I’m Just So Tired
This phrase. I keep thinking it, and sometimes it slips out my mouth. It instantly traumatizes and scares me. And then I think about the impact that statement has on my husband, and my family. That phrase a year ago meant I had nothing left to give to this life. That phrase, obsessively replaying in my mind, giving way to indescribable darkness and hopelessness. If I could just rest, things would be better. But I couldn’t. 20 min spurts of sleep, for no more than 2-3 hours nightly, with an inability to nap at all, had left my mind struggling to hang on. I laid in bed, exhausted, crying, wishing for sleep to come. But it never did. And my mind told me the only way I would finally rest would be to end this physical life. I prayed out to God and begged him to please still accept me into His Kingdom upon my death. I knew that I should keep fighting, but there was no fight left. I knew God was there, but I just couldn’t withstand the pain anymore. And when everybody asked how I was, I simply would reply, “I’m just so tried”. Little did they know what that statement had turned into in my mind. Little did they know God would reaffirm that tiredness on the night I was to take my life, that he would breathe a breath of life into me and tell me that I was indeed, just really tired, and should go to bed. That pause. That borrowed breath saved my life that night. The next day I opened up about where my mind really was, telling my family I needed to go inpatient because I felt it would just be so easy to end it all otherwise and didn’t trust myself.
So here we are nearly a year later. And I am laying in bed with bone-crushing fatigue. I remember this feeling. I remember this inability to get out of bed. I remember the feeling of not doing enough while struggling with the attempts to rest. I remember ultimately deciding I was worthless, undeserving, and a burden. I remember that I just “knew” that my family would be better off without me, that they could again have unbridled joy, and that I wouldn’t be able to “ruin” Olivia. And as I remember, the tears slip down my face. How can I ever trust my mind again?
Fact: I have covid. Fact: I have double pneumonia still. Fact: my blood gases are all messed up secondary to this. Fact: recovery will be awhile. Fact: my doctor doesn’t even want to follow up for 6 weeks because he doesn’t believe there will be much improvement in imaging or labs prior to that.
Yet, my mind still says, “are you sure this isn’t actually your depression?”. I am physically ill, with objective evidence even, but my mind is still not convinced. Perhaps this is a welcome excuse to stay in bed and not have to deal with my life; to not have to be a Mom.
But is that what I actually want? To miss out? No, I want rest because this exhaustion is overwhelming. I literally cannot move from the bed at times. But depression had that power as well. Your mind is such an incredibly powerful thing. So at the height of disrupted hormones and neurotransmitters, my body was unable to function properly then as well. And again, my mind wanders. How do I know, how will I ever know? Yes, I can test everything against the truth, and I have and do. Gabe also reminds me of the truth of the situation. I am not that same person from a year ago. When I hold Olivia now, I get to actually feel joy, and peace, and connection. I don’t feel empty and hollow. I don’t feel like a monster.
But is that monster still lurking? Is that why I am laying here in bed, frozen, too tired to even lift my phone and respond to messages checking in sometimes? Am I just isolating and avoiding? Another familiar phrase from that time pops in – how am I ever going to do this? I can’t do this currently, and it just feels like the same rhetoric from me, an incapable Mother.
I reach into my mind for grace and gentleness, reminding myself of the truth of the past year and how God has delivered us. But it is a struggle.
Your mind is so powerful.
Especially when it is tired.