Recently, I returned to work at a full-time job again. It has only been two weeks, but I think I like it despite the maddening pace. I feel like an equal breadwinner again and love getting out of the house. My husband and I had such polarized lives before: he made the money, I tended to the home and kids. We had little sympathy for each other, since it felt like we lived on different planets. Now we have our exhaustion in common.

I never really knew the meaning of exhaustion until I had children. I had stayed up late before, worked hard before, been emotionally spent before, but they were temporary states; transitional stages I could recover from after some self imposed TLC. Since becoming a parent four years ago, I have been in a constant state of mind-altering exhaustion which never seems to end. Sometimes I feel like I should check to see if I'm drooling on myself.

I used to pride myself on clear quick thinking, creativity, and punctuality. I worked best staying up late and sleeping in late. This seemed to be my natural cycle, and I honored it. My creative peak was around ten at night, and I did my best writing and socializing during this time. Now my kids get me up at six. To the natural morning people out there, it is hard to explain how bad it sucks to get up at such an ungodly hour. It hurts. It feels as if right when I'm entering the deep, dreamy sleep I need so badly there is someone crying for a bottle or asking me to get them clean underwear.

After my first was born, I experienced deranged deprivation mixed with dead sleep for the first time. I was so exhausted, when I finally slept I'd wake up sore from lying in one position for so long. I'd have drool all over my pillow. I wouldn't know where I was. It was satisfying and disorienting at the same time.

Around this time my mother and sister started looking at me funny. It was a bit annoying, their looks were so full of concern. I could read their faces as they thought to themselves, she was once so vibrant, now she looks mildly retarded. My mom kept muttering randomly, "You poor thing…"

My husband has always been a morning person, even in the party years, and he and the girls wake up chipper and focused and ready to achieve. I am a bitch in the morning. I am still tired. A tired that has lasted four years, compounded by sleep disorders which I have had my whole life. My mother claims I was sleep walking and an insomniac as a toddler. I sleep so lightly that if someone looks at me I wake up. The backbreaking pace of the day does nothing to help me sleep better. If anything, I am more wired and lie awake calculating what little time I have left to sleep.

One day not long after my second child was born, I dropped her older sister off with a friend so I could take the baby to the doctor. Afterward, we ran errands and socialized a bit before returning home. Happy I made a successful day of it despite my newborn baby sleep deprivation funk, I was ready to congratulate myself when I caught a look in the mirror. My shirt was on inside out. It was so weird looking and obvious I wanted to curl up on the bathroom floor and never leave the house again. But of course, the bathroom floor is too dirty to lie on.

On a daily basis, there is so much damn work to do in my home it makes me crazy. A lot of it is how I perceive my home—I just want it clean enough to not be embarrassing. Keeping up this minimal standard takes an incredible amount of work. The undies with the skid marks, congealing food, and hazardous toy obstacle courses must be dealt with. Then there are the basics for living: clean clothes, clean dishes and groceries.

If I never, ever in my life wash another dish or load of laundry again I will be the happiest woman alive. When my oldest was two, my husband got me a dishwasher for Mothers' Day, and I was actually happy. So much for feminism.

To my dismay, I can't just sit down and rest when I do have the chance. I've become neurotic. I think to myself, the kids are out; I will watch the Daily Show and relax. But then it starts. Not five minutes into the show I'm dwelling on all that needs to be done. All the things that need to be attended to are staring me in the face. I start performing bursts of cleaning activities during the commercial breaks, and eventually give up and just turn the TV off.

I used to drink when I wanted to relax, but that's been ruined. I feel guilty drinking on front of the kids. I worry they will associate the smell of alcohol with mom and it will become too familiar to them. I am also so tired that it works a bit too well. Two glasses of wine and it may as well of been two Valium; I'm out.

Now that I'm working, my exhaustion has reached a new level. The first few days of work, I was so over stimulated I'd collapse into bed and lie there with my eyes bugging out. There was a new franticness in my day that was like nails on a chalk board. I had all my usual home duties to tend to and now a boss to impress too. I have yet to find a balance and don't know if I ever will. In a perfect world, I would halve my home workload and share it with my husband. Yea, right…I just doubled the workload. One of our staple conversations these days is a tense verbal competition over who's more tired.

Some days my four-year-old will ask me for something, and I just say no. Her timing is impeccable, as she usually asks right when I sit down to rest. I usually pause, consider the request based on what she's asking for and how tired I am, and reply one of three things: you can get it yourself; ok, I'll get it; or you just have to wait one damn minute because mommy can't move.

I remember thinking my mother was lame when I was little because she always seemed so tired. She would look at me like a tormentor when I asked her to play a board game. Now I understand better. When you're exhausted you not only lose me time, you lose enthusiasm for their games, control of your home, much needed romantic time with your partner. I wish I had the energy to run and play and do crazy art projects with the girls, but it's just not reality. Reality can be playing … mixed with cleaning, eating, relationship and paperwork management, bringing home the bacon, minimal hygiene maintenance, and hopefully sleeping.

Frequently these days I worry about the damage my absence is doing to the girls as I work late into the night while they become lonely serial killers. Then the rational voice in my head kicks in, telling me in soothing tones they need to learn self-reliance and that I am a person in my own right, in addition to being their mom. Whether any of them like it or not, I also believe very strongly that my husband needs to be relied on as a caregiver in lieu of my presence. Lastly, I need to give up my idea of my way being the only way and give them all room to grow. (My way is still the best way, of course.)

My friends and I talk about the day we are going on our Vacation. Anyone in our position knows an overnight away from the kids is nice, but hardly a break. Really a good few days minimum are needed to detox from the insane pace of a day in the life of a mom. So my friends and I have been planning on going to Mexico, for a week, as soon as none of us are breastfeeding or pregnant. Since one or another of us keeps getting knocked up, it keeps getting put off.

We plan on doing nothing but lounging and drinking umbrella drinks on the beach, surrounded by tanned pool boys. This is not a fantasy. It will happen, if I have to pump the breast milk for them and drag their butts down there. Only then, hundreds of miles from my job and family, will I finally get the rest I desperately need.