Burnout, Grief and Fear | Entry 1
Dear you,
I don’t know who you are. But I imagine that, in some way, we might be alike.
This is my very first entry in this diary, and I have no idea what it will become. What I do know, however, is exactly what brought me to this moment.
The past few months have led me to a point of no return. The point where you find yourself completely alone with yourself. The point where your nervous system is desperately trying to stay afloat. The point where you hit the ground and realise that getting back up will require more strength than you ever thought you had.
After two years of constant tension at work… after two deeply structuring relational losses… I reached the edge of burnout.
Then, one day, the day after I was signed off work completely, my almost sixteen-year-old dog, my first attachment, the one who had been with me through everything, left this world.
At that moment, I was already isolated. My nervous system was already under extreme pressure. And suddenly, I lost one of the three beings I loved the most.
My manager began putting pressure on me because I was on sick leave, so I decided to return to work. But the meeting with Human Resources felt hostile. The tone was almost interrogative. I was asked deeply intrusive questions about my personal life, questions that should never have been asked.
I live in a country where medical confidentiality exists. And yet, that meeting was humiliating and intensely stressful.
It was the last drop.
After that, my workdays became marked by severe headaches and intense nausea. Then came the evening when, after returning home, I experienced what felt like a collapse from the inside.
Everything suddenly felt dark. I felt as if I were standing at the edge of a void, trapped at the bottom of something I could not climb out of.
The episode lasted about two hours, with a peak of intensity for around thirty to forty-five minutes. I was afraid. Deeply afraid.
Four days later, my doctor signed me off work again, this time at 100%. She prescribed herbal remedies to “bring light back into my nervous system” and to ease the night-time epigastric pain I had been experiencing.
Yes. The past weeks have been chaotic. Nerve-shattering.
I sometimes feel as though a part of me has died. As though my entire life has collapsed. Or at least the fragile life I had managed to rebuild after my burnout in 2021, a burnout rooted in complex trauma and toxic work environments.
I think I will stop here for today. This is already a lot to take in.
By now, you probably understand something important: I don’t have a village.
I am an immigrant living in a country where I have spent the last twelve years, and my social life mostly consists of going to work, buying groceries, and walking my dogs.
This recent loss, combined with the dysregulation of my nervous system, has forced me to ask myself a question.
Is there somewhere I belong?
And if so… how do I find my village in a misaligned world?
You see, we are only at the very beginning of this journey.