I'm so burnt out that I actually cried the whole drive home.

I am exhausted.   I babysat little Courtney today and almost fell asleep multiple times.  I actually laid across the floor like the outline of a dead body.  I am exhausted.  What made me break down and cry the whole way home from J's new apartment was the realization that I am not happy.  I don't feel young, beautiful, exciting or fun.  I feel like I am losing myself in the day to day shuffle.  At work I have to be serious and organized to keep the kids in line, in class I am stressed and anxious--completely overwhelmed by my horrible professor, and then with J I feel like I am his pal to get things done with--not his girlfriend.  There is no picturesque romance happening-- there is depletion after shoving mattresses across a massive parking lot and up stairs.  There is standing in a kitchen, gnawing on pizza after not eating all day--too tired to really speak to each other.  I feel like there is an ocean between us, any conversation we have being drowned out by the ongoing hurricane.  The real fear, the real frustration is that my life is not what I expected.

We grow up thinking that things will magically work out the way they are supposed to--that every decision we make will be the right one, that doing the right thing will be easy, that falling in love will be as obvious as gravity.  As I am getting older, I am realizing that life isn't as beautiful as the picture I painted in my mind as a little girl, even 2 years ago.   I always thought love would be the easy part--I never thought that life and stress would play a role in my relationship.  I am sure that sounds naive to all the realists out there--but for me, that was a real belief.  I believed in the fairytale--and I what I struggle with is whether or not it exists.  Part of me still believes that our lives will be magical because they are ours, because it is what we wanted with who we wanted (rather, who we could not live without)--but the other part, thinks that maybe nothing is what it seemed.  Maybe love loses the romance--maybe two people can't be as crazy about each other as they were when they had the butterflies.   Maybe we won't get the promotion we felt entitled to and worked so hard for--maybe we won't get the recognition for our work...maybe, as hard as you tried not to, you'll find yourself settling because you don't know what else to do.  That is my biggest fear.

I would be happy rinsing the stress from the past two months off my skin--I need to be clean of the stress.  I need to handle it better.

I don't even know where to begin in starting to relax.  I feel like a wind up toy that is on full speed.  I hope I can survive this summer-I don't want to lose myself in the shuffle between school, work and my OCD idiosyncrasies.  I just don't want this to be my life.  It's too draining.  I just wonder if all of this was a mistake, I feel like I don't know what I'm doing and things are just moving too fast.  I feel like i've lost myself to the stress.  I am who I am.  I will never be ambivalent to grades, I will never be able to fall asleep in a messy room, I will never go to sleep without having taking care of what I needed to--I can't help who I am.   But I refuse to be some stressed out fool running around on hyperspeed because of school and work and the life that happens in between.  I just need to shut the world off sometimes and just sit.  I miss being able to be at peace with myself and just shut off my mind.  I am making a vow to do something nice for myself this weekend.  I can't go-go-go all the time. I'm exhausted.