exhaustion - 22/12/25

lately i have been so, so, so, so fucking tired. i haven't been able to do anything that requires brain power for more than an hour a day before i turn into a zombie, so exhausted i can barely even sit upright. my internal monologue slows to a crawl and the only thing i can do is stare into nothing for hours.

i wish i could get work done, and play games, and talk to people who might enjoy my company. there are 24 hours in a day but it feels like i get 5 max, often less. it fucking sucks!

i guess you would call this burnout, but it isn't caused by overwork, so the solution isn't as simple as "take a break and do something you enjoy."

i feel like i'm very seriously ill. my head goes in circles and circles and circles and circles and circles and circles and circles and circles and i can't stop it because it doesn't ask for permission. i worry about things i know don't matter. i worry until my body starts to break down. everything hurts from the moment i wake up because of the stress. self-soothing works well, but it takes a long time. i end up back at square one every time my body has another stress response. the worrying, no matter how useless i know it is, is what takes up all my energy. it's the reason why i only get a few hours to focus on things that matter.

and the awful thing about having more than one condition is you put so much effort into managing the worst one only for the other ones to get worse in the meantime, and then they keep getting worse, and they keep getting worse, and they keep getting worse, and they keep. getting. worse. it's a sweet little surprise for the future. will the treatments i try end up making my overall quality of life better, or will something worse come out of hiding?

...but that's for now. i know what will make me happy, and right now, i'm safe, so everything will be fine. i don't need to completely cure the source of all this stress (impossible, might as well ask for a completely new brain at that point), i just need to shrink it until it's manageably small and doesn't take up all my energy anymore.

there will be a point in the near future where i'm not exhausted every hour of every day. there WILL be, because the fury i will feel if i spend the rest of my life like this will be apocalyptic. it will explode the sun and everything in the universe will die. but i already know that's not going to happen, so everything will be fine.

when i worry too much, i feel like i'm boiling alive. it's an invisible sort of agony and the fact that nobody can feel it the way i do almost makes me want to drag the people who piss me off into hell with me. for a few months up until very recently, the suffering was constant, every second of every minute of every hour of every day. i couldn't find a way out, and the only people around me kept reinforcing all the fear i was trapped under. as far as my body could tell, i was never safe, so none of my skills alone could snap me out of it.

then my dear closest friend, practically my adopted sister, helped me out. i don't know how i got so lucky to meet someone like her, and i tell her that every time she saves me. she has the most perfectly grounding presence out of anyone i've met, and i'll always be grateful to her. if there are more people like her in the world, any amount of suffering will be worth living to see the day where i get to meet them.

so i'll always be okay. my current predicament feels insurmountable, but all of this will feel so light one day. that's how it went in the past, too.

i'm very grateful to be alive.