The burnout chronicle

If being burnout is sickness I could have been admitted in hospitals for permanent treatment long ago. 

The pain of being a racketeer of some sort, as some boss would like to call it, kicks in at this time when getting up from bed and adhering to your phone’s alarm become nothing but a dark pit to drag yourself into, feet forward, soul lagging behind.

Every dawn you get up, point blank, wash yourself from yesterday’s filth. But despite of all the brushing and scrubbing, your senses remain asleep, dreamless.  The sound of the bursting bubbles from your soap is not enough a sound to bring you up and carry you through another day.

Others might have nothing to complain about what I do. I sit at my desk and work with whatever that is presented to my face with everything else: coffee, food (microwave-heated if you prefer), sweet handouts from workmates, all at arm’s reach.

The problem is not the job, but the “work,” the lack of it, actually. The mundane task of sitting for straight nine hours, doing the same job you have been doing for the last three years, seeing the same people for 45 hours every week with no official break, with no honest leave, with nothing to look forward to except for banknotes handedly delivered.  

"This is not about you. This is about the job,” a boss once said.  This should be the mantra. Regardless of your feelings, you have to work. Even if it means putting your creativity dispenser to rust, your social skills to oblivion.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to exchange mine for any other boss. But, once in a while, it’s nice to think about the what ifs and what might have beens. It’s nice to think that after the day, you get to see what you have done, that you accomplished something. The concept of working without knowing, the concept of working and sending your work to outerspace, is tiring. More tiring than that of utility workers’. At the end of the day, they have the glistening of comfort room’s tile to tell them they did a good job.   But there is nothing like that for me. Not a good-job-tap-on-the-back or a ridiculous criticism for “improvement of your craft”. Nothing. There is nothing really. It’s the mundane task that is deadly.  Deadly for your brain. Deadly for your soul. 

I’m at a chronic stage of burnout now. It has taken toll on me and my relationship, not only to my partner but to my friends and family. The burn has razed the entire part of me, leaving nothing but bitter ashes of failure and frustration in my mouth, and an exceeding level of apathy.  The burn had made me a pusher. I had pushed everybody away. 

First, my partner. My three year relationship has long suffered from my condition. Instead of love, my relationship had been made an avenue to belt out my boorishness. I have driven mad the only man who had tried to understand. And so he’d grown tired. 

Next stop was the only ‘friend’ I have in the office. She has been in the same funk as I am. So we clashed and burst out. She said her sorry. Instead of saying mine, I ended up breaking off with her. I said I’m done. I said I’m tired of her and I want to be her friend no longer. And in her silence, I know she had nothing to do but agree.

Everyday, my third casualty suffers from me.  My family, I never let pass a chance to scream and yell my heart out at them.  Every slip, every mistake, is a great chance for me to burst. My cruelty has gotten to the point of nowhere. It has crossed beyond the boundary of humane treatment and rationality.

I have nothing left in me now. No kindness, no love for self.  Except for hopes and wishful thoughts for the better of things.

I feel bad because I am.

As I realize the problem, I also struggle to find a solution. I’m thinking of leaving the job, of mending the hearts, both mine and the others I have hurt. 

 

“Burnout is a psychological stress syndrome that occurs as a “response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job.” Besides feelings of excessive stress, burnout can ruin personal relationships and cause fatigue, insomnia, depression and anxiety. What’s worse? It may be spreading through Gen Y women like wildfire.”

- Huffington post