Pressure Cooker

I feel like I'm in a pressure cooker, with no way out. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but there's an ironic side to it. The irony is that the closer the light gets, the more pressure I'm under. People keep telling me to take a day to myself, to get a massage, to relax, to *fill in the blank* but I can't. I can't because taking a day off adds to the stress. The stress of my senior thesis, working for 3 families, and taking 3 upper level classes in order to graduate. The stress is getting to me. And by getting to me, I mean:

1. Nightmares. Every night I have at least 1 nightmare about my senior thesis. About something going wrong, about participants showing up, about not supporting my hypothesis, about participants walking out of my experiment, thus leaving me with incomplete data.

2. Crying. I have cried over my senior thesis, over not giving myself 100% to the kids I watch, over not completing school.

3. Eating. I either eat like crazy, or I don't eat at all. I go through phases. 1 of those phases is to eat and eat and eat. Not healthy stuff though, oh no. Comfort food. The other phase is when I don't eat at all. This week I haven't eaten anything but granola bars, jolly ranchers, and diet coke. Next week, who knows.

4. Sleeping. Sort of like the eating thing, it's all or none. I either sleep 10-12 hours and sleep through the alarm, or I lay awake worrying all night and don't sleep for upwards of 30 hours. The problem is after 30 hours of awake time I'm overtired and find it impossible to go to sleep.

5. Pain. Every muscle in my body hurts. My stomach burns all day long. Headaches every day.

So, the pressure cooker ends on May 3rd. Just over a month until I reach the light. A month of stress, pressure, fear, worry, sleepless nights, binges, not eating, pain, nightmares, crying, and whatever else decides to creep up during this time.

If you read all of this, thank you. I'm just venting, getting things off my chest, trying to de-stress. Trying, but not succeeding. Adding to the cycle. I'm not happy, I barely smile anymore, I don't even enjoy spending time with the kids that I love so much I would lay down my life for them. I've struggled with depression since I was 13, but this....this is a new low that I've never felt before. I will make it, one day at a time. It's getting through those days that is the problem.