My mind is boggled. Completely. It’s a jumbled-up mess, and I don’t know where to start – or even how to start.

It feels like a lifetime since I last wrote anything. Not because I haven’t tried, and not because I’ve had nothing to say. If anything, it’s because there’s been too much. Too much to think about, too much to process, too much to untangle. Maybe it’s just been overwhelming. I don’t really know.

What I do know is that I can’t switch off. There’s constant noise in my head. Never-ending overthinking. It’s loud. It’s confusing. It’s exhausting.

Do you ever feel like you’re drowning? Not in anything obvious – not work, or money, or deadlines, or the usual things people point to. There’s nothing specific you can blame, yet somehow you’re still drowning. Drowning in life, I guess. All the tiny things you normally don’t think twice about start piling up, until suddenly you’re buried under a mountain made entirely of small things that don’t feel small anymore.

You remember the washing needs doing, but on your way to sort that you notice the bin needs changing. Then the dishwasher needs loading. Then something else. Then something else again.

Before you realise what’s happened, you’re surrounded by half-finished “little tasks” that feel anything but little. Not because they’re hard, but because you started them all, and finished none of them.

Then my good old chronic pals join in. Suddenly my body gives up, and I need to sleep. Now I’m in pain. I’m exhausted. I can’t move. And the house is left full of half-done jobs with an obstacle course I don’t have the energy to navigate. I tried to help. That has to count for something, right?

Except guilt doesn’t care about effort.

It creeps in quietly. The kind that tells you that you can’t seem to do anything without breaking yourself in the process. That instead of achieving something, you’ve only created a mess you’re now too weak to clean up.

What surprises me is that out of everything I’ve been through since my last post, this is what my brain latches onto. Losing a loved one. More health battles. Leaving my job. All huge, life-altering things – yet here I am, thinking about the cup I didn’t wash before going to bed.

Maybe that says more than I realise.

I suppose there are some underlying feelings buried somewhere that I’ll have to unpack eventually. But for now, underneath it all, perhaps I’m just carrying the weight of my inability to complete simple, everyday tasks. My brain clings to everything I can’t do now, instead of acknowledging what I still can. I feel weaker. I’m eating less. Some days the pain is unbearable, and the thoughts I have about myself in those moments are frightening.

So I fixate.

I overthink.

I replay everything.

My body craves sleep constantly – every moment of every day. Sometimes even turning over after I wake up feels like too much, and my body demands more rest.

I’m fighting the exhaustion as hard as I can. But at the same time, sleep doesn’t come easily. The pain is loud. My thoughts are louder. And nothing makes sense in those moments. Not the feelings, not the fear, not the exhaustion layered on top of everything else. Am I even making sense right now?

How do you switch it off long enough to feel fully rested?

Truthfully, I haven’t had real respite since I got this sick nearly three years ago. Wow – has it really been that long? I hadn’t fully comprehended that until writing this very moment. Maybe the three-year mark looming doesn’t help. Maybe not being able to eat properly means my body has nothing left to give. Maybe the new tests will bring answers. Maybe distraction will help. Maybe something will shift.