On Not Being Able to Catch a Fucking Break

(This is profane because life is crazy and sometimes language fails, except for some very specific four-lettered words, to capture that.)

I’m so tired. I am so fucking tired. For the past five weeks, I’ve run through the gauntlet and back, and it took all my energy, and I’m tired.

I’ve been thinking lately, when I can muster the strength, a lot about math. And it would be fair to say that I think about math a lot on a normal day, but this week especially because I’ve been trying to calculate why I’m so god damn tired.

Let our tiredness be x.

So you take your dose of shit in the form of schoolwork, as any good UCLA student expects. x+x=2x.

The devil’s spawns in Murphy Hall make a clerical error, which they then refuse to fix, and you’re dropped from your classes and miss three emails about homework and spend four hours running between Francoise in the Physics office, and Jennifer in the Financial Aid Office, and some bitch at the Registrar only to be assessed a $50 late fee. 2x+x=3x.

So you dance, and you dance a lot, because it’s the thing that makes you happy and keeps you sane, but god damn does it take time. Time that you could/should be spending remedying the other stresses. 3x+x=4x.

By now you’re already tired, and you start losing things. Leather jacket (with debit card in the pocket) goes first. Phone charger goes second, then the office key. It’s hard to care for yourself without a debit card! No groceries, no replacement phone charger, no freedom to swing by chik-fil-a for some comfort food on the way home from another tough day. 4x+x=5x.

And then you get a call from home. 6x.

And things aren’t going very well. 7x.

And your dad’s sick, and he’s not trying very hard to get better, and your little brother is making tough decisions that you should be making, but you left to go to school 2000 miles away to escape, and you feel guilty because he’s only 17 and he has no experience in these kinds of decisions that you’ve been making for a decade. 11x.

Your family’s hurting, and you feel the pressure to be a good daughter. 12x. And sister. 13x.

Money’s tight. 14x.

You’re not special. Your friends are hurting too. And you love them, and empathy is draining. 15x. But you also step up as a friend, and commit to them in any way you can. You do this out of love, but love requires energy too. 16x.

When my exhaustion is at 16x, I spiral. My immune system shuts down, and I get sick. 17x. My eyes droop, and I fall asleep before I can shower, and don’t wear make-up except maybe for the remnants of the day before. I don’t feel good about myself when I’m this tired. 18x. Little things affect me in a way that they normally wouldn’t. 19x. 20x. 21x.

I push myself to a second-wind every night, and take two extra hours to wind down before I can fall asleep. Two hours of too-tired-to-work, too-wired-to-sleep.

That purgatory is where I’m at right now. There might be a conclusion to draw from this, but I’m not in a headspace to get there at this moment. The deepest lesson I can muster right now is, if you at all are able, you should make a cup of tea and go to bed right now.