety.  I have bloodwork scheduled, a pyschologist scheduled, and some online work doing CBT.  I'm changing my diet, re-looking at meditation, and taking this seriously.

The NP said that I've gone so long dealing with stress, that she thinks my brain is likely depleted of serotonin.  It's why i'm tired and likely why I no longer give a fuck.  It's why I always feel like something bad is going to happen.  It's why I can't stop thinking about something even worse happening.  

I feel - stupid? - that I didn't know.  That I excused it as other things and didn't realize how this was going.  I feel like I should have seen this, staring at me.  But it explains why I was angry at the "compartmentalizing" comment, and why I lost it yesterday. 

Ah, well.. time to replace my serotonin, change some habits, and get back to normal.

 tears, pressure building

i hate the word, triggered, but

my heart is wounded.

So I'm sitting at my desk, in a meeting.  My heart is pounding, my face is flushed.  I'm a fucking hot mess after a bad meeting this morning.  We took a burnout test and my results were "severely at risk of burnout - do something now".  

Do WHAT?

Fuck.

So here I am, chest pains.  Faking it.  Knowing I need to deal with my stress and handle this feeling of burnout, but no clue how.  I don't want to exercise or cook more meals or take longer walks.  What I want is for people to see what i'm being asked to do and stop asking me for more.  I want someone else to maybe catheterize my husband twice a day and let me take a few days off.  I need to stop feeling like I'm drowning.  I want to stop having to ASK people to do their jobs.  I want to stop having my ass handed to me when I make an assumption because I'm too fucking tired to chase people who are making 70 grand a year.

I need a break.

 heart muscles, tighten

ears, my pulse is audible

the stress takes over.

I'm tapping out.  The flood last week has been all consuming - losing all the flooring and some of the walls, the repairs to be made to the drainage system, not having a furnace, and the constant whirs of fans like sinister white noise.  

That, and I'm turning 50.

That, and my son called from outside Orlando last night - after being in an accident with his big truck. He's fine, and he wasn't at fault, but the stress of that and everything else had me imagining a different scenario and succumbing to the stress that has been bubbling up for a week.

That, and I'm tired of my mom putting little hearts all over my brother's gf's cheesy ass posts but not looking at mine.  "they are too political".  Well, sorry I'm smart.  Sorry I'm not a skinny, stupid bitch.  Sorry I think - and sorry I'm not pretending to be something other than I am.  Sorry, sorry, sorry.  My smug mother even pretended she didn't know who my aunt was "oh, I don't have a sister in law with that name, but your dad does" and then proudly tells me that my father wrote off his sister - just like my brother did.  

I should take some time off work.  Walk.  Relax.  I can do that while working, though, too, and so I just continue on and hope for the best.  God, I'm so tired.

the sun, bright and young

bursts through branches with such force

shadows on my lawn

Two weeks.

As someone looking back on *almost* 50 years of living, there is something that continues to amaze me - the human capacity to continue believing something stupid no matter what facts or arguments they are faced with.  And their seamingly endless capacity to argue the truth, over and over and over again, to continue the luxury of not changing what they think.

Obviously, anyone that knows me knows I am talking about religion broadly.  But this truth, this light of forceful sunshine, can be found everywhere.  I found it last evening, in a conversation.

I had a very meaningful conversation yesterday with a group of ladies I like and admire.  The conversation felt good, felt cathartic, even though I was largely a spectator of it.  However, this morning I woke and in those moments between waking and being awake, I realized that I had kind of accepted something as my issue that is not my issue.

The conversation was around trust.  And how trust had broken down and how we need to fix it.  Yes.  But there was something around us needing to trust and explore it, and not much around the person who had broken our trust or our right not to trust someone.   That questioning whether or not someone was truly at capacity was about us not trusting, and not about them not demonstrating what they're doing.  Even when we ask.

I'm.. exhausted.  Perhaps there was some truth in what we discussed - it's not my problem.  I can just trust and hpoe for the best. 

 turning fifty soon

I slip on my pastel pants

and pour myself tea.

I'm turning fifty in 19 days.  I crochet now.  I have bird feeders and know the types of birds who eat.  I put the woodpecker food and the cardinal food in different places so I can enjoy both birds.  I research ancestry.  I wear sari skirts and funky boots and do not give one flying fuck what people think of me.

Yesterday, I had a shift at the mission.  I wanted to wear something with pockets (phone) and looked.  I had crop pants (I work from home, yo) and sweat pants (same), and found a pair of blue jeggings and several dress pants.  I picked the jeggings and went through my tees and sweaters - and I.. just don't know how to dress anymore.