Burnout

I wake up in a room.  Dazed, tired, heavy.  By now I am so used to feeling this way I don't notice it.  They have become my normal.  Part of me, like another one of my freckles, a scar.  In my mind I'm stuck in a huge room.  All around, spaced evenly apart , are dozens of doors with signs above each one, "JOB", "FRIENDS", "CHILDREN", "RELATIONSHIP", "SEX", "MONEY", "CHORES".  They're evenly spaced apart, but the size of them is different and it always depend upon the day.  Sometimes there is a "Do not disturb" sign hanging from one or several. 

In my hand is a large key ring full of keys.  All silver and labled.  The door labeled "HEALTH" is always covered in dust. 

My heart starts pounding and my chest gets heavy looking around at all the doors.  Which do I go into first?  My hands start shaking as I shuffle through the keys, knowing all these have to be done, all these doors have to be opened and closed by the end of the day.  Knowing I'm the only one who can take care of them.  It's.  All. On. Me.

I start the internal social media coaching, "Get moving girl.  Pull up your big girl panties, you're fine.  You're enough.  YOU CAN DO THIS."  I muster all the strength I can and walk quickly toward the children door.  That one feels important.  I run in and out, slamming it behind me.  That didn't go well.

Before I know it, I'm sprinting from door to door;  opening and closing and running to the next one.  In and out, in and out, panicking as I shuffle through the keys as quickly as I can.  As soon as I get done behind the relationship door, I hear banging coming from the job door and dishes crashing behind the chores door.  I don't even have time to question why there's a separate room just for laundry when it falls under the chores category because I'm rushing and running and gasping for breath until eventually, I collapse.

I can't keep up, no matter how many times I go through each door there's always something chaotic happening when I come out of another one.  I throw down the set of keys down with a crash, screaming like I'm tied to the tracks watching a train barrel toward me.  I'm desperate to make it all stop. 

With a crushing blow to my pride and my womanhood I realize it.  I can't do it all.  This is the never-ending highlight reel, all night, every night. My big girl panties are permanently welded on.  I cannot pull them up any higher.  

I was at a conference recently, chatting with a bunch of people.  I was already feeling anxious because i had spent the entire night awake, staying the night in a bed that wasn't mine and the social interaction in a new environment was becoming overwhelming.  I've been living with anxiety attacks long enough to know that if I didn't shut down, go home and lay down in my bed, in total silence and relax, I'd probably end of having a full blown attack and not sleep all week.

But, life was waiting for me when I got back home and I had to put on a brave face and go to group because people rely on me.  It was of course wonderful and I'm not sorry I did it.  I knew I needed to take a day to slow down after I started forgetting to do even the most mundane, every day crap - the banana bread on the counter, the coffee left in my car, turning my computer off before leaving me desk at work.  But I haven't slowed down, and here I am.  Stopping.

My kids have also started pointing out just how bad my short-term memory had gotten.  I walk into a room and forget why - something that started happening to me after I became a parent - but I also feel massively overwhelmed at the thought of doing tiny projects, like depositing a check or running the vacuum cleaner.  A friend of mine told me I sounded like I was suffering from burnout and I dismissed her.  After all, how could I be burned out?  People do stuff all the time and they are still functional.  I just appear to be on the outside.  Only the outside.

My thoughts about keeping my schedule full and not taking a breather changed a few years ago when I found myself sitting on the basement floor staring at a pile of laundry my daughter told me that she would do that day while I was at work.  The mere site of it, was so overwhelming I began crying so hard I almost vomited on the concrete.  It was my breaking point.

I knew it wasn't rational - we are talking about clothes that someone else said they'd take care of - but I couldn't see that silver lining.  Perhaps my therapist was right.  I am experiencing burnout.  That three day weekend, I didn't leave my room for anything that I wasn't required to.  I shut out everything and did my best to reset.  And it helped, for a day.  Then normal life happened.

The thing I learned after taking it easy was that hitting a wall doesn't always look like falling on your basement floor sobbing over something as simple as laundry.  There are many warning signs like having a short fuse, being forgetful.  We just chose to ignore them because we think, "I'll just get through today and try to slow down next week", when really, we need to slow down now.  Even if it's just for a few minutes at a time, at the first sign so we don't end up in the emergency room having to get body parts stitched up because we're so distracted that we chip our own funny bone getting out of the car, or sprain your ankle with your arms full of stuff because you're so preoccupied with not panicking and trying to put on your brave face before going into work.  Both things, by the way, happened to me.

On the few times that I have had to call out of work, either coming in a few hours later or for the entire day, I get a ton of crap from people who have no business caring why I wasn't there.   Last time, I got a "what were you doing?" in front of everyone and this time, after a really bad day where I didn't want to get out of bed, I responded "Sometimes I need a break from my brain."  She of course didn't know how to respond to that.  I of course am still irritated.  Not everything is your business.

