As much as I hate to admit it, I’m tired. Really tired. I hate being tired. And the odd thing is, the more tired I am, the harder it can be for me to see that I am.
I tend to just drive myself — the more tired I am, the harder I push — and I end up getting in over my head, taking on all sorts of projects, writing, drawing, painting, doing-doing-doing…
It’s just crazy.
Over the past year, this really hit home with me, as I looked through all my notebooks for what I’d been doing with myself, and to see if there were any indicators that something was not quite right with me, when I thought it was. What I found were pages and pages and pages of notes about projects I wanted to start and work on… most of which I never finished, and many of which I completely forgot about, when I got distracted and started doing other things. I literally completely forgot about a bunch of projects I’d started that were intense burning desires with me, when I started.
Then all of a sudden, I went off and did something else, and I never came back to the projects.
Now, someone might say that it sounds like ADD, but it feels a whole lot more extreme to me. It really does. It’s not simple distraction. It’s having something you once loved and were 100% devoted to… simply cease to exist in your mind. It’s just dropping something you have hundreds of hours invested in and wandering away to do something else, and never, ever coming back to your original plan. It’s misplacing a notebook (or putting it somewhere you cannot see it) and experiencing life as though that notebook and that plan had never even existed.
This is something far deeper and more extreme than ADD. It’s got to be.
It’s sleep-walking through life because I am so worn out and exhausted by all the activity going on in my mind that I cannot think clearly… and I don’t realize I’m not thinking clearly, because I’m way too tired to grasp that fact. It’s never seeing the whole picture, because in the process of pushing yourself too far, too fast, too hard, you’ve shattered the image and are working off various little pieces of the whole, never fully aware that there is more to the whole than what you’re able to see.
It’s exhaustion-driven over-achievement… that ultimately goes nowhere.
Fortunately, I have (slowly but surely) come to realize the impact of fatigue/exhaustion/busy-ness on my life and productivity. And I’ve thankfully come to realize that one of the prime indicators that I’m intensely fatigued, is me thinking that I’m not at all fatigued… I’m just fine, thank you!… mistaking my agitation for energy… and doing way too much. I’ve come to realize that my agitation is not necessarily positive energy… it’s not necessarily productive drive… and it may actually be a fear-driven gut instinct to avoid the innermost anxieties that haunt and taunt me, so I don’t have to admit there is something not quite right in my head.
It’s a physical phenomenon, as well as a mental and emotional one. The drive is a physically palpable thing… and the true fatigue underlying it is really well-masked by… fatigue.
What saves my ass, is my self-assessments. i have my list of things that I ask myself objectively, if they’re going on with me. Am I tired? Am I anxious? Am I agitated? Am I excitable? If I am answering objectively “yes” to these… and “I’m busier than usual” — I can say, “Hey, I must be fatigued!” and it sets off alarms with me. It makes me step back for a moment and check in with myself and see if I’m getting myself in any hot water, due to my over-activity. It gives me permission to admit that I’m pushing myself too hard. It gives me permission to slow down. To stop.
And then I can rest.
It’s the weirdest thing, that… but typical for my TBI experience. My body reacts to its deficits by overcompensating and telling itself it’s doing great. My brain has been altered in ways that cause it to think it hasn’t been altered at all – Adventures in Anosognosia!!!
Ha. Well, as long as I keep a sense of humor, I guess I’ll be okay. Really okay. After all, laughter oxygenates the blood and brain, so that can only help.
