How do I get through the day in one piece?

[satantram]

With things like an increasing school-load, increasing family problems, and just personal all-round health, how can I get through a bad day without feeling like I don't want to wake up in the morning?

After school, I have eight hours 'til midnight to get my homework done, cook and eat, take care of my much younger brother, deal with my brother's homework, and clean around the home. Simple enough, an hour and bit for each task, give or take some, right?

Quickly with school, I have five classes a day with a rigorous workload and exams coming up. Granted, I don't find the material to be very difficult and I do enjoy my classes, but I can't seem to focus for the life of me; due to laziness or some underlying issues, I don't know. Because of this, I found that a few hours by myself with no interruptions at all can get the job done. Lately I find that about four to five hours is a comfy time period to work for me.

This should leave me with four hours for the rest, which isn't too bad but not as lenient as I'd like. An hour for eating with my brother, and another to help him with homework. That leaves two hours to clean until midnight.

The reason for me finding this a tight schedule is because my brother tends to just run over me like I'm only here to bend to his every whim. At times, he might leave me alone for two hours straight and other times he will scream at me, tell me to shut up, and then to go back to my room, and upon going back will scream at me again to come to the living room. Sometimes he gets physical, enough to bruise me at times; I will say, I have NEVER and will never lay a hand on him no matter how angry I am. All in all, this happens at least twice a day and makes it extremely difficult to maintain focus on anything or to talk to him properly without feeling like I'm going to explode. Because of this, my homework can take over seven hours to complete which even I find to be completely unreasonable. This results in me staying up past midnight to finish as well take the breaks that I desperately need.

And very briefly, I want to mention that I have a difficult time focusing on even the simplest tasks and struggle daily with myself and just the weird thing that is the human brain. This just adds to the things I need to worry about.

Now usually I'd eat first upon arriving home and help my brother, then I'd do homework. I never have time to clean nowadays and rarely on the weekends. This has left me with a messy working environment and just a generally uncomfortable home to be in. As well as absolutely no time to work on myself and better myself.

By the end of the day, I feel frazzled and frustrated. My poor family has to come home to me being moody and tired and refusing to hold conversation with them because of this. At night, I sometimes physically feel repulsed to even sleep in the direction of or come in contact with my brother whom shares the bed with me. This in turn doesn't help with me sleeping well and further makes me grumpy the following day; this doesn't help me with my relationship with my brother either.

There isn't much for me to do with the situation but I'd like some advice on just making the best of what I can. I want to be able to handle the stress of day to day life without breaking down and needing to spend excessive time alone to recover.

[Worried-help]

Hi Satantram. Sorry you are having a difficult time. Is it just you and your brother?. And how old is he?. If it is, some ground rules for him will probably be the best thing to do. Like quiet time doing what he likes while you get your homework done. Or a specific bedtime for him if he doesn't have one which will allow you to get homework done and straighten up a bit before bed. You can also put your foot down by not giving in to his every request. I have a son and when he miss behaves he gets put on time out. Time out means he sits down for a while and doesn't get to play until his time out is over. This is done every time he miss behaves and he gets so bored when on time out he does it less and less. As far as your younger brother hitting you, that is unacceptable, he has to have respect for you as his older sister and should be given a few chores just to help you out a bit, you shouldn't have to straighten out so much every single day. Also is there anyway you can have your own bed?

As far as how to feel less stress you can try meditating a bit before bed.