exhausted

When I was in college, it wasn't unusual to go a day or two with no sleep.  I remember at least twice that I stayed at Denny's all night long with friends, probably pretending to study for a test, undoubtedly ordering little more than coffee and likely annoying all the long-haul truckers who had the misfortune to chose the same restaurant to dine in that evening.  In grad school, it was a little less common; I remember staying up all night working on our take-home comp exam, dropping it off at my professor's office in the wee hours of the morning, and treating myself to donuts from Rick's Bakery before collapsing to sleep for the next 18 hours.

The exhaustion I feel right now pales in comparison.  It's days upon days of sleep in 2-4 hour stretches, waking up just enough that trying to fall back to sleep takes effort.  It's being awoken to a smiling face at 6:30am, the same face that, just hours earlier, had been twisted into an inconsolable grimace because growing new teeth is hard.   It's spending all day trying to please a tiny person who refuses to speak English or sit still, and insists on pulling my hair and kicking me repeatedly in the still painful C-section scar from which he came.

Not long ago I was telling Joel that I keep reading and hearing that it's important for me, as a new mother, to get out and do things for myself, things that I enjoy, so that I can recharge.  The problem, I told him, is that I have no idea what that those things might be.  I love spending time with my friends, but the thought of being social makes me so tired.  I like volunteering at the Humane Society, but I'm already spending all day getting barked at by our three dogs.  I enjoy reading, writing, sewing, crocheting, cooking...none of these sound like any fun right now.

But as I sat there listing off all the things I used to enjoy that currently sound so unappealing, it hit me: I just want a nap.  I want Joel to take J-man, take the dogs, and leave me alone in this house so I can curl up under our big comforter on our nice, king-sized Tempurpedic with my white noise machine on and the window just cracked open so I can hear the birds or the rain or whatever.  And I want to sleep.