I try to figure out how to say that to a bunch of adults who have spent tens of thousands of dollars on their education just to act like they're in Junior High School without sounding like a jerk about it.  One time, after getting my hair inappropriately touched by a coworker that I had already made it clear to that you can't come up behind me and do that (with the history of abuse that I have), I got up from my desk and took a walk to avoid bursting out in tears in front of everyone.  Another coworker jokingly asked "Were you blowing us off?"  She said it jokingly, with a half smile but at the same time there was a little bite to it too.  There always is when I turn down social interactions.  I've been faced with this situation enough times to know that whenever I have to step away from a social event because of my anxiety, or I have to cancel at the last minute because I can feel anxiety bubbling in my brain or I tell someone I can't make it.  And when they ask why, I can't tell them I have anxiety.  They're too busy making it clear that they don't condone taking a minute, and pretending that their lives are perfect.

And I'll tell you what, if you think for a second that I'm imagining any of it, your life is pretty darn close to it.  I would give anything not to feel like this.

Most of the time I'm 100% fine.  I'm communicative, I'm friendly.  I'm the biggest martyr who ever walked the face of the earth.  I say yes to my kids and other obligations all the time.  But then there are the dark times.  There are the times when I can feel the shadows closing in on me and I know that if I don't take some time for myself, it will only get worse and there is no "taking a breather" to get through it.  I feel nauseous and resentful.  I'm jumpy.  I feel like something awful is about to happen at any given second.  I feel terror;  like I'm stuck in my own personal hell.  I'll have to take medication to get through it.  Instead of taking a breather, I used to keep pushing through it because I believed that I was going to be fine.  I wasn't.  Not one time that I did it.  I've learned to pull back and set limits.  There is still too much stigma around anxiety.  There are a lot of people who still don't believe it's real;  and even if they do believe it, they aren't living with it and it's a pretty difficult thing to understand if you don't.  There's always the fear that whenever I discuss my mental illness with someone, they will look at me differently so most of the time I just keep it to myself.

I don't know if that's me being self-destructive about a condition I really wish I didn't have, or if people are actually acting differently around me.  I am so tired of constantly holding myself together only to fall apart behind closed doors and not having enough of myself to give to those that matter the most to me.  Everyone just assumes that I'm avoiding them, or acting stuck up when the fact is I'm just trying to keep from having a panic attack and it has absolutely nothing to do with them at all.

But of course, all I do all night long is obsess about every interaction that I've had that day.  Worrying about making sure that I've made a brave enough face to not destroy the even brief relationship that I had with them.  That's anxiety for you.  It causes your brain to turn into a never ceasing rock tumbler;  second guessing everything and it all rolls around in there in the middle of the night until I am a nervous wreck - and then I'm an exhausted nervous wreck; even worse.

Today, I didn't drink, and I'm proud of myself for that.  There is no reason to push so damn hard that we suffer mental and physical consequences.  Our health and our family are the ones who suffer if we don't.  It's easier to be there for our family, jobs, our friends, if we are also somewhat in tune with our bodies (and minds) need from us to keep going.  So, the next time you feel like you need just keep pushing even though you literally can't see straight, or have lost interest in activities you used to view as fun because they've become daunting chores, consider this:  being or becoming burned out isn't a clinical or technical term, but it's a well-used and useful way to describe the way we feel when we've had enough of something.

While some feel there has been a shift and mothers aren't expected to do it all anymore, we can't deny that we are socialized to believe we need to do it all and with our kids and friends as much as possible as some kind of measure of the kind of person we are.  Those patterns are hard to break.  The mental overload of everything involved in life itself is as heavy as it ever was.  Stop trying to keep your engine running when it's begging for a tune up.  I don't give the flyingest of fucks about how others view me;  I'm my own worst critic.  When I see a mess around my house, or I've left the office with work only half finished or one of my kids need something from me, the voice in my head that says "Oh please, you can handle it - it's a small thing", pops up every time.

So remember, wanting a break and not waiting until you feel like you cannot take one more second of your life as it is isn't the way to do life, and it certainly doesn't mean that you're a bad person.  It means that you are aware of what you need in order to be a good person to the people in it.  Instead of taking a break and looking at it like you're slacking - and worrying that others on the outside of our life think the same - realize you are taking necessary steps to keep yourself from falling deeper into an anxiety-ridden life where no one wants to be around you and the littlest shift  or unplanned even sends you spiraling.

There are times I just am not aware of how badly I need to say "no" or how often we need to step away from our regularly scheduled programming instead of waiting until it's too late.  Recognizing the signs when they first pop up has helped me get to know what my limits are.  Yeah, I am not Superwoman.  Nor do I aspire to be any longer.  I look forward to the days when I get through it and celebrate that there wasn't a crippling sense of overwhelm. That's the payoff.  The nights when I wake up after a full night's sleep free from the rock tumbler.  The week that I go without an accidental self-injury.  I refuse to go back to the way I used to operate, and my mental health is thanking me for it.

 i have found that there is no "getting over it", but there is a point where i can wallow in worry, or take control and find a way to work through the sandpit of anxiety.  i am the only one who has control over my mind, and i can be miserable, or i can do my best to control what i can.

the worst thing that could happen did, and it was something that i wasn't even worried about.

you can't spend your life in fear.  that isn't living

I'm getting better at being kind to myself even on the days when I don't get along with me.  There's a world to save, y'all, and I'll be damned if I miss my chance.