Ball of Nerves

Quick update. I am so unbelievably busy and stressed. My new thing is staying up late doing work, then waking up at 4 or 5 with this sick, twisting knot in my stomach and not being able to get back to sleep. So I'm stressed and sleep-deprived and worn down, and only two weeks into the semester.

I'm not even exactly sure what I'm so stressed about. The workload is heavy, but I've had heavy workloads before. The schedule is insane, but I've had insane schedules before. I think the looming grad school applications are weighing on me, although a lot of my essays are done and I've already pinned down two of my three recommendation letters. (I did ask one of those bigwig celeb professors and she said yes! Now I have to ask the other one...) So basically everything is under control, it just feels like I have a million balls in the air and keep waiting for one to drop. And honestly, I feel more nervous than anything else, like I'm living a giant case of stage fright. I've felt this way before, and it did eventually ease off.

Sort of tangentially related: we were talking about anxiety very generally in one of my classes last week. Professor J mentioned something about it being really a really tricky condition because "people walk around and look very functional but in reality, they're doing terribly on the inside." It about made me cry to hear him say that. Because how long have I gone around being completely functional,  and excelling in pretty much every tangible, quantifiable area, all while doing pretty terribly on the inside?

I'm not doing terribly right now, but I'm certainly not doing great. I'm biting my fingernails like crazy. I can't sleep. I have constant butterflies in my stomach. Yesterday while running between meetings, I was trying to send an e-mail on my phone but my fingers wouldn't stop shaking. Most of the time I do okay at talking myself out of the irrational, anxious thoughts I tend to get, but I have no clue how to handle these relentless, visceral nerves.