Looking Back

Often times I write thoughts, story ideas, personal notes, and things I want to research, in my notes app. It’s my digital post-it note, along with Google Chrome tabs, which I think is a fairly normal thing among people in my age group (?). Lately, I’ve been going through my notes, cleaning them out, looking things up, or deleting something nonsensical.

This one note broke my heart. It just said this:

“Farao islands”

That’s it. Just a passing thought as I struggled to keep my head above water, I didn’t have time to look it up, or the energy to see if I could go there or learn about it, just the location. It’s not the most telling note. Nobody would know the context and likely how I was feeling at the time, but I know.

Further down the page of the note I wrote more. I must have gone back to the note or just added it as a non-sequitur but clearly around the same time. I want to go back and hug the past me. Sweet girl, get on out. It’s okay.

I’m standing in the middle of a tornado inside my head. Outside my head, my body is tired and puffy. Not sleeping well, it’s just starting to take a toll. Now, it’s more physically obvious than just one night of sleep lost. Daily, I’m thinking about what comes after this. I’m wondering how much longer the day today will continue.

Every single day, I’m questioning myself.

It seems like everyone around me just doesn’t question themselves, or their lives. Do they just get up in the morning, go to their job, then live out a couple of hours of freedom while they’re not at a job… And then do it again? Who is okay with this?

Moving Forward

In truth, sometimes there’s no way to wrap up a thought like this – only get it onto the page and let it go. My life has changed, I’m no longer feeling this despair and frustration. I’m no longer this exhausted or scared. Looking back now, I know I’ve left a job where I felt burnout like never before. Looking back, I see how I got myself there and how I often get myself into a place of burnout. For now, I have the gift of a sabbatical.

For me, I’ll continue to write as I process, but if you’re feeling this way, please know that you’re not alone. Burnout is a real thing, and can easily be confused with depression – the symptoms (from my google searches) seem incredibly similar. Talking to someone, I talked to a therapist, personally (thank you BetterHelp – not sponsored) helps. It got me out of my tornado and gave me the courage to get better, to take my life back into my own hands and live it the way that feels right to me.

 

Brianna is a businessperson, writer, and teacher with a passion for social science and healthy living. All of my interests seem to intersect and come together on Indie. If you’d like to read more articles like this one, check out Indie. Thanks, as always, for reading!