I find myself feeling as if I’m going into another depressive phase.  Definitely not the worst one ever, that’d be the one that I had to be medicated out of, but it’s interfering a bit.  So much to do and no energy.

I know it’s the all-nighter.  For one thing, that’s something sleep deprivation does in the first place, and for another there’s no other reason why it should be happening.  I’m almost out of school (a year late but hey), it’s summer so it’s not seasonal-affective stuff, I’m excited about the new life I’ll start in about a month, money’s not great but what’s new about that, I think I’m going to like my summer classes…in short, I’ve got some situational stress, of kinds that didn’t send me into a depression back, say, at Chemeketa.  Now, I know some of the difference is pathways in the brain that got laid down and reinforced during the big one, but this particular time–when there’s not even that much situational stress now, but there was an all-nighter a few days ago–sleep deprivation has to be a factor.

So I’ll deal for a few weeks, and get plenty of sun, and it’ll go away.

Yesterday, my observation didn’t go great.  Not horrible…I got a usable writeup about it…but then my cooperating teacher and my advisor went into this huge thing about how I’m not functioning on the level they expected.  Apparently I’m “disconnected” and my enthusiasm has tapered off from the beginning of the year…

It’s not complicated.  I’m tired from 5 hours being an average night (the other night, I had a chance for almost 8 uninterrupted hours–spontaneously woke up and interrupted it, six and a half hours in).  I’m fighting depression off again because of the lack of sleep and the pressure of having to not screw it up now when I’m this close.  I’m feeling overwhelmed by having to get all the finishing-up stuff right in such a tight timetable to be able to teach in the district that wants me.

I’m running out of energy even for myself.  I’m dragging myself through because it’s almost over.  Yeah, I’m less enthusiastic, it’s called being dead tired.

They made useful comments like “you’ve got to take care of yourself.”  There’s only so much time in the day and almost every minute goes toward school–or at least trying to do school stuff, I’m so scattered that I fall into other things and don’t even realize it–I just can’t imagine being able to fit anything else in, since for anything that goes in something’s got to fall out.  If I had an hour a day for “me time” I’d sleep more.

They said that they wouldn’t be surprised if I were to break down and cry, that in fact they’d be more surprised if I hadn’t up to that point.  Now, there were a few tears, but “cry” is a strong word…I felt like it…I’ve felt like it before…but…yeah, I’m controlled.  I will not break. For all I know that’s part of the problem, but it just is what it is.  I’ve already used my quota of crying as a student.  Couldn’t explain that; they know, to some extent, since I couldn’t keep the whole thing a secret, but almost no one knows how much that still gets to me, so when they asked if I knew what was wrong, I just couldn’t come up with anything that was true and let me keep trying not to talk about it.

Dangit, my throat’s sore again now, from thinking about it.  Something in me still tries to say I can’t do it.  Ridiculous…I know I can do it, I just have to drag myself through this, get to it.  But it’s there, it’s a thought in my head, I can’t make it go away even though I refuse to give in to it.  So it makes every day a struggle and I don’t know how to change that.

And they asked what they could do to help.  The thing is, there just isn’t a whole lot anyone can do, unless they can make my life make sense, put an extra four hours in each day so that I can sleep and breathe, and cook and clean for me so I don’t have to think about that stuff.  I’m not from a teaching family, I’m not even from a normal family, no one gets it and almost no one even knows how to listen.  I’ve got pretty much no one outside of school to bounce stuff off of or to look to for an example.

So, I’m fitting in a doctor’s appointment on Friday, to rule out physical causes, since they said I should do that.  I doubt it’s anything that’ll show up in that sort of thing, it’s that I haven’t had a term off since 2001 and have been running up a sleep debt since sophomore year and deliberately made it worse in spring of junior year.  I doubt they have a pill for that.  But, whatever.

I’ve gotta step back from pushing buttons on Facebook while tired. I started poking around in WOU-related stuff, including digging around in among some people I (sort of) knew back there. Basically, generally making myself feel bad; once again, I remember just what an awful experience that school turned out to be. I have trouble finding any redeeming qualities in my time there, or even (to a lesser extent) the time I spent trying to get there. The classes were better at Chemeketa. But I still lost pieces of myself at each school, a lot of which I still haven’t gotten back, and I lost a few years of my life and my chance to get a real college education. One is supposed to be a trade-off for the other. Now, since you have to have a social life to get a social life, I can’t help but think it’s too late for me–I’m 23, not 13, and I will never again have the prepackaged undergrad million-club social scene at my fingertips. What actual friends I have are almost all online; that just doesn’t work for getting a group together for, well, anything. If I’d just taken classes where I could’ve met people who had some chance of getting me, back in undergrad…instead of that boring pre-ed course plan…that led me to literally nowhere…I still could cry about all that, not anymore so much that I didn’t get in as that I sold so much of myself for nothing. NOTHING.

At the end of this summer, I’ll be a teacher in spite of WOU, but I can’t help thinking that because of WOU I fall short of being a complete person. I look at myself, and I’ve come so far as far as degrees and stuff goes, but I’m so far from who I thought I’d be by now.

On the one hand, I know closure’s a myth. Nothing can ever change the fact that what happened sucks, and I’d have to be delusional to think otherwise. On the other, why does it still have to hurt?

Somehow, I actually accomplished stuff today!

