Why I should probably take a month off from work but never will
On July 2nd, I walked into my 4pm meeting the way you wander through San Francisco fog: unsure of your surroundings, unaware of what’s ahead, and completely detached from reality.
After a day of sitting at my desk writing emails, setting up calls, and clearing out my inbox, I wasn’t quite sure of where I was or who I was, just that I had to do the things written out on the list in front of me. My fingers weren’t gliding the way they usually do over the keyboard on my lap. My mind was unamused by the subdued, pre-holiday office banter.
Instead, every so often, I’d feel a sharp pain stop tears somehow gathering, ready to fall. How did they get there? What was happening? Didn’t I just receive some hopeful news last week? Didn’t our team just have a great quarter?
Oh right, I’m a fraud.
It clicked in that moment, and the memories threw the gate over the walls I was building. I saw the stories from Not That Bad I’d read just yesterday, I remembered the times I wrote about for my first book, and then I remembered pulling them out at the last minute. Fear silencing me again.
A fraud.
I couldn’t shake that. I couldn’t shake the guilt weighing on me, pushing my shoulders lower and lower.
I couldn’t reconcile the person I told myself I was, resilient, strong, ready to fight for myself, for everyone, with the person I was when I submitted the “FINAL” draft with that story removed.
These people in Not That Bad, the stories they told, the details they shared, they didn’t let that stop them. They didn’t give fear a second look. They were brave. They were helping others heal, sharing their healing with the world. They were strong.
Not me.
Pulling a story about something too grey for me to understand from a book no one will probably read. I don’t have the reach they did, the talent, the pain, and yet, I still pulled it.
I still let fear control me.
It’s like I haven’t grown at all. Like the past five years were for nothing. Like my life has been for nothing.
And then I spiraled and I found myself Googling, mid-4PM meeting, “How to Pull Yourself Out of a Depressive Cycle”. I read each article I’d opened about five times because I couldn’t get through a sentence without flashes of the times I wish I’d written about interrupting each sentence.
About the times I failed to talk through. Shed light on. Speak up about.
And if I couldn’t put that out there, then why should I continue going through a life, these motions, if all I am is a fraud?
Why carry on this facade of fighting for justice, pushing for change when I wasn’t able to do the same myself?
Why bother with change when apparently I can’t?
And after finding reasons to work from home that week, I’ve found my way back into my office chair today. Sinking down at my desk, resuming the list of things I’d left undone.
But I’m not okay. And I haven’t been okay for months.
This has all been bubbling in anticipation for moments like these. When I can’t sleep and I’m too tired to fight them off.
I was “fine” all this time, but I was never okay. I’m just in the next step of this cycle.
Fine. Not okay. Drowning. Repeat.
That’s why I wish I could just take this month off to find a way to catch myself back up with the rest of the world.
I wish I could find someone to talk to about all of this that won’t drive me further into a debt I can’t fathom a way out of.
I wish I could get out of this fog and find some fresh air.
I wish I could swim to the top of the water instead of lying on the ocean floor.
I wish I could use that time to find out where I was and deal with the thoughts clawing at my bones.
But I can’t. I can’t do that. I like my job (enough). I like the things I’ve been able to do. I have friends. And I like being able to pay rent.
I can’t just take a month off.
Not when I have trips planned later in the year. Not when I don’t want to lose one of the two things offering stability in a life out of my control.
Not when I don’t want to explain this to someone only to be met with something I don’t want to hear.
Not when I don’t want to be pushed back down a ladder I’m fighting so hard to climb.
The blood that’s been spilled can’t be for nothing.
So I guess I’ll just be “fine” for now. Until the next wave comes and I’m back to the rock bottom I can’t seem to swim far enough from.
