EXHAUSTION

Exhaustion took on a new meaning the first time I had a child and then it took on a whole other meaning when I had my second child.  The more physically tired I feel, the more mentally and emotionally exhausted I feel. In my case, and maybe it's the same way for you too, when I am tired, life seems 100x harder than it actually is.  Situations that I normally can handle just fine, seem to be down right too difficult to cope with.

In my mind, when I am tired, everything seems to clump together and now I am not only trying to cope with the present moment, but all of a sudden, my mind is taking me to every seemingly stressful situation that I am anticipating to encounter in the not too distant future and now I am stressed about everything.  My husband calls it the snowball effect.  It starts out small, but in no time at all it's rolling down a hill, gaining speed, and by the time it hits me, it is a freaking snowman  :)  

I've been spending time trying to be more aware of what makes me tick in an attempt not to be so tick-able a.k.a moody.  I know that when I am tired, it is not the best time to have a loaded conversation or to talk about making future plans beyond what I have already mentally alloted energy towards.  However, in life, I can't necessarily push those things aside when I am tired, because the reality is, I am tired a lot.  Unfortunately, by the time my boys are asleep I am exhausted which happens to be the time when my husband and I finally have a chance to talk, plan, etc. 

What I am realizing more and more is that I spend a lot of energy resisting the idea of being exhausted on top of resisting the thought of doing certain things when I am tired.  For example, our dishwasher had been broken for months  (yes having a dishwasher is a luxury i am so grateful for, however...) and every night after cooking dinner I would first be thinking about how tired I felt and then I would spend time thinking about how the last thing I wanted to do was stand at the sink and wash dishes for however long it would take.  They wouldn't be fleeting thoughts, but rather they would play on repeat. The more I tried resisting them the more frustrated I would get and by the time I would be done with the dishes, I would be in such a bad mood. What a waste of energy! On the other hand, on the nights where I chose to sit down and take a break and recognize yes I am tired and yes I do not want to do the dishes, the dishes eventually got done and even though I was tired, I was not frustrated at the end of it and didn't waste that energy on thinking about it.  

To sum it up, what I seem to be learning is that it is OK to be exhausted, I need to just let it be what it is.  I strongly dislike carrying this cloud around with me, feeling and thinking about being exhausted.  I have decided that I need to begin coaching myself through some of these bad habits.  For some reason it comes easily to me when I run or  while I am working out.  If I am struggling at the end of a long run, I coach myself by saying: "It's ok to feel like this, you are not gonna die, you are almost done."  On the runs or during workouts where I am constantly looking at the clock or resisting the way I feel, they are, by far, much more difficult. There are too many times where I have let that exhausted state of mind take over and rule my mood, actions, and words.  I can't do that anymore, although I still do, I don't want to. 

For the times where I am so tired that all I want to do is scream or cry I will tell myself, It is OK!  It's OK to feel mad or frustrated and it's OK to be exhausted so there is no need to resist it.  In reality, as long as I am a mom, a wife, a friend, a daughter, an aunt, a sister, etc. I am sure I will continue to exhaust myself by doing as much as I can to make the people around me happy.  It just happens that motherhood is that much harder because your kids depend on you for so much and you can't give yourself the break you need.. so for the times when my children won't go to sleep and I am at my wits end whether it be at nap time or in the middle of the night, or when there is an hour of clean up left to do after an extremely long day, or when I don't sleep well, I just will remind myself that it's OK, I will and can get through this, and it's just a part of my life.