my mother died over the summer and the grief mixed with stress from college is killing me

I just need to rant, but if you have advice its welcome.

For context, I'm a junior and a history major. and I'm 24(M). My mother lost her 4-year journey with cancer in late June. I watched her slowly lose all function and decay in front of me as she lay in her hospice bed. I watched her take her last breath. Yesterday was the four-month anniversary of her death. I miss her every day. Some days I break down out of nowhere from grief. I hoped my school work would distract me from the grief but it's done the opposite. It made it stronger. School has always been stressful, which is a given, but my sheer amount of workload this semester is making me buckle. I was only taking four classes but I dropped to three and the stress still makes me numb. I have two 10-page research papers due which are my final projects. But the mere thought of having to dig into these papers makes me nauseous and I'm slowly falling farther behind. Luckily my profs have lifted my deadlines and are willing to give incompletes if necessary. But its easy for me to say "im not working on it today, itll be tomorrows problem." Maybe my time management skills just suck but the other work just keeps piling up and when I finish one smaller assignment (which in itself takes a lot of energy right now) the bigger research papers get pushed back.

I guess what Im getting at, and its kind of hard to articulate, is, I am so mentally drained from all the stress and trauma of this past summer, that additional stressors from school is just flatlining me. I don't feel like I can grieve. I don't feel like I can healthily cope and focus on things to help me heal. and when I do try to indulge in things that I enjoy, I play mental mind games with myself and end up telling myself that what Im doing is wrong and that my school work is more important. Them it turns into procrastination.

Sometimes when I sit at my desk, I instantly become overwhelmed and my fight or flight kicks in and I want to run as far away as humanly possible from these assignments. It makes me feel like such a coward. But I just want a break. I just want to be able to breathe for a second without the looming stress of academia hovering over me. I already am going to take next semester off or at max, take one online class to get some r&r. Dropping out is not an option right now, I dont want to dump all of my classes this late in. These not impossible tasks just feel impossible and its making me slowly lose myself. My beard hairs are turning white, ive lost a lot of muscle mass, I feel tired all the time. Its so unhealthy. Its a mental roadblock Ive never faced.

I started therapy on friday to help manage grief and stress but cant get back in till nov 11th, I just want this nightmare to be over with.

Ive never been like this. I have always been one to stay on top of his assignments and I get good grades. Im just slowly slipping.

Idk, has anyone else ever felt like this, how did you manage

TLDR: my mom died and school makes my stress worse and I'm slowly losing my mind