It’s 2:30 pm and I’m furious: My Burnout Story (part 2)
Writer’s note: this post makes a LOT more sense if you read the first post, found here.
After my friend gave me the loving shouting wake-up call, I stopped seeing my Crying Appointment as some personal failing and started seeing it for what it actually was: a cry for help.
Once I acknowledged that, what came rushing in was anger.
I was angry at the company for gutting my team and expecting me to carry the load of five people. Angry at the people who saw my exhaustion and looked away. Angry at the system that told me crying into my laptop was a personal failing instead of the predictable outcome of being wrung dry. And yes, angry at myself for believing that if I just worked harder, I’d finally “earn” the support I needed.
Anger gets a terrible rap, especially at work and especially as a woman. It’s called unprofessional, emotional, disruptive. But anger is what shows us when something is deeply wrong. Anger is fuel.
That anger is what finally made things clear: I was not the problem. The job was. And the only way to solve it was to get the hell out.
So I leapt into another flavor of Corporate Awful: I polished up my resume and started flinging it into the void. That’s already miserable, but WOW job hunting while actively burned out is its own special kind of hell. You’re expected to sound energized and impressive on paper while you’re crying in real life. You’re supposed to “sell yourself” while secretly thinking you’re completely unsellable. Every rejection email felt like confirmation of the worst voice in my head: See? You can’t even get out. You deserve this.
Still, I kept going. Out of sheer stubbornness tenacity. Out of anger. Out of the desperate belief that surely there had to be something better than crying at 2:30 every damn day.
And then, somehow, it worked. I got an interview. And then another. And then an offer.
And here’s the twist: the new job was like coming up for air after drowning.
I remember my first week there, waiting for the other shoe to drop, bracing for the moment the mask would slip and I’d discover this was just another flavor of misery. But instead, I found managers who checked in without micromanaging, reasonable expectations, and people actually concerned with how much work I had on my plate.
Now, was it delightful? Yes. Was it also incredibly disorienting? Also yes. There’s a lot of emotional whiplash in going from the deep hole of misery, to the even deeper hole of job searching, to suddenly being very happy with my new job. When you’ve been stuck in survival mode for that long, it takes time to trust that the ground under you is solid. The tension in my system didn’t evaporate overnight; it took months before I stopped holding my breath, waiting for disaster.
Part of me wanted to believe the story was over. Huzzah, I escaped! Roll credits! Move on with your life! But workplace trauma and the resulting burnout lingers in your nervous system, in your habits, in the lies you told yourself to survive.
Leaving the bad job was the first step. Learning how to stop living as if I was still in it was the harder part.