Progress and anxiety

Time has been successfully bent and twisted.
I finished my final paper for one class and have three hours to go before the test in another. I have read another 100 pages in the book for the book club - 400 down, 500 to go by Friday. My sock is another inch longer and Tuesday managed to be a successful knitting night.
AND I managed to get more than three hours of sleep last night.
I still have one unfinished paper and one more assignment for my research class and I have to come up with a "journal" of my Hospice experience with at least ten entries, but that's all for next week.

I thing I figured out what has been keeping me up at night. I was sitting on the couch last night reading Sacred Games (the book for Friday) and I kept looking around at my living room. There is a big, green chair with an ottoman that I love. It's next to the window and there is a bookshelf on the other side and a floor lamp behind it. I never sit in this chair, but I love it and it occurred to me that the reason I don't sit in it is because I love looking at it so much. When I imagined owning a house - having my own space I imagined just this picture and it's perfect. It's inviting and warm, there are books and knitting at hand and there is a place to put a drink. The cats love the chair, too, so there is often something warm and fuzzy purring behind your head. I look at this chair and I think, "Yes, this is what I have wanted." So I sit across the room from it, keeping myself out of this picture because I don't want to ruin it.
The problem is, that having what I wanted is a terrifying thing. If you have nothing you have nothing to lose and now there are lots of good things in my life and I am so afraid they'll all disintegrate before I even know what is happening. I lie in bed at night tensed and barely breathing, trying not to move. Not to disturb this life. I don't even realize that I'm tense until my muscles start to ache, my legs and arms and neck and back. When I try to relax them it takes real effort, and my jaws ache constantly from the pressure of my gritted teeth. I have dreams sometimes that I wake up and my teeth have become a fine sand in my mouth, that I have destroyed them. Scary, right?

But what if we lose everything? What if we lose the house and my self-destructive semester finally catches up with me and I do so poorly in my classes that they have no choice but to remove me from the program? What is my marriage crumbles and my friends realize that I'm just a hollowed out version of a real person?

And is this all just a manifestation of stress? Of burnout? Or is this an indication that my medication is not working and I need something else (again). Shouldn't my favorite place in the house include me? Shouldn't I be able to relax?

Ten more days and the semester will be over. Ten more days and I will be done with Hospice. The husband has a couple of job interviews and surely one of those will end up with a job. A month from now we'll be home from our trip to Chicago and I'll be eating better and exercising and things will look better then, right?