Whether it’s from chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, an iron deficiency, or something else, living with chronic fatigue sucks.

1. Waking up is always hell.

No matter how much you have or haven’t slept, it still feels nearly impossible to get up in the morning. It’s just about excruciating every single day, no matter what. Lying in bed feels so nice and you wish you could stay there forever, even if you’ve already been in bed for 12 hours or more.

2. No matter how much sleep you get, you always want more.

You can sleep a lot or a little, but it’s the same amount of exhaustion either way. Whether you sleep for three hours or 13, you’re going to feel like you could fall asleep at any moment all day long, no matter what you do. But you still want more sleep anyway….

3. The tiniest thing (or even nothing) makes you exhausted.

Doing literally anything saps your already nonexistent energy for the day, and after going to school or work you have to force yourself to stay awake or you’ll sleep for hours.

4. Staying awake all day feels impossible sometimes.

Between classes you’ll lay down and fall asleep, even if it’s just a 10-minute break. Any chance to lay back down in bed again and you’ll take it. And if you don’t have anything to do for a few hours you know you’ll be sleeping.

5. Binge-sleeping on the weekends and over breaks.

When you don’t have anything to do, you can sleep for sixteen hours at a stretch. If you don’t have school or work it’s just a sleep marathon, every single day.

6. You drink so much coffee that you’re probably damaging your body.

Coffee practically emanates from your pores because you drink over 10 cups a day just to be able to function semi-normally. You get overly defensive when people say you should drink less, because they don’t understand that you just can’t stay awake without it.

7. And without coffee, you’re useless.

If you don’t drink coffee, you can only manage to stay awake for four hours or less and are exhausted the whole time before you fall back asleep. Plus, even hours later, you barely know what’s going on and can only answer the simplest questions. You never really “wake up.”

8. When people say “Oh, I’m tired all the time too!”

I’m sure you are, everyone is, but I’m so tired I can barely function and am destroying my body with caffeine just to be able to stay awake for more than four hours at a time.

9. Or, “I wish I could sleep as much as you!”

No, you really don’t. It sounds nice at first until you realize you’re giving up your whole life to lay in bed if you have nothing to do and your hobbies have taken a backseat to sleeping. Well, everything has taken a backseat to sleeping.

10. You only actually feel awake for a few minutes at a time, after drinking copious amounts of coffee and sleeping way too much.

For me to feel fairly awake, I typically have to sleep for at least 10 hours, drink at least six cups of coffee, and even then it only lasts for an hour at most before I crash down into fatigue once again.