I’m So Tired I Could Cry

Have you ever felt so tired you could cry? No? Apparently it’s just me. I am the only person I know who still feels like a toddler.

I used to wonder why toddlers cry when they’re tired. And when they don’t want to sleep. And when they wake up. What are the thinking and feeling? I asked a parent once, and they were just like, I don’t know. He always does that. And this is perfectly acceptable behavior. Yet if I were to cry upon awakening and sulk and be out of it for a period of time afterwards, this behavior would be frowned upon. That’s totally unfair.

I have an advantage over toddlers in that they do not have the cognitive development and verbal skills to articulate what they’re thinking and feeling, but I do. So it’s almost like I can read a toddler’s mind. If I had to describe how I feel in that moment, it’s something like, this sucks that I’m struggling to stay up but I still have to stay at work, drive 45 minutes to get home, go to the grocery store, cook dinner, do the dishes, and get ready for bed before I can sleep! I could seriously fall asleep right now!

OK maybe that’s not anything like what toddlers think. But I still feel their pain.

When I feel like crying when I wake up, it’s more like, that wasn’t enough sleep! I don’t want to get up and do a bunch of chores! I’m hungry! I’m anxious! I have to pee! I’m just going to lie here and sulk for a while as a small act of rebellion against adulthood.

This is probably not normal, either.

I fight sleep like a toddler, too. It’s not even conscious. I’ll feel myself drifting off into a dream state and I’ll do something like roll over and wake myself back up again. Maybe it’s because I have to will on a hypomanic episode just to get ready for bed because it takes about an hour. But then once I’m done my brain is still all hyped up and I can’t turn it off. So then I can’t fall asleep and have to take extra Ativan. So then I wake up tired the next morning, and I feel like I want to cry. And the cycle repeats.

These are the kinds of things that make me feel like I’m not handling adulthood well.

But perhaps there are advantages to being in touch with my inner toddler. Maybe it’s a gift to able to access every version of myself from infancy to the present. Maybe it helps me to be more self-aware, to know myself better. Maybe that’s why I’m able to empathize with people so well. Maybe it helps me to be a better therapist.

Or maybe I’m just making all this up and I’m really just crazy.

That’s OK, too. Maybe there is no such thing as normal. Maybe that’s just some idealized version of ourselves that we can never live up to. Maybe it wouldn’t even be a good thing if we could live up to it. Maybe we are all just different degrees of craziness, and on that continuum, I’m probably average. More than just a little crazy, but functioning well enough to write this blog post without crying.