I was going to write a different piece today, something light and loving, but I can barely sum up the energy to write this article instead. My other article “5 Reasons Why Mid-Semester Fatigue Really Sucks” skimmed the surface of those less-than-awesome feelings that come with the nearing the finish line of the semester, but it definitely isn’t fully covering what I’m going through.

            To be honest, I should’ve seen this coming. When you deal with chronic stress and anxiety you get used to knowing when something is wrong when everything seems all right. I thought that the spring semester would be a chance for me to bounce back from my horrible depression and anxiety over winter break, but I was wrong. I’ve been climbing and falling up and down since January, trying to get on my feet, but it’s not working.

            I’ve been dealing with stress at school, starting from week one when I realized that the history class I signed up for was mostly discussion and presentations (something that my social anxiety wanted none of) so I bounced from an online class to another one. I thought that this new class would be easy, an elective to just breeze through and enjoy, but I was wrong there too. This class is definitely not designed with procrastinators in mind and it’s a lot of busy work that I walked blindly in to. The tests are open book but that doesn’t help me much. This class is stressing me out. My other classes, while not that bad, aren’t what I expected or wanted, and I don’t feel that drive to go to class or learn like I used to. Some days I drag myself into a desk and barely pay attention. I feel like I’m on a total disconnect.

            I planned on spending most of my free time writing, working on getting my career off of the ground. At the beginning of the semester it was going okay, now I don’t have the energy. I spend most days working on schoolwork, and whatever’s left is for me to take care of house stuff or emotionally/physically/mentally recover from school. So I basically only work on school writing or articles for Misc Musing instead of my revision or new novel or short stories. I want to write—God, I have so many ideas—but I can’t find the energy.

            I want to get healthy, do the whole diet and exercise thing, but yet again I have no energy. I don’t sleep well at night and get most of my good sleep in the early hours of the morning, so I don’t have time to go in the early hours when it’s mostly old people. I have classes in the afternoon, a job on the other side of town around lunch time on some days, and I am constantly stuck on a loop of, “I’ll go tomorrow.”

            Over winter break, I was dealing with huge stress at my house. Now it’s better, but not great. I do a majority of the chores, cook a majority of the meals, and spend a lot of my time fretting over dishes in the sink or if the cats need more water. Anytime I’m not doing schoolwork I’m vacuuming or wiping down the counters for the nth time. I’m tired of taking care of the house, even though I don’t do it because I have to and because I want to, but I just wish some of the energy I spend on keeping that place spotless could go into writing or into something else.

            Not to mention, the financial exhaustion since the Captain earns the bacon in our household and I make up for it with cooking/cleaning/etc. while I pursue my dreams. However it seems like we never have enough money after bills/insurance/groceries so there’s no time to enjoy things like we used to. Our plan of having one ‘out of the house’ date night a month hasn’t worked so far. I feel bad when I need to borrow money to cover an empty tank of gas, or a nice meal instead of just pasta, and I know that most of the time he’s fine with it, but I dislike that he seems to spend a majority of his paycheck on me, instead of doing something nice for himself.

            I just feel majorly exhausted by everything right now. The only thing that doesn’t stress me out is my family and The Captain, but that can only go so far. I can’t rely on people to fix me or for everything, and I have to be held accountable for my own things, but I just miss how simple things used to be. I don’t know what to do to get back on track, to not feel overwhelmed and tired all the time, but I have hope that things will get better. Maybe after a day or so of relaxation and unwinding I’ll feel better and be able to concentrate without wanting to curl up in a ball and pass out for a week.