Ash

 

Life is just too heavy.

I’m carrying mountains on my back every day.  They grow and get heavier as those around me add to them, with no thought to the weight I’m already carrying.  Nobody is around to take some of the burden off my shoulders when I just can’t keep going, but instead continue to push down on me, making the task of just breathing seem insurmountable.

Everyone talks about burnout as if it’s the same thing as being tired or bored, maybe because it’s no longer cool to just say you’re tired and/or bored. But burnout is real, and it’s far past being physically tired or bored or stressed out- all of those things are merely precursors, warning signs even, some milder than others. Burnout is like extreme mental, physical, emotional exhaustion, coupled with crippling anxiety and depression, with a coat of apathy on top just to keep you numb, while you basically waste away from the inside out. It’s spirit breaking madness, in which your mind and body just fucking quit on you, but still leave you with all the physically presenting illnesses like headaches and heartburn and a concrete brick of anxiety constantly churning in your gut.

The worst part is that you take it upon yourself to hoist this fucking mountain on your own back because that’s what you do. You decide to rent a house you can’t afford and tell yourself you’ll figure it out along the way, but end up struggling to make basic ends meet.  Do you pay the light bill this month and have no food-again- or risk disconnection but finally have a few groceries in the fridge? Do you pay rent or the car note? Hey, guess what, the cable is about to be shut off again and you haven’t even paid your rent or your car note this month, but still end up broke every Friday.

You fight to be pleasing at work, despite the fact that you feel like you’re being shit on and forced out the door by a boss who you considered a friend just a couple of weeks ago. You stick it out despite the fact that he never shows any appreciation for the dozens of thing you do well, has no faith in you and constantly expects you to fail at something, and jumps all over you when you make any petty mistake. He refuses to communicate with you about work, or to even say hello most days, lacks any compassion for you as a human being, and refuses to apologize when his baseless accusations are proven wrong. He makes it clear that you are expendable, never taking into account all the ways you’re not.  One day, he treats you with kindness, respect, reverence, and the next, you’re unimportant and barely human.  Attempting to appeal to his human side by dropping your guard and being unfiltered just earns you an extra kick when you’re already down. You are singled out and ridiculed, micromanaged, the weight of this just added to the growing pile on your shoulders.  And still, you stick it out, because despite all this, you still want him to recognize your worth.

 You’re made to be the family peacekeeper, because, despite not having a control on your own fucking life, you’re seen as the levelheaded one.  The strong one.  You get all the shit from every side and have to untangle it like a fucking necklace.  You’re the mom who has to run in and save the day, the daughter who has to talk her crazy mother off the ledge, and keep a stiff upper lip when her second father dies because they all need you to be strong for them.  Someone has to hold them when they cry, and check on everyone in the days after.  You stop expecting to be the one that gets to fall apart when you’re expected to hold everything together.

 I feel like my mind is a grenade.  This stuff just weighs on me, building up pressure, and suddenly one day the pin was kicked out and now everything that I’ve bottled up is exploding out of me and I don’t know how to handle any of it, and that’s a problem in and of itself, because that’s all I do is handle things, and not because I want to, but because I always feel obligated to.  I’m saddled with expectation and the need to please, and in doing so, I’m running myself into the ground.  Nobody thinks to ask me how I’m doing, or thinks of me at all. Nobody bothers to look beyond my strong exterior that I’m still a human being with feelings, but as long as I’m smiling and doing my part to make things easier for everyone around me, who cares, right? Fuck my feelings. Fuck my mental health. I’m juggling all my plates with a smile on my face, so I must be fine.

 I go home every night to an empty house. To an empty life.  Loneliness is by far the heaviest weight. I feel it, physically, in my chest and in my bones.  It’s crippling.

I have nobody to share myself with, to repair the cracks in my armor every day.

I’m missing vital human necessities, no different than air and water.  I wish for long, tight hugs so hard that the ache of it nearly makes me sick. I can bat an eyelash and have a dozen men that are willing to fuck me...yet none of them want to stick around. Missing that kind of human interaction for so long does things to a person, physically, emotionally. It leaves little holes in you, in spite of how ‘complete’ you may be.  The longer it goes on, the bigger the holes get, like a moth eaten garment that’s been shoved in the back of a forgotten closet.

 Now add the weight of the world that I carry every day, and do the math.

 

The worst part is, I don’t even know what would make me feel better at this point. All these things could magically fix themselves, but the damage would remain, and I would be stuck in a constant recovery loop. It’s like all the life has been siphoned from me, and I’m working solely on autopilot, going through the motions out of habit. I have no more energy to give to people or myself or to save my job.  IDGAF anymore mode is on, and I don’t have the energy enough to change it.

 

This should scare me.  It doesn’t.