Why am I struggling so much with everything?

The same load of towels has gone through the dryer three times this week, because folding them felt like a lot. There’s a text from a friend you’ve been meaning to answer since Saturday. It isn’t even a hard one. You like her! You just can’t find the first word. Nothing bad happened this week. You’re worn down anyway.

If you’ve been hunting for the one thing causing this so you can fix that one thing, I don’t think you’ll find it. It isn’t one thing. It’s ALL of it…and it’s how long it has been going on. None of it clocks off at bedtime either. You get to be this tired.

The Line Moved

Maybe one day it broke through. Maybe it never did. Either way, the line between a full week and too much of one had been moving for years, an inch at a time, with you moving right along with it, because that’s what we do. Somewhere along the road, tired stopped being news. It stopped feeling like anything at all. It became the temperature of the room.

How long has it been like this? Longer than you would say out loud, probably. You can stand in front of the shampoo shelf for a full minute now. And leave with none! Two good options get offered and you feel exactly nothing about either one. A whole weekend goes by and you can’t say what you did with it, only that Monday found you no less tired. Mostly you scrolled, since picking anything better would have meant picking.

Is that a character problem? No. That’s where the line is now.

More Than Anybody Is Counting

You are not a weak spot waiting to be toughened up. You’re a person carrying a lot. So what adds up to this? We count the big things and skip the rest (the gift that needs ordering by Friday, the thing you noticed at dinner and decided not to say, the feeling you parked until later when later never came). Each one takes a minute. There have been years of those minutes. That’s where the feeling of being behind comes from, the one you can’t pin to anything in particular.

We almost never add it up ourselves, and nobody adds it up for us. Somewhere in a drawer is the planner you bought to fix this. Possibly three of them! None of them could take anything off the list, only write it down neater.

Why Nobody Noticed

You know where the spare key is, what everybody has going on this week and which friend needs checking on. You’re also not the type to leave any of it at good enough, which is a job all by itself. From the outside, none of it shows. Keeping all of that in the air takes real effort, and that effort has been coming out of you, quietly, for years. Holding it together has never once meant being okay. It only looks that way from a distance.

So why did nobody say anything? If you could not hold it together, somebody would have noticed by now. You can. So nobody did.

The Word You Say Instead

Somebody asks how you’re doing. What comes out? “Fine!” The more you’re holding, the faster that word comes out, since a real answer would take time you don’t have. The tired part of you wasn’t asked. It stays right where it was. Say it for enough years and you start believing it yourself. That answer has a post all to itself.

When the Season Ends

Some of this really is the season. Some seasons are too much for anybody. So what’s the tell? What happens when the season ends. You’ve had hard stretches before, and you know how they end. The thing finishes and ordinary life puts you back together. This didn’t end when anything ended. It has had a new reason every season and has outstayed every one of them. The job, then the house, then the holidays, then whatever is next. The stress-or-anxiety question has a post of its own.

So when do you say it out loud? When looking fine has outlasted feeling fine, and you’ve stopped expecting the two to meet up again.

What Your Body Already Knows

Know that sigh you do when you sit down? Has anyone mentioned it yet? Then there’s the grip you’ve got on the steering wheel at a red light, with nowhere to be. Your body got the news a long time ago. The rest of you is only now catching up.

You Don’t Owe Me a Reason

You don’t owe me a reason at the door. Working out the why is part of what we do together. This is the one place where somebody else does the holding for a while.

And if nothing has felt good for a while now, not the small things and not the big ones, tell me that first. It changes where we start. That’s ground I know well.

What We Do With It

In my office we take the load apart and look at what is actually in it. A lot of it is a hundred small things, plus the fact that finishing one never seems to make the pile any smaller. We figure out which of it is yours, and which of it you picked up because nobody else would.

We get curious about the voice that says every piece of it is load-bearing. The guilt that shows up when you finally sit down goes on the table too. Then we put some of it down. Not all at once. Some.

Does it take a while? Sometimes. You have been carrying this a while too.

If you’ve been thinking about hurting yourself tonight, call or text 988. A real person answers all night. If it’s danger right now, that’s 911. My contact page has the rest.

I’m Acelli, the counselor behind Solid Ground Counseling & Wellness. Online works from any corner of Texas. In person means my Cedar Park office, where I meet women face to face. That first call is free. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. You can use it to say what’s going on…or to say you’re not sure what’s going on. That counts! Then you decide.

Nothing has to be on fire before you can call it heavy. Heavy is plenty.

When you’re ready, request a time or write to me.

On solid ground,

Acelli