• Registered for (warning: links to PDF) ESOL and Middle School Math PRAXIS tests. On separate days, because they’re both 2-hour session 2 tests, so I got to pay two registration fees. Oww, my wallet.
• Read some textbookish stuff–about a chapter and a half.
• Collected standards related to Fractions and Decimals for the Math Methods project.
• Went to the gym. It’ll never be my favorite hobby but it beats landing on Lexapro again, and between the stress and February 17th coming around again (why’s it have to be right after winter when the seasonal-affective component has also screwed with me for a while?) I need everything I can get working in my favor, and endorphins are a good thing.
• Almost finished writing a Personal Narrative draft thing for Language Arts Methods. Ending doesn’t wanna. Must hit it with a rock.
• Blog entry! If that counts…

Just one thing: I really must get hold of my advisor and tell her that I want a practicum placement for next term that’ll let me get the middle school math endorsement.

I’m not even sure how to categorize this…holidays and family are in there, but there’s more to it than that…

A while back (a week or two), one of the light bulbs in my main upstairs light fixture crapped out. Now, I understand that that happens now and then. But the thing is, I’ve been upstars with scattered breaks for stuff like food, checking the mail, printing and mailing Christmas cards, driving something out to the college to find out that I’d wasted the trip, and a couple days where I watched too much TV, since…I’m not really even sure. Maybe this time last week. Not good on its own, I know, but it’s also been darker than usual up here, and I think the perpetual twilight is getting to me or something. Also, I haven’t really gotten anything done since the end of the term–it’s the typical ‘not knowing what to do with myself without homework’ thing, even though there are plenty of things needing done. Like cleaning, especially downstairs. Scary. I’d take and post pictures, but I’m too embarrassed.

Also, it’s Friday night, and I’ve hated Friday nights on principle since what I had for Friday night plans disappeared (I was one of those wacky Enterprise viewers). And to some extent, even before that, because Friday nights have always highlighted my lack of a life. The person I would usually be talking to isn’t online…we talked earlier, but the conversation fizzled…probably my fault for running out of stuff to talk about. Or maybe my fault for other reasons, I don’t know. Anyway, it’s almost midnight, and I’m (for lack of a better way of saying it) bored with my existence.

I need to accomplish something, but there’s so much housework type stuff to do that it’s overwhelming, and I can’t start on Christmas shopping because as of today there’s a chance that I’ll be with my parents, not my aunt and uncle like I thought, so I really don’t know who I’ll be with, and I can’t shop for people I’m not going to be around and pay next month’s rent (due on the 5th, student loan disbursement on the 8th). I’m gonna end up in the dollar store on Christmas Eve, it seems.

I need more than 1% of a life.

And I need a light bulb.

OK, so I probably do need to find a counselor.  Or use up some of the leftover meds–I was going to start on that this morning, but I didn’t get a chance (too much snooze button + didn’t shower the night before), and I was actually OKish today so maybe I can remain functional without resorting to medication this time.

It was school stuff going wrong that did it again, that’s the only thing that does it to me.  All I have to do is get that stuff under control and keep it that way and I’ll be fine.

I can’t take this “life stuff.” Even sleeping for twelve hours, Saturday night/Sunday morning, doesn’t seem to have caught me back up. And I literally have no memory of a portion of this morning, apparently related to the fact that I ended up wearing mismatched shoes . I just feel like curling up in bed, munching on chocolate and sleeping for a week. I don’t want to do ANYTHING.

It’s gotta be partly the winterness of stuff getting to me, a little bit of the whole seasonal-affective thing. Partly just stress. Partly that I’m totally out of energy since I’ve had two weeks and scattered long weekends off since last December. And I’m cold. And feeling slightly queasy for some reason.

Wanted cheeseburger today and didn’t get it because I’m starting to get skittish about money stuff. Impulse control is theoretically a beautiful thing, but leaves cravings unsatisfied.

And I wonder if this cold that’s been taunting me for a couple weeks will eventually actually beam in.

So, I’ve barely been sleeping lately, except on the weekends when I barely do anything but. And the less sleep I get, the worse my work is, therefore the later I have to stay up.

GOT to break this cycle somehow. I can practically feel the sleep deprivation doing things to my brain chemistry–the longer I’m stressed, the less I can take. This morning, I was so tired that I really shouldn’t have been driving. Now, the caffeine that I got around lunchtime is wearing off, so I’m just about ready to pass out. Thinking about taking the laptop upstairs, turning on the heater, curling up under the blankets, and working on random stuff until I fall asleep. And it’s 8 PM.

I read this article, and I got to thinking. Just what is it that’s keeping me from producing pages at a time, and from writing at least every few days? Of course I wouldn’t be writing as much now as I was back when I had literally no scheduled stuff. But…even during, say, freshman and sophomore years, I had lots of scheduled stuff, not all that much free time, and I still did a bunch of writing back then. I must’ve, anyway, because I know stuff got written.

I don’t know if I just fried out after being in school without a break for a few years, but I doubt that somewhat since there wasn’t a slow buildup into frying out like I’d expect from a time factor. I was fine…right up until I wasn’t, then it sort of sputtered out over the course of a few months. Middleish of my first fall term at WOU. When I started actually thinking about the program application, as something immediate. The more stressed I got, the less I could write, it just sputtered out. And now…it’s just not coming back…and I’m not sure why…but…lots of stuff isn’t coming back either; something’s still not right…