Exhausted. No other way to put it. Physically there's just no strength in my body. I don't know how that's possible after sleeping most of the weekend away ~ but it is. I was planning on trying to go exercise today since I haven't been able to the last 2 weeks, but I don't know if I physically can.

I'm slowly getting better, but I'm a LONG way from well. I'm afraid that there may be more to this than what the doctor originally thought…possibly Mononucleosis? God I hope not. I still feel very nauseated when I eat for the most part, so I'm still avoiding food. I've dropped another 5 pounds just from being sick (not that I mind the weight loss, but this is not the way I want to do it). If things don't get better soon I'm going to have to go the emergency room or something. I DON'T want to do that! This exhaustion is not normal.

I'm pretty down today, and have been for the last couple. I realized that tomorrow I turn 33, and what do I have to show for it? Without my son and my husband, my life is empty. EMPTY. I haven't played violin with any regularity in years, and it's probably been months since I picked it up for anything besides teaching a lesson. All the music in me, all the fire that drove it, is gone. I don't know where it went, but I can't find it. I don't read anymore or journal or write poetry. I just don't have it in me. I've been withdrawing into myself more and more, socializing less and less, not wanting to talk to people on the phone or spend time with them for any amount of time really. I just want to be home.

I feel pathetic. I have no self-identity. I'm either a wife or Mom, but when those things are stripped away ~ who am I? I don't know. I have no idea who I am. For years I've actually made my identity being bipolar because I deal with it every single day; all the pills, the constant mood swings, the underlying depression, the doctors and therapist visits. I feel like I'm just a walking illness. Who is this person that I see in the mirror several times a day? What does she enjoy, what does she find fun, what are her hopes and dreams? I have no earthly idea. I really don't. What happened to her that made her this emptied out shell?

There's a Reba McEntire song that has these lyrics:

"Is there life out there? So much she hasn't done

Is there life beyond her family and home?

She's done what she should, should she what she dares?

She doesn't want to leave she just wonders if there's life out

there. "

That's me…that's where I am. I've spent the last 11 years being a wife, and the last 8 being a parent. Is this what my life is always going to consist of? Mom, wife, bipolar?

It's not enough.

It's not enough to sustain me, to keep me moving forward day in and day out. I can't tell one day from the next, they all just blur together. And I'm scared…my life is passing me by so fast and I can't seem to step into it and become part of it. I'm lost, and I don't know if I can ever find me again. It eats away at me constantly, any time I'm not busy with something. "Who am I?", it whispers over and over again. And only silence ensues in my mind. Cobwebs all over the place, dark space that's been unused for so long.

I need to pick up the violin, to play it ~ but what's the point when my heart is not in it, when the desire to make music is gone? What's the point in pursuing my teaching career again when I can't handle the stress and anxiety of a classroom full of young children? What's the point in ANYTHING?

I've faded away into nothingness; only my 'jobs' define me ~ mother, wife, patient. I don't want to go on this way any more. I just want it to be over with. I can't even cry about I'm so numb and tired. All I crave is sleep…maybe the eternal kind.