How does it feel to be completely and utterly fatigued out? I haven’t had a full nights’ sleep in a little over five days.  Since Wednesday last week I have had broken nights’ sleep again.  Waking two to three times per night and then taking ages to fall asleep again.  The last two nights I have barely slept.  Maybe 2 hours here or there. I am exhausted.  Worn out.  Pooped.  Beat. Dog-tired.  Drained. Spent.  Worn-out. Weepy.  Over-exhausted. Emotional ship wreck.  The problem is when you reach that point of extreme exhaustion that even when you try to sleep, sleep eludes you.  Sleep evades you and you end up tossing and turning, tossing and turning in different directions.  I feel like a shattered rose.  A broken rose. Irreparable.

I tried sleeping at my friend’s house last night, whilst I checked on the plants.  I was too lazy to go back to my own apartment.  But that was a wrong decision.  I ended up staying awake most of the night.  Feeling agitated and irritated, and frustrated, and nervous that I couldn’t fall asleep.  I am just so worn out I just want to collapse and sleep for many hours to come. I want to wrap myself up in a small ball and curl away into a small corner and be forgotten.  To be left alone.

I am walking home tonight to tire myself out.  I am not drinking coffee today to keep me awake like I did yesterday.  I could use some tooth picks perhaps to keep my eye-lids open?!  Who knows… I just need to sleep.  I am going to take a hot bath to see if that will do the trick for a peaceful slumber.  I can’t remember the last time I had such a peaceful slumber or perhaps I have had a peaceful slumber sometime recently in the past when I felt safe.  But lately even that seems to elude me.

Luckily I haven’t had much of a chance to think about stuff throughout the day.  I have been barely able to focus on my work but at least I could get my work done and not have peace evade my presence.  Not have the anxiety attacks that were so clearly there on the weekend. Anxiety attack after anxiety attack.  Except maybe now this anxiety has transferred to sleepless nights, where my mind tries and figures out how on earth am I going to achieve all of the things on my gigantic to-do list, endless goals that I want to meet?

Is my goal to publish my book for March even realistic?  I am not even sure anymore.  But I feel like God is telling me to pursue that avenue.  So surely God will open the door and make it happen even when in my human mind I feel like that it is almost impossible to meet.  I really want my book to be published for next year.  I don’t want to keep dragging it out.  Last year I put it on the ‘back shelf’ intending to forget all about it, only to be nudged and told that the book is worth it.  That the book could help thousands of hurting women.  Hmmmm…. Really?! So, then the ball got set into motion and now beyond my wildest dreams the book is nearing publication point.  Eeek… and then I think I don’t even have a cover design for the cover of the book.  Nor do I have a publisher yet.  Well I could go down the self-publishing route which seems to be more feasible than the other route.  But my editor tells me to think BIG. To go out of my comfort zone and to go through the traditional route of publishing my book.  So, I am praying about that.

Then there is the move.  I have to move.  Admittedly I haven’t even started looking for a place to live.  I have to move out within the next 7 weeks.  Will I find a place to live?  Why am I not even looking?  I am not really stressed about it.  Truthfully speaking I can’t be bothered to look.  I am not even sure how long I will be living here where I am living.  But I need to look – eventually. Somehow. Somewhere.

Between now and October so many things are happening.  My birthday. A course I signed up to do.  My son’s birthday (I am dreading it).  Personal ministry retreat. Move somewhere in between.  Another course to do.  Packing to do. And the endless list goes on and on.  I haven’t had the energy to cook since June.  I haven’t baked since June.  To be honest I can’t even remember the last time I cooked myself a meal, let alone bake a cake (one of my hobbies).

All I have been able to do is write, and write and write. Flicking between anxiety, depression and happiness back to intense grief.  It’s exhausting keeping up with my own emotions.  I can’t wait till the day that I feel completely at peace again about everything.  And when I think about it – I don’t know what happened between the months of April up until August.  Where did time go?  Why did time evade me?  Why did time go so fast? What did I do all these past months?  Did I waste them?  Or did I achieve at least something?  What happened to them?  Some of it feels like I have been in a dream like state.  Almost as if I am living in a dream world rather than a reality.  But I know for a fact that it was real.  Emotions were rushing around me going from extremes.  Absolutely normal.

Truthfully speaking the months between April and end of June were the happiest months of my life since Sebby’s death.  That is saying something in itself.  I was so happy.  I was at peace.  I had joy.  I felt loved. And before I knew it I crash landed back thickly into the slushy marshland of negative emotions.  Oh how I dread it.  How I hate it.  How it infuriates me.  I just have to accept it.  And then I simply have to withdraw myself once more from my usual activities, just trying to keep myself afloat.  Thinking I haven’t been able to achieve anything since his death.  But I am sure I have achieved something.  I have written a book.  I am starting a second/third book.  I have written endless amounts of poetry, and short therapeutic streams of consciousness… which I guess this is what I am doing right now.

But what is my purpose?  What am I supposed to be doing?  Will my life be very different next year in April? Or will I be stuck in this dead end job that I dislike so much that it creates this whirlpool of negative emotions. Sometimes I love the job.  But mostly I hate it, because the work just seems to pile up on me, and no-one seems to notice.  I am just swimming underneath it all.  I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life.  I want to do something where I can have a creative outlet.  But that seems impossible.

Nothing is impossible for God.  But for my small brain everything seems impossible because I feel like I have to climb insurmountable mountains.  I am simply overwhelmed.  I need to take a break.  I need to rest.  I need to sleep.  I need to find my equilibrium again.  But not sure how I will do that?  And through all of this I feel like I have somehow failed myself, failed my son, failed my family, and the people close to me.  I guess I just need to take a step back and be reminded of all the things that I did achieve, and that it is OK sometimes to crash land in a puddle of mud where you try to make sense of what your purpose is in life.  I just pray that this time next year my life will be very different and that I will be doing what I enjoy doing rather than doing something I hate doing.

God is in control.  God will make a way where there seems to be no way.  I am safe in the arms of Jesus.  I will surrender to God.  He is my refuge, and in him I shall seek my rest. Hallelujah.