Shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone and being ground to a pulp

I spent a weekend of doing absolutely nothing. I always feel guilty when something like this happens, but I'm just tired. And not physically as in I have aching bones or my feet are killing type of tired but just wanting my brain to shut down and not do anything at all. Just lay around and read a book, or just go for a walk with no general place in mind, or just sleep all day for that matter and not worry about what was coming the next day.

I remember I had this intense period starting somewhere near the end of my sophomore year and beginning of my junior year in high school where I felt like I was being decimated by the amount stuff going on both at school and at home. I feel like I spent the last two years of high school very detached from everything because I'd flown into a sort of autopilot mode. It wasn't that I was doing anything particularly grueling...individually...but all together it was too much.

I realized the same thing was happening when I realized the other day that it was already nearing September of 2007 and for the life of me I really couldn't explain where and how the past couple of months had gone. Sure things had been pretty busy at work, and yes there were some stressful moments and bad things that I wanted to put behind me, but come on, I'm approaching 25 here. I can't afford to just shut out a couple of months anymore. Next thing you know, some bad job situations, maybe a bad friend situation, a handful of student loan payments and I'll be waking up at 50 wondering what the hell happened.

I've never liked confrontation or when things got too complicated. I found it more easier to deal with thing into compartments so that when stuff went bad or became too much I kind of pretend they're not happening. It's thanks to a sine-shaped trajectory in the development of my personality where I started off as a quiet and shy kid. It became so bad at one point that teachers had to pull my mom aside and let her know that this was very much a problem for a developing child. The way I grew up made it take a bit longer for me to learn how to play with other kids and I did get better about making friends, but there was still my parents. I disliked bringing friends over to my house because it was embarrassing when something would happen and my parents would erupt into a fight and as things got worse I started getting involved in them and eventually stopped visits from friends all together.

I basically learned to keep things to myself and to this day I like keeping things all separate and I'm a bit guarded about who gets to know a lot about me. It's almost like top secret clearance levels. It was nothing personal against people I knew, but more how comfortable I was with how much things could get to me. Then if things got hairy I could push it away and wall it up and pretend like it never happened or isn't happening. I developed a class clown persona so people wouldn't ask too much about me. Kept it light with jokes, wisecracks and funny stories so conversation wouldn't get too deep and someone finds out what things were like at home let alone, god forbid, how I really felt about anything. At the same time studied like crazy as soon as I realized there was such a thing as college so I'd have an excuse to get away from my parents' problems far, far away.

To this day I'd rather forget about things. If I tie something to a certain someone or event that I'd rather not bring back up again, into a box it goes and away in a closet it gets stacked away until enough time passes that the thing either resolves itself or becomes a non issue. I generally don't like to argue. Partly because I watched my parents doing it so much growing up and people yelling just make me go numb, but also when confrontation does occur I'd rather not talk and walk away. There was a time a short while ago when I'd get into arguments often, but that was mostly because it was me arguing with my dad all the time, and never being in a good mood. Combine that with the fact that there was also certain persons in my life who pushed all the right (or wrong for that matter since I can't figure out if they were the type who enjoyed doing that to people or it was just their personality) buttons on me.

I need to wake up out of this most recent bout. Hopefully I'll go on vacation and feel better. I just don't feel like doing much right now. I want to get out of this funk very much and stop feeling so tired about everything. I'll go out, do something fun, meet people, but then I'll come back home and be tired. Tired, tired, tired. Better being busy than having nothing to do at all I suppose, but I'm starting to want to just ignore everything and go through the motions and that always sucks.