Dark Night

full of dark thoughts. Maybe it's the stress of maintaining two houses and paying multiple mortgages/utilities, but I feel like I'm going to crack. I can sort of hold it together during the day, but at night, especially when I'm alone, I feel like a piece of china teetering on the edge of the shelf.

My own version of Sundowner Syndrome.

Worse, my body has decided to get into the shattering act: I have random pains, shortness of breath, headaches. And I keep waking up in the morning with my teeth clenched together so tightly that I can now confidently say I know what lockjaw feels like. It hurts.

Each night when I turn off my light I have a moment of pure panic. What if I can't sleep? What if I lie here, tossing for hours, frying my brain with sleep deprivation so that I can't function as a mom tomorrow? So far I am sleeping okay, but the fear that I won't is all too present.

And really, I am just barely keeping it all going during the day. I can do the bare minimum for survival -- laundry, cooking, enough cleaning to keep the the really egregious dirt at bay -- but I'm not setting any landspeed records for anything and I am overwhelmed by anything not strictly critical to keeping the family bus moving.

I am so tired. Tired of feeling so swamped, tired of the continual frisson of worry about whether the house will finally sell and how we're going to pay the shortfall when it does, tired of the aches and pains and the nagging little fears that they bring with them. Going to St. Louis -- to not be here for a few days -- was so great. It was like being allowed to step out of a very painful skin for a while. But now we're back and it's night and I'm alone and I'm worried, worried, worried.

It's gotten to the point where Tim and I can't really talk about how stressed we are by all of this. It's not productive, for one thing, and it only leads to discussions about how much we still have to do on the old house, which makes me feel even more depressed. It's the elephant in the living room that we very much know is there but which we are tired of exclaiming over.

I think on some level that I'm depressed. No, I know I am. I don't know if it's bad enough for clinical intervention, but it's certainly bad enough for me to admit that I am there -- down and not sure I feel like getting up again. This holding pattern that we're in with two houses has forced us to postpone all sorts of things -- our getaway weekend (we've had one in the last 8 years and were really hoping for another one this past fall. Didn't happen), any and all work on the new house, any major purchases like a playset for the backyard, a kitchen table, a new couch, desperately needed new blinds for several rooms...all on the back burner indefinitely.

I just want to feel like a normal, healthy, functioning, capable person again. Not like a bundle of agitated, irritated, stretched-to-the-breaking-point nerves.