Exhausted

The past month or so I have noticed anxiety building up, and I have noticed changes in my body that have no happened in over a year to seven years. When I would feel nervous I would start to break out in red blotches on my shoulders and chest, and sometimes on my back. Recently, I started feeling anxious and uncomfortable, and those red spots returned, only this time they were super red and it was one big blotch all over my chest. I felt dizzy again, paniced, and drained. This happened more than once. One day last week Nichole and I decided to meet at Taco Bell for dinner, and I noticed I was shaking for no reason what so ever. When we ordered I felt displaced, and within a few moments of sitting down I felt a wave of absolute dread and panic hit me. This was what drew the line. I went to the doctor and had a new prescription wrote for anxiety medication.

I had been doing well without it. Over 6 months without it, feeling great, and then suddenly all the anxieties of life just come crashing down. Between work and school, money issues and having to even do my own laundry and clean my room and my car it all has just bottled up and seems to have exploded into pure dread. The doctor said I should have stayed on my medication when my mother was diagnosed with cancer. To be honest, I felt better off of it until the hot flashes, red blotches, the dizziness and the sudden feeling of absolute dread (which leads to feeling like you are going to die) exploded on me. I have been taking the medicine for over a week now, and, yes, I am feeling better, but what started when I was first on the medication (Lexipro) is constantly being exhausted and tired.

I noticed it this morning. I slept through my alarm, once again missing my 9 am class. In fact, I slept until 11:30, had to get dressed and drive over to the school for my noon class. Surprisingly I was only two minutes behind, and the professor was still taking attendence. What luck.

I slept over 10 hours straight last night, and you would figure that after 10 hours of sleep and only being awake for 12 hours and hardly doing anything for the day I could keep going. Once 11 pm hit I have been exhausted. I forced myself to do two hours of reading research for my Seminar a little while ago.

It is nice that I am not having the out of control dread feeling and I am not dizzy, but this whole tired issue is really making me angry. Last time I went through this, it took three months for me to adjust. I do not know how many times I missed my 11 am class when I first started on this medication over a year and a half ago. Until that point in my college career I rarely missed any class. I had the occasional migrain I would get, but I usually went to school. Take some pain medication and go. I cannot wait until this exhaustion feeling goes away. Even after working for 2 hours this afternoon on research for my seminar paper, and reading the pieces I printed off to help me write my Seminar I feel like I have not accomplished a single thing.

Not this weekend but the following weekend I am planning on taking another trip to Chillicothe and spending my Saturday working on my Seminar project up there. God Bless Jay for allowing me to come up and make his home my own quiet study place while he is at work. He has encouraged me to keep going with my Seminar and has helped me see more light at the end of the tunnel to this semester. It is hard to believe but in 6 weeks I will have a Bachelor's Degree in English. What am I going to do with it? God only knows. Hopefully, I will find a great job here soon so I can move on with my life. I am excited and nervous. I cannot wait to have a place of my own to call home for Murphy and I. I cannot wait to experience the thrill and anxiety of moving all my belongings to another place and actually have friends over for an evening of games and/or movies and have a few drinks over conversations, or have Jay come visit me at my own place for a weekend. When I am at his house I miss Murphy all the time. I would love to have Murphy and Jay near me together.

Jay came down yesterday for a day, and I finally got to try Tuna Steak with Dill Sauce at The Forym. I must say, I think Jay has me hooked. I have never had warm tuna, and the Dill Sauce made it even better. I think I kind of understand why relish goes well with tuna now. Now that I have an idea on how Jay likes his Tuna Steaks and the type of sauce he likes I think I will attempt it. Should be a fun experience.

Before we went to The Forum for dinner, I picked Jay up at KFC (which conveniently is right off the interestate) and I took him to Downtown Arena, yet again another locally owned place. We watched March Madness, then watched a movie at my house, full of crazy dogs trying to not only cuddle with Jay but also barking at him everytime he placed his arm around me. We watched "Grown Ups" and he talked to my dad about golfing for a little while. After we ate dinner at The Forum, we drove out to Salt Fork and sat by the fire. Basically we kind of relived our first date since we went to The Forum for dinner and then out to Salt Fork to have some quiet time to talk to each other.

Well, it is going on 2 am, and I have to get up and get a move on tomorrow morning. I not only have to have 10 pages of my Seminar completed by Thursday morning to discuss with my professor (I never reached my goal if you cannot tell) but I also have to have a rough draft of a 3 page paper completed for tomorrow afternoon but also a 5 page research paper due Friday. This week is seriously just crazy busy. Next week will be much smoother. I plan on getting a lot of Seminar done this weekend, which includes more research and more chapter analysis over Great Expectations. I am ready to say Goodnight!