Burnt

I am so burnt out. Completely and totally tapped out. I have nothing more to give. To anyone. And yet...And yet tonight I'm supposed to be at a PTA executive board meeting. I was up until 6 am Monday morning, and I still have two more chapters to finish for the deadline that passed on Monday, and then the final three, plus intros, toc, acknowledgements, a glossary and god-only-know-what-I'm-forgetting due in just over two weeks. I have two more bipolar patients to interview. I have three interviews with scientists for work this week, and a list a mile long of things I am expected to have done asap. I have a parent conference with N's teacher on Thursday, at the same time that I have a work-related event I'm supposed to be at. Em has a swimming lesson tomorrow night and a gymnastics lesson on Thursday, and wants me at both. She's reacting to my stress and complete unavailability by starting to have nighttime stomach aches again. I have a very good friend who's going through a very hard time--a very, very, very hard time--and I want to be there for her, and yet I can't even find five minutes to call her, much less BE there.

I hit a breaking point yesterday, as all this kept piling up on me. And I mean that literally, I think. My editor sent me an email yesterday pushing me on the deadlines and telling me to let him know if I needed anything. and I actually replied by saying that I needed a time machine so i could go back about four months to the point where he told me about these deadlines, and laugh uproariously at him and walk away. (OK, I softened it by saying I was mostly joking, but still...) Obviously, something in me broke. And it hurt. I was in pain all day, all night. But today, I'm numb. Now I'm just kind of looking around me, smiling a vacant sort of smile, and wondering just when the crack in the foundation is going to turn into a cataclysmic failure, and just what my life is going to look like when it's in rubble all around me. Maybe then it will be quiet, at least. Maybe then I can just find a quiet place, a rock I can crawl under, while I wait for my limbs and mind and sanity to regenerate.