The signs were there right from the start. After two months in the job my face broke out in sores: impetigo, caused by stress. Then came a series of paralysing neck spasms. There were periods of thriving, thinking, I’ve got this! Only to be plunged back into a Sisyphean cycle of trying harder yet somehow feeling even more of a failure. People were retrenched; the workload trebled. Then again. Then again. The company made concessions for an ever more demanding client, and the workload just kept growing. What did I do to cope? I took on even more work to show I was up to the task (I wasn’t).
Then one day I started sobbing at my desk for no apparent reason and I couldn’t stop. The urge to flee the building overwhelmed me but I resisted the urge, knowing that if I did flee I would not return.
I looked at other jobs. They all seemed like more of the same.
I began to realise that something was wrong, something I didn’t fully understand. I took some measures (hired a brilliant coach and took her advice), which helped, but the problem was still there and I couldn’t see past it: the job. Increasingly, every day was infused with dread, hopelessness and overwhelm.
Then lockdown came and the company I worked for went into crisis mode, its clients went into crisis mode, and for the first time ever my brain offered suicide as a perfectly logical solution. Then it offered it again, and again. It felt as though an alien was thinking my thoughts. Horrified, I realised I was going to have to do the unthinkable before I did the irreversible: quit my job. So I did.
THE NUMBERS
This story is from the July/August 2021 edition of Fairlady.
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This story is from the July/August 2021 edition of Fairlady.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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