This Body is Bullshit

A love letter to sleep, guilt, and getting through the damn day

Some mornings it takes dynamite to get me out of bed.

Not drama — just the slow, heavy, body-aching kind of dread where you stare at the ceiling and try to negotiate with time. Five more minutes. Ten. Just enough for the aches to settle or the weight to lift. They don’t. Eventually I peel myself up and start moving, but it feels like operating a body that isn’t quite mine. Stiff, sore, bloated, tired, and — I might as well say it — depressed.

I don’t love saying that word. But it’s probably accurate.

Because the thought of going to work, putting the face on, managing emotions, solving problems, navigating people all day — it’s just a lot. Some mornings it’s genuinely too much and I do it anyway.

Here’s the complicated part: I love my job. I waited a long time for this position. I’m good at it. I love the employees, love being the person they trust, love being able to actually help someone when they need it. But the past year changed something.

Before the last surgeries, before the fatigue got this bad, I was doing everything. Fifty-plus hours a week, available after hours, weekends, always on. And my review said I was meeting expectations. Just meeting them. I gave more than I had and apparently that was average.

So now I work forty hours. I show up. I do the job well. I’m still running between buildings, still showing up for my people. And I still carry this low-grade shame about it, this quiet voice that says it’s not enough — even though “enough” has always been a moving target and I’ve never actually hit it no matter how much I gave.

I tell myself I’ll walk three miles after work. Get back to Pilates. Move the body, feel better, all of that. And then I get home and I’m just done. Completely done. And I’m stuck in the same loop every night — do I exercise or do I sleep, because I genuinely cannot do both and I need both and I don’t know which one I’m failing at more.

I want to feel good. I want to get up in the morning without it being a whole thing. I want to move through my day without dragging myself through it like something I have to survive.

But that’s not where I am right now.

Right now I’m just getting through it. Mornings feel like marathons. The days are long and then I’m home and then I do it again. And somewhere in there I’m supposed to be healing, exercising, sleeping enough, eating well, managing my stress, staying positive —

And some days I really want to tell all of that to go to hell.

But I get up anyway.