Running on empty

The last time I remember feeling this exhausted was at the beginning of this school year. I remember that I would come home from school and just collapse on my bed. Every day wore me out. The type of exhaustion I feel now is just as overwhelming, but in a different way. Now, I feel absolutely empty. I feel like I have given everything I have to give this year.

Physically, I can feel that my body is angry at me. The diet here is so oil-heavy, so starch-heavy. I don't feel healthy. I'm also very tired all the time, always ready to go to sleep. I just don't feel good.

Mentally, I'm frustrated. There is no intellectual stimulation here for me. None. I read as much as I can, and I look at the news websites, but in the US I was always surrounded by news and articles and discussions of politics and current events. I have always craved intellectual stimulation, and there is just none of it here. The national newspaper in Honduras, "La Prensa," is an absolute disaster of a newspaper. No one seems to know anything about current events or politics. I miss spending time with an informed public, and my mind is bored.

Emotionally... I'm already spent, and I know I have an emotional goodbye to prepare myself for. The emotional element of this year has been...tumultuous. It's hard to live in an impoverished country and fall in love with a group of great children who have grown up there. Their lives include so many hardships that no children should have to face, and helping them navigate through those problems for a year has been a very challenging (albeit very rewarding) experience. I know that saying goodbye to the children and leaving the place I have called home for the past year is going to be extremely difficult. I don't feel like I have the energy for it.

Today we went to town (like we do every Wednesday), and I just felt like I couldn't do it. I couldn't go to the bank, I couldn't walk through the dark aisles of the store to buy groceries (it didn't help that the electricity across town had gone out), I couldn't go to the market, I couldn't even walk to my student's house to make dinner with his family. Of course I did do all of those things, but I just felt like I was dragging my body to do them.

I want to stay positive for the last week and a half, but it's so hard. I'm aware of my dual and competing emotions of both being sad to leave and anxious to leave, and I'm not entirely sure of how to deal with that. It's just a really weird time.