This Is What Exhaustion Feels Like

I have been this tired, or a bit moreso, a few times in my life.

On our return from Model United Nations my Junior year in high school.  We had actually gone to The Hague, worked our tails off, and had a great time.  I was beyond tired when I got home.

Similarly, after a certain school trip to France.  (Hey, you get lots of cool field trip opportunities when you go to high school overseas!)  I believe I slept for nearly 24 hours after returning from that trip.

When I had a toddler and a baby.  Who cried a lot.  And didn’t sleep through the night.  I was exhausted for months.

This time, the exhaustion is new and different: it is completely physical.  I am, essentially, a lazy person.  I am sedentary.  I don’t like getting up and moving around.  When I was a child, my mom had to take my books away and practically push me outside to play with other kids.

And now, here I am, going to the gym five(!) days a week.  Spending up to three hours(!) there each time.  Granted, a chunk of that time is taken up with walking to and from my car, showering, changing, filling ice bags and icing my knees, etc.  Still.  I am working out.  A lot, for me.  Compared to how those three hours of my day have been spent in recent years (I read a lot of blogs.  I crochet or knit.  I scrapbook.), this is quite the shock to my body.

I had an idea going into this experience that the workouts would bring me energy, not zap it.  And I’m sure they will…eventually.  For now, though, I am — and there are no other words that come close to describing it — simply exhausted.

But in a good way.

I think.