I am struggling to make it through my “normal” work weeks these days. Fifty hours of work was once the norm I lived under but now I can barely make it through a ten hour day. I know how bad that sounds, but working 50-hour weeks was my devil’s bargain for living alone in this expensive modern era. It was the thing that gave me the hope that I’d be able to pay off my student loans “early” (which feels dumb to say considering it has been thirteen years since I graduated college as of the second weekend of May). It is what has enabled me to live with the rising cost of a not-shitty apartment and my unceasing eleven-hundred-dollars-a-month student loan payments (which have finally begun to snowball thanks to paying off one loan with a particularly large quarterly bonus last year). I have depended on it for five years and counting, and I don’t know how I’m going to keep it up anymore. I’d have to move someplace much cheaper if I stopped. I’d have to trim back what few luxuries I allow myself like decent coffee, fresh chicken (that I then freeze, sure, but it’s still better than the already frozen stuff I used to buy), and enough vegetables that I sometime don’t eat them all before they go bad. And the “expensive” frozen pizzas instead of the cheap, crappy ones. But I am so burned out and tired that I can’t really force myself to keep this pace up most weeks and I’m not sure if failing to work that much is me recognizing I need rest more than I need money, or if this is a drawn-out breakdown due to overwork, stress, and isolation combining into the most gnarly, horrible burnout I’ve ever experienced.

I wish it were possible to have someone check my status conditions. Just get a list of everything that’s afflicting me and read it out so at least I can know whether or not I’m having a breakdown or if I’m tired enough that I’m just automatically overruling the part of me that demands I continue working for what are really some very good reasons. It’s not like I’m doing this for nothing. It’s not like I’m sacrificing my life force for some stupid trinkets or whatever. I’m trying to dig myself out from underneath a mount of debt so that, maybe by the time I’ve forty, I can lean off the gas a little bit and buy a house or something. Or just… I don’t know, work less. Or go on vacations. Or do literally anything other than scrimp and save and live paycheck to paycheck so I can pay off the results of some really bad financial advice my parents gave me when I was seventeen that ended with me signing myself up for two decades of debt. I wish I could let an outside perspective into my thoughts and feelings and interior condition so I could get a sanity check that wasn’t filtered through my own impulsive need to be “fine” all the time, to never worry anyone, or to not take up space in people’s minds that I don’t feel I deserve to inhabit. It would make all of this stuff so much easier if I could get an outside opinion or some kind of objective report.

Instead, all I can do is watch my thumbs quiver as I hold up my phone to type a message with shoulders, arms, and hands weary from the work I did today. Or cough to clear phlegm from my throat while wondering if it’s just allergies because it’s finally spring and I’ve got my windows open in the almost 80-degree days because it drops into the 50s overnight and maybe I can save on my electric bill by holding off on using the AC for a little while longer. Or if maybe the cough is a lingering effect of one of my many illnesses that I had to work through so I could get overtime pay or maybe a sign of something worse, of something I’m in the process of catching but too stubborn to really let myself feel until it takes me off my feet completely. All while trying to relax my eyebrow and eyelid muscles so they stop twitching from sheer exhaustion. No matter which it is, a drawn-out breakdown or overriding exhaustion, it is not healthy for me. It is not a good thing that I’d be feeling any of those things. But I don’t really have any other choices right now because it’s either continue this or get a second job and work more hours than I currently do because that job won’t give me overtime pay the way that my current job does. I’d have to work three times as many hours above forty to break even if I took any of the jobs I see advertised in the world around me. Which isn’t a viable solution, you know?

I know it’s the burnout. No matter which thing is happening right now, I KNOW it is the burnout. I just… I don’t have the luxury of doing something about it. So I need to figure out if this is a breakdown or just exhaustion so I can treat the symptoms long enough to maybe finally find the financial stability I need to rest long enough for my burnout to actually decrease instead of just constantly going up or staying at the same level. I need to know so I can stop silently shrugging or saying “I also wish I knew” when people close to me say they wish they knew some way to help me. I need to know so I get the right kind of rest or least stop getting the wrong kind. I am halfway through my thirties and I cannot keep this pace up forever. I’m sure it’s already had a long-term impact on my health, though it will likely be years before I know what, exactly, that impact is, but I need to stop it from getting worse. All of which contributes to feeling more burned out than ever because who doesn’t love yet one more thing to do around everything else already going on. I’m caught in a feedback loop I can’t seem to shake out of and I’m not really sure what to do since any other work schedule than the one I’m trying to force myself to stick to is going to end up with me out of my apartment or eating only rice and beans for my single daily meal on a long enough timeline since I just don’t make enough money doing only forty hours of work a week to sustain something even close to my current lifestyle.