I sound like a broken record, but I can’t believe how tired I am. I was so drained on Thursday that even after a pair of sweaty workouts during the day, I had insufficient energy to even take a shower before I went to bed. Yet my body is so accustomed to a certain rhythm that it won’t let me sleep any more than I’m sleeping.

I’m realizing that it’s not only my body that’s tired, though. Or my consciousness. It’s mainly my heart. (Metaphysically speaking, of course.)

After a rough event about a year ago, I said to a few friends that I felt like a balled-out melon. It was like someone had sliced me in half, scooped out my insides, and given away the good parts of me, leaving a discarded rind for me to somehow regenerate enough human essence to fill back up if I wanted to keep going.

In February of this year, I felt that same way. I’ve spent the intervening months trying to make myself whole again. I’ve had some success: I’ve produced creatively, I’ve landed a new job, I’ve re-established a few interpersonal connections, I’ve given myself a vacation, I’ve tried new things, I’ve had new ideas, and I’ve made huge strides towards improving my overall health. But underneath it all, I’m still feeling a lot of sadness and loss and hurt. I’m still grappling with a lack of answers that I know I’ll never get. As I’ve said to a similar arrangement of friends, it takes a lot of energy for the body to quietly run depression.exe in the background of everything else.

This isn’t to say I’m consciously miserable or actively struggling, or anywhere near the same spot I was stuck in 7-8 months ago; I’m not thinking about this all day, or even fleetingly every day. I’ve put a great deal of effort into recovering, and I have made progress. The full process simply takes an unknowable amount of time, and there are reminders in my life that are both animate and inanimate which keep some of the deeper cuts feeling fresh. Even the more superficial wounds aren’t healed; they’ve just entered a different phase of scabbing.

Hard things are hard.

I am certain that I’m focusing on the right stuff to restore my quality of life. It’s not — and can’t be — to the total exclusion of all else, though, so the dark stuff is going to creep in sometimes. Learning how to make space for that without allowing it to become consuming is another challenge for me to figure out. I will. I am.

But my non-anatomical heart could use some caffeine.