Weary

Post Reply New Topic

I feel I have lived a lifetime in 6 months. In the first, and now I know the last, 6 months of normalcy in my life, I have worked 3 casual jobs at once on the holidays, had many friends and acquaintances, done full time uni, participated in 3 choirs, socialized and partied and gone clubbing every week for at least half the week. Socialized with groups of people every night.

I collapsed. And now I'm at home, minus everything except a smaller uni course load.

I've never been more weary in my entire life. I feel devoid of emotion, feeling, purpose, hope, joy. Devoid of feeling except for a vague sadness. I am reduced to myself, a very broken down self, and the mask is shattered beyond repair.

There's this sense of loss, like nothing I had or had gained truly held any happiness or meaning for me, and the things that did are now too far in the past to be reclaimed. I feel, to be honest, old and weary.

This is definitely a defining moment in my life, and I find myself wondering if others like me have gone though similar experiences.

Tell me your stories.

It is nice to work hard and get a lot of experiences, but it is tiring. In my experience it should not be too long. After a few months I get tired and have to turn in bed early every day. I need my personal time more and more when I am too long occupied with work.

Now I am taking vacations when I sense my self slipping. Well 'vacation', not really. More to sleep good, reorganize my life and house. Make some decisions on my tasks and reorganize my schedules.

I know the experience and my advice is to take some rest and reorganize your schedule.

Yes similar. Just before christmas at the end of my first term of uni, lots of drinking and socialising and forcing myself to meet people, and now again at the end of term i'm completely drained and exhausted. have gone home and haven't really talked to any people from uni since. Thinking about living at home next year and commuting as everything was just a bit too much.

Hope you don't feel bad for too long, Asterisp is right holidays and vacations are a good remedy.

I had two separate periods, each lasting several years, of engaging in pastimes that unavoidably involved some social activity. At first I enjoyed it and felt good for some time after an event. Then I gradually reached a point where I enjoyed myself while I was at a meeting, but already on my way back, as little as half an hour after leaving, I would feel just like you describe. Drained was the best word I could find.

I think I ended up like that because I never made any real connection with any of the nice people I met. My progressively faster come down seemed too much like the progression of a drug addiction. I decided I'd rather go cold turkey than continue the cycle of floating high, followed by crash and burn. Avoiding the crash and burn by making some real friends would have been better, but I never got the knack. More recently I just keep reminding myself to keep expectations low, not get too caught up, and that also works.

Have you perhaps had a more intensive dose of the same thing? The only good thing I can tell you is that it is possible to pick yourself up and put the pieces back together again.

Well, beats me.

All I've done the last 6 months is work my dead-end part time job.

Haven't really done anything social at all.

I remember the dramatic change after I quit using drugs, all my friends left, and I began working all day.

I get drained if I am kept away from the things that interest me. Some types of social contact do this while other dont... I find that the most draining thing of all for me is any repetitive activity such as housework or other work. When I was a kid I used to be always found with a book when I was supposed to be vacuuming, or doing my room etc... the book is kind of like a magnet and it is hard to stay in the activity that is not involved in the interest.

Nothing quite like that because my scope of social experience is very limited, although I do know what it is like to be weary and burned out. A few semesters ago I was getting ready to register for classes in the next semester. Whenever I had free time I always had nothing to do except surf the internet or go out and shoot free throws, which gets boring after a while. So I decided to load up my class schedule as heavily as possible so that I wouldn't have free time. I registered for 7 classes (a full time student here is typically 4), they acted like I was crazy when I registered for that many. That semester I had to get up every morning on weekdays and would go to classes until 4:30 after which I would head to the library and just study until midnight only taking breaks to eat. I spent my weekends studying or doing homework, the little free time I had was only for the little sleep I could get. At first it was nice to always have something to do but after a while it really became tiresome. 4 months of being under constant pressure to work or risk falling too far behind to catch up takes its toll. About halfway through that semester I got a cold, I didn't have time to rest so I just kept working and the cold lasted for almost a month, probably because I wasn't taking it easy. During that time I think I started to go a little crazy, I had convinced myself that I had psychic powers gained from keeping my mind constantly busy, I believed it until about a week after that semester ended when I lost my powers.

This...

Sorry to hear that sunshower. I've been through a few of those experiences you are describing. It's 5:20AM so I'll have to keep this short, for now. These times aren't as bad as they seem, sometimes your minds needs to break-down and absorb everything that is happening, and has been happening. It's very draining, and usually depressing too. The good part is that nothing is lost. It's all still there, just getting re-configured. Yes, it might've changed you, but, you will find the change will be for the better, once you equalize and get back up to speed. Trust me, things will get better.



OK, I'm off for the night. Good night all.

Thanks everyone.

I'm on anti-depressants and starting to feel a little more up-beat. I have pretty much gone cold-turkey - I have been living in social isolation (except for two days a week when I attend uni classes and people sometimes talk to me in those) at home for about 3 weeks now, and it feels really good.

Yes, it was very very intense socially - I think even for many NTs it would be too intense. I'm not really sure what I was trying to prove, or even if I was trying to prove anything at all - I think everything just got out of control like a runaway train; I figured out the social mechanics, and glued my foot to the acceleration pedal, but forgot to work out where the stop pedal was or how to push it. I faithfully imitated all the expected rituals, and got a massive increase in interaction back, but I didn't know how to be selective, or say no to people. With the best of intentions, all these people sucked me dry and kept going even though I ended up drawing on my life force (I guess you could say) to respond. Like magic in books or computer games where the magician can draw on their own life force if their energy runs out until they die.

I use way too many analogies.