I’m exhausted. Simply and utterly and thoroughly exhausted. Not tired, exactly — after all, I’ve gotten sufficient sleep for (mostly) three nights in a row. I’ve even woken up with some semblance of energy these past two days.

But there’s an exhaustion that reaches past how much sleep you’ve had and settles down into your bones, your fingers, your mind.

I think they call it “graduating.”

No, it’s nothing special.  No, I’m not alone. Yes, I’m probably surrounded by seniors who feel this way, and yes, it’ll be over in two more weeks.

But that doesn’t always help.

It doesn’t help the way I’m bone tired after a walk to the beach, something that shouldn’t normally affect me that way. It doesn’t help how I’m having all sorts of strange physical symptoms that really can only be written off to stress. It doesn’t help the stress.

But yes, yes, it will be over soon. Soon, I shall retreat to Florida where, as someone who interviewed me for a job today more or less advised, I should watch TV till my brain rots and I start to feel rested again.

But that doesn’t help me have the will or the focus or even the remotest desire to stay up this night and finish my second to last paper. It doesn’t give me the energy to maintain friendships in these hurried last few days. It doesn’t give me peace over not having an apartment when I get back to the city.

But, thankfully, it doesn’t need to. I WILL write the paper, if for no reason other than I’ve done this before, stayed up all night before, written things I desperately didn’t want to write before (and the whole not-failing thing is motivating as well). My floor meetings and the closeness of a dorm hall will keep me in touch with these girls for another two weeks. And I’ll find a place — even if the address I went to scout out today simply didn’t seem to exist (I swear, we walked around that neighborhood for nearly an hour, and it just doesn’t exist!).

The Saturday that falls 12 days from now will come, and it all will have ended. It will be time to go home for a little while, time to sleep for a long while, and time to track down a job and apartment for myself.

I just have to survive and ward off this exhaustion a little longer. And to that I say, “Good luck, self.”