Overwhelmed

I have been running out of steam.  For many weeks David told me I wasn't going fast enough with the packing and cleaning.  Today, one of my new colleagues at work told me I had to pick up the pace this week. 

I am out of pace. 

It feels like where ever I go someone is telling me to move faster and do more.  There is no more.  And every request for more drains me.

Yesterday I sat for a while in the supermarket parking lot because it was a place where I could be alone and not have anyone expect me to do anything. Indeed, often lately, I find myself sitting in my car for 10 or 15 minutes when I arrive at my destination because I don't have the energy to spring from my car and enthusiastically attack the next task. I am dragging. I am emotionally spent.  That pace comment pushed me over my ever shrinking edge to the point where a single sentence made me weep through lunch. (on the plus side, David has been very sweet to me since then.)

Before lunch I asked David if he would mind if I took some time to go get a massage.  I was thinking that I could go on March 1, the day before I fly out of here, because I've already taken that day off from work. David rightfully pointed out that we will be busy that day getting things ready for the movers who are also coming on March 2. But all I could hear was that we would be too busy for me to get a massage, to do something to care for myself.

After my nervous breakdown at lunch I felt a little better. And I ended up getting a massage appointment for later this week. It will be my last time with this massage therapist. She is the one who gave me a massage in between my egg retrieval and embryo transfer during my first IVF. At the end of the massage, she gave me a gold colored stone crystal. She said she'd bought it and didn't know who it was for, and when she saw me that day she realized it had been for me.  I was so touched.

In the midst of all this stress has been the kindness of many people, from David's mom and one of our neighbors who are both allowing us to store stuff in their garages for a few weeks to a new neighbor we have yet to meet who is 79 years old and has cleared the snow from the walk and driveway of our new house -- not a small task given that we are on a corner. These are just a few of the kindnesses from other people that have simply blown me away.

Comments

[Aurelia]

Oh Jess, please tell them all to go suck a lemon, or alternatively, send them to me and I will tell them to go suck a lemon.

You are pregnant, and deserve, nay are ENTITLED to kindness and decency.

I'm glad some people are being kind to you. Sigh...

[Eva]

It's hard to understanding how draining creating a life can be if you haven't done it, I suppose. I was all crabby and exhausted at 8 months pregnant when my in-laws came to stay with us for a MONTH and no one understood why the burden of houseguests was so much for me.

And you have SO MUCH more going on. I'm pretty impressed you have it together to write about it! I wish people around you were more sympathetic and you didn't have so much to do right now.

Enjoy your massage!

[Mel]

Hope it is a wonderful massage. It's true--think about how much you have on your plate between the move, the job, and a toddler. And now throw pregnant into the mix! Any one of those things could drag down your pace, and you are tackling all of them at once. That, in my definition, is Superwoman :-)