Fatigue: The Friendship You Just Can't Sever

Over the past five months I have befriended fatigue in all of its forms. Actually, fatigue befriended me against my will and despite the many naps and small comas I have had in attempt to rid myself of this friend I have been unable to do so. 

In my relationship with fatigue up to this point I have found like other friends he has different sides to him. He's more like a two headed hydra, where both sides can be nasty.  I truly feel that there are two types of fatigue. 

The first being just tired from not enough sleep. Many of my peers at work and at school complain of this fatigue. They stayed up until midnight or 1am watching Letterman or doing homework and had to get up at 7am so they are only operating on a few select hours of sleep. There is no doubt that this type of fatigue can be wearing.

Alas, I have experienced a new type of fatigue that I have never undergone before in my life and only a select few others have too. There is a fatigue where your body genuinely does not know what it wants to do. You wake up at 3pm on Sunday afternoon and go into work for 7pm. You are up all night at work until you go into school the next morning for 815. Class 815-200pm, you have class at 530pm so you don't take a nap because 1)you won't wake up for class @530 2)your body says it is time to be up. You go to class @530 get out at 1030 and can't fall asleep because this is when you go to work so your body says "stay up." You know you have reached this state of fatigue when your eyes start to pulse inside of your head and you become aware of the frontal lobe of your brain (it doesn't hurt or ache you just know it's there) and the accessory muscles in your upper back (around the scapulas) tighten up to keep your posture and keep you upright. Meanwhile you look in the mirror and ask yourself "What are you doing?!"