Tired

I am tired. Soooo tired. Dragged down. Out of juice. Bone weary. It has entered deep into my body and is part of my fiber. I hate it.

I remember this feeling. When I was working as an attorney there were times when the volume of work surged and long hours for weeks on end would be required to get the work done. At the end, when I finally was able to rest for a few days, I would feel as tired as this. But those days were better. At least I had a reason. At least I had an accomplishment. Today I have no excuse for how tired I am.

Stress can make me this tired. Depression can make me this tired. But neither of these is present in my life right now. I believe that my body has had an allergic reaction to an environment which I was in for a couple of days. That is my best guess. I hope this feeling is not here without cause.

Twelve step programs have a saying: Watch out for H.A.L.T. Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. It is at those times that you are the most vulnerable. Now I see why they have included Tired.

Tired scares me. It looks like depression and it feels like depression. Even though I know that it is not depression, my mind and body want to think that it is depression. But what if it is depression? What if it has arrived unannounced? What if it never leaves? This itself is depression thinking. Despair is hiding around the corner.

When I am tired, my whole view of life changes. Life does not change. It is just as wonderful as it always is. But my ability to see the wonder changes. My focus is on my self. I have blinders to what the rest of the world wants or needs from me. I am all that I care about. I do not live in the present. The present is lousy. It is better to torture myself about what could go wrong in the future. At least that will generate some type of feeling. Being tired has a dead feeling which is no feeling at all.

Everything is harder to do. Getting up in the morning is harder. Staying up is harder. Shaving becomes a choice and decision. Pretending to the world outside that everything is normal is harder. Forcing myself to do what needs to be done becomes so hard. Every inch is a fight with myself.

So what do I do? I wait. I wait it out. I wait for it to end. And in the meantime I try to meet my commitments and do what needs to be done. I keep my life as simple as I can. In the old days I used to punt and not do anything. But now I know that the doing is so important. It is important to me and to the ones I love. I need to meet my commitments. People are counting on me and I am counting on me.