Mojo and the Mess

I’ve been running on fumes for so long that I don’t even think I noticed how bad it got until recently.

At first it was just little things.

Forgetting what I walked into a room for.
Getting irritated over stuff that normally wouldn’t bother me.
Looking at my phone and suddenly feeling exhausted by the idea of answering anybody.

Then one day I realized I wasn’t really recovering from anything anymore.

Not physically.
Not emotionally.
Not mentally.

Everything just keeps stacking on top of itself.

People hear “burnt out” and probably picture somebody overworked who needs a weekend off. I wish that was all this was.

This is the kind of exhaustion that comes from spending too long living in survival mode.

The kind where your body never fully relaxes because there’s always something waiting around the corner. Another appointment. Another scan. Another symptom. Another conversation I don’t want to have but have to anyway.

I don’t think people understand what it does to your brain when your life becomes constant maintenance.

Medication schedules.
Insurance problems.
Side effects.
Pain.
Treatment calendars.
Watching your body change.
Trying not to panic every time something feels different.

It’s exhausting constantly living inside a body that keeps demanding your attention.

And after a while you stop feeling like yourself.

Lately I’ve noticed I’ve gotten quieter.

Not because I have nothing to say. Honestly probably the opposite. My brain feels so crowded all the time that talking sometimes feels like work.

There are days where everyone around me is just existing normally and meanwhile I’m trying to mentally calculate things like whether this headache feels familiar or not. Whether I’m tired-tired or something-is-wrong tired. Whether I should mention a symptom or wait and see if it passes.

People don’t see that part.

They see the version of me that still jokes around.
Still posts.
Still answers “I’m okay” automatically.
Still manages to pull herself together enough to leave the house sometimes.

What they don’t see is how hard I crash afterward.

How quiet I get.
How overstimulated I feel by simple things.
How sometimes even hearing my phone buzz makes me want to throw it across the room because I cannot handle one more conversation about cancer or appointments or updates or anything serious at all.

And I know people mean well. I know they care.

But being loved and being exhausted can exist together.

That’s the part I wish more people understood.

Sometimes I think I’ve spent so much time trying to stay emotionally manageable for everyone around me that I forgot I’m actually going through something horrific.

Because this is horrific.

I’m twenty eight years old and having conversations about my brain and my spine and progression and treatment options and quality of life like that’s a normal thing to be discussing at this age.

Nothing about this is small.
Nothing about this is easy.

And I think I got so used to carrying it that I stopped realizing how heavy it actually was.

Until now.

Now it feels like my brain is waving a white flag.

Not in a hopeless way.
Not in a giving up way.

Just in a human way.

Like okay, this is too much for one person to hold all the time.

There are moments lately where I feel emotionally numb and overly emotional at the exact same time. I’ll be sitting there completely detached one second, then crying because somebody asked me what I want for dinner the next.

Not because dinner matters.
Because my nervous system is exhausted.

I think that’s what burnout actually feels like.

Not laziness.
Not weakness.

Just reaching the point where your mind and body are tired of carrying fear every single day.

And the truth is, I don’t even know what the solution is.

You can’t really “rest” from cancer.
You can’t take a mental health weekend from living inside your own body.
You can’t mute reality for a while and come back when you feel ready.

So instead you just keep going while secretly feeling yourself getting more and more worn down by it.

I know I’m not the only person living like this.

A lot of sick people are.

A lot of people are quietly surviving things they never fully get a break from, and eventually survival itself becomes exhausting.

So if you’ve been feeling this way too lately, I get it.

I really do.

Thank you for reading.

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