On being tired

I'm tired.

I'm so tired that I've included that in my dating profile.

"in need of sleep or rest; weary"
"no longer fresh or in good condition"
"boring or uninteresting because overfamiliar"

Part of my exhaustion is this sickness I've been carrying around for the last week. My tonsils are swollen, and post-nasal-drip is making my throat feel raw. Half of the time, I can successfully breathe through my nose, but a lot of the time I'm gasping for air through my mouth (MOUTH-BREATHING is there anything worse). Sleep is hugely impacted by this, especially because my severely obstructive sleep apnea requires me to use a CPAP so I don't die in bed randomly one night, and sickness plus CPAP is just kind of a mess. I think I've been averaging 5 hours of (interrupted) sleep lately because I wake up panicking about suffocating myself accidentally.

I think more of my exhaustion comes from a general emotional fatigue, though.

My head is a heavy place lately.

Lola passed away, and my parents spent two weeks in the Philippines to celebrate her life and be with family. My passport expired and I am poor, so I didn't join them, and that made me sad. I wanted to be with my family during that time, especially since the majority of my Filipino family members are people that I only remember from our Facebook interactions. The last time I was in the Philippines was for my Lolo's funeral when I was...maybe 10? Maybe 9? I wonder how much of my existential loneliness comes from half of my family being oceans away.

Dating is exhausting. It's been over two months since I started actively trying to meet men, and for the most part it's been disappointing. All of us have so much baggage, and the generalization I'm getting from these single dudes my age is that they know they're damaged but don't actually want to change or be better. There's this general attitude of "I know I'm terrible, accept this about me because this is who I am and I will not change", which...is disappointing.

Also, I should start a club for all these introverted workaholic 30-something dudes that like boardgames because they should all be friends with each other instead of trying to hook up with women that are cool and secure in themselves and ENJOY self-improvement.

I'm not saying that I'm Team Forever Alone, because statistically that is unlikely, especially if I were to be willing to adjust my standards a little. But it does seem like it's difficult to find anyone that is compatible and comparably close to me, with the desire to make things work for themselves and with someone else, and who has a face I would like to lick while also being content to just sit around watching TV. Sometimes I wonder if I should've been searching for someone earlier in my life, even if I wasn't ready for anything then. And then I remind myself that it doesn't matter what I should've done because time moves in one direction (so far) and there's no point in regretting the past while still zooming forward.

All this just to say that I'm tired, and my current struggle is trying to figure out what will make me feel more awake (woke?) in my life. That's the current question I'm rolling around my brain, and the current puzzle I'm trying to assemble.