Some days just kick your ass and all you can do at the end of the day is stick to the list of chores you gave yourself and hope that tomorrow will suck less. Today’s one of those days for me. Got to work a bit late (but no big deal, I’ve got no obligations so I can just stay late) and immediately got plunged into the shit. Catching up coworkers who were out, starting on things that I’ve been waiting for people to get back into the office to do, having to chase people down to get my testing setups fixed, losing hours and hours to a problem no one can figure out, having my boss skip our one-on-one meeting when I’ve got stuff to talk about, and finding out that my coworker who has been out a bunch will be out even more (and I can’t even just feel angry at him because he’s getting surgery to fix his knee, so I’m also a little scared about what this will mean for him since he’s nearly sixty and this could have a huge impact on someone who is, sure, a frequent source of frustration for me, but also someone I care about since I’ve worked literally side-by-side with him for the last eight and a half years). It’s all been a bit much today and yet I’ve still got to go grocery shopping since I won’t have a chance to do that again until thursday, I’ve still got to do my chores because I’ve got other ones every single day between now and when my friends show up (which I’m very excited for), and I still have to find time to eat dinner and have at least a little fun somewhere in there so I don’t go to bed hating my existence as much as I do right now.

All of this is the burnout talking. Sure, a day like today wouldn’t be great any time, but one of the things burnout has taken from me most notably is my resilience. I am no where near as good at rolling with the punches or getting back up again as I was even two years ago. The year of pain, dimished physical capability, loss of sleep, mounting work stress, and shift in work environment have taken their toll. It’s all I can do to get through most days, even when I think my antidepressants might be starting to do something for me, and then days like today come along and lay me out flat. Or they would if I could afford to spend time on the ground. I had a ten-hour work day today and, by hour two, had already dealt with two things that made me want to just walk out of the building and never come back. By the time my coworkers started leaving the office around four or five in the afternoon, I’ve dealt with six things. By the time I took a break to start writing this post two hours later, it was up to nine. I know that all of the subsequent battles against myself to stay at in the office were much easier to cause because of the first one (If you’d already hit your limit, getting pushed past it again is much easier since it’s not like that resets afterwards), but I don’t think I’ve had a day where there’s been a near-hourly reason for me to have to tamp down the urge to leave and never look back. It’s not like I can recover from that while I’m in the office, either. I just have to put up with it all, be miserable, and hide how miserable I am from my coworkers so I don’t need to put up with more comments behind my back to my boss–about what would probably be my “attitude” this time around–since I’ve addressed every other problem my boss has brought up.

I do not like the bitter person I’ve become, but I feel like that’s all that is left of me on days that squeeze me dry like today has. When I’m a husk of a person, just trying to endure the many hours between the point where I’ve officially run out of patience, spoons, or tolerance for the day and when I can finally leave this place, all that remains is this bitterness that I’m forced to swallow every time I’m called on to do more work or realize that it’s been too long since I left my office and now I have to step out so people can see me “working” instead of trying to get actual work done in my office. I don’t know how much longer this is going to remain tenable. I don’t know when I’m going to reach a breaking point and be unable to stop myself from leaving. I fear it won’t be long enough to have found something else. I fear that, even after reaching that point, I’ll still need to keep coming in. I fear that none of this might even matter as the country I live in feels just one or two steps away from society-wrecking chaos. It’s all just so much every single day and then days like today layer it on inescapably.

I’ll make it through today. I’ll get my groceries, I’ll do my chores, I’ll play a video game or two while eating some kind of dinner… I haven’t really got a lot of other options these days. I can’t afford to take many days off to rest. I can’t afford to work less. I can’t afford to try to draw boundaries or push back against the unfair practices of my boss and coworkers because I’m fairly confident he won’t react well to that, a thing I can’t risk since I will begin sinking into worse debt with the first disruption to my current pay schedule, based on my past experiences with him. All I’ve got is the choice between being more or less constantly miserable for at least ten hours a day and risking homelessness if I can’t find enough work to make up for my current income. Not much of a choice, really. Which is the real kicker for all this. If I wasn’t essentially trapped in my current position as it slowly destroys my mental health and self-worth, it would all be so much easier to deal with. It would all sting so much less. But here I am, working this job long after all my coworkers have left because I need the money and there’s so much work to do that I don’t even need to get my overtime approved. The least bad of all my options. I really wish I had at least one good option, or even a neutral one. Anything but degrees of bad would be welcome.