Burn Out

As the holiday season approaches, and the days get shorter, I always notice this almost frenzied desire of wanting to get together with friends and colleagues, while also trying to meet end of year project deadlines and complete all of the tasks necessary both at work and home before the holiday slow down. As I sign into work every weekday morning, I can feel the exhaustion in the air on my calls with colleagues and family members. November has been an intense and gruelling month for me at work, with a mixture of needing to grind and produce in order to meet client deadlines along with the planning of multiple holiday events. I am tired and I know that many others around me are as well.

As a woman living alone, with no children, I recognize that I do not have to deal with the added exhaustion that parents have to deal with. Especially in the days of COVID when your child running a fever means staying home from school and going to get tested. This seems to be a never ending cycle for most parents, especially those with little ones in daycare right now. 

Though I do not have to deal with this added stressor, one thing I do contend with is loneliness. And there is just something about the combination of high pressure at work, shortened daylight and living alone that can feel pretty dark. Usually, I would be spending time with loved ones, but this pandemic has added another layer of complexity to that, and my boyfriend has also been away in his home country for the past 4 weeks. There is a part of me that cringes reading this, and feels ashamed for all of the complaining. At the same time, I hope that if this is relatable to you, you can at least know that you are not alone in your struggle.

I also recognize that I am incredibly fortunate and privileged to have the life that I have. I am excited about the direction that my career is headed in despite the intensity of it all, and I am grateful for my loved ones, my home and the support and love that surrounds me. All of these feelings can coexist, and sometimes I struggle with allowing myself to just feel sad and compassion for myself at how hard it can be sometimes.

I hate finishing my workday when it is completely pitch black outside, I am not a winter person even though my birthday is in December, I am so sick of this pandemic and all of the limitations it enforces on the people I love and I am very tired. So that has been my reality, for the past while.

It is also times like these where my addict brain tends to kick in and the cravings for an escape come on hard. Alcohol was that for me which is very much aligned with how it is marketed worldwide. The glorification of drinking as a reward or celebratory act for escaping the mundane, tiring work week is simply everywhere. It all feels a bit heightened with December around the corner as well and all of the holiday parties ahead. 

So as I continue on in my recovery, I have felt confronted with the fact that even though I am working as hard as anyone else, and I am tired and lonely too, I cannot reward myself (as society tells me to) with a drink. Because for me, that drink becomes two, which then becomes many and the spiral of destruction ensues. Even after six and half years of sobriety, I still can idealize this privilege that I do not have. To be honest, I never really had this privilege to begin with because I never drank in a socially respectable way. I have been a blackout drinker since my first drink. So I know that this was never something I could really do but boy did I try to prove otherwise. 

I am so grateful for my sobriety. For the fact that I wake up every morning, with no haunting of the night before's blurry antics. The shame that I lived with when I kept trying to fit into that mold of the girl who goes out for a couple drinks to 'blow off some steam' with friends and prances home safely to bed at night. There was so much shame because, "Why couldn't I ever do that? Why was it that when I tried to be that girl, I almost always lost complete control?" I know that drinking is not an option for me, but when I am drained, stressed and lonely the desire for that type of escape comes on strong.

As I come up against this, I know that I have to reach into the toolkit that I have developed over the past few years of my recovery. Some of my main resources are:

• recovery meetings
• prayer and meditation
• walks in nature
• reaching out to loved ones
• reaching out to friends also in recovery
• rest and self care

All of these 'tools' have become my coping strategies for when life feels really hard. The most important one of all though, is simply giving myself permission to feel my feelings. It is doing the opposite of escaping, but rather identifying how drained/sad/lonely/envious I am and allowing myself to truly experience that feeling. Before recovery, I did not have a lot of patience for any of my dark emotions. I didn't like how they felt, how they made me appear to others and I anxiously avoided being with other people's dark emotions as well. 

I have learned in recovery that in feeling my sadness, I can have more space for full and complete joy when it comes. And in having compassion for the girl who just wants to fit in with everyone else, and celebrate, and drink and be merry, I can give myself the space to feel the sadness of missing out on that option. I can grieve the relationship that I never had with alcohol. and I can accept that it is not fair that I don't have that escape route, even though I am as stressed out as those around me.

cool winter walks

At the end of the day, I am so grateful for my life and I would have none of it if I were not sober. I know this to be true. And so if you are going through the same or know someone close to you that is, try to have some compassion for yourself/them during this holiday season. We are all recovering from something and sometimes life doesn't make it easy for us. It is ok to feel the heaviness of that. It is what make us human.