Two years ago
About 2 years ago I had a nervous breakdown and quit my job. ‘Nervous breakdown’ has fallen out of vernacular in favour of ‘burn out’, which is perhaps more reflective of the fire of stress that burns you to a husk.
I thought a weight would immediately be lifted off my shoulders but it took a long time to recover.
A long time.
A few days after I left, I got on my bike and attempted to cycle the length of the country off-road, self-supported. Two weeks in and I had another breakdown in a train station in Liverpool, as I quit the thing I’d quit my job to do (or so I had told myself). I was so used to gritting my teeth and fighting the relentless flow I always seemed to be going in the opposite way to. I’d been fighting since childhood, determined to make a better life for myself. Why had I lost that fight? Why was I weak now?
After the cycling attempt, I threw myself into converting a van to a camper from scratch. I had quit my job with nothing else lined up, so I needed a project. There were days I would sit in the van for hours, start one thing, hesitate, start another, stop, sit for an unknown amount of time overwhelmed. My confidence was in pieces. I didn’t feel capable of anything.
It feels like at this point in the story I should be saying ‘and then I did this thing, met this person, read this inspirational quote’ that changed everything. But that’s just not how it went.
My recovery was gradual, non-linear. It was dependent on my hand being forced in some other areas of life - my landlord gave notice, me and my boyfriend parted ways. I’m so grateful those things happened. I’m so grateful that I became so weak I couldn’t grit my teeth and get on with it anymore.
I’ve spent two years and the majority of my savings recovering my life. I did a lot of soul-searching but ultimately what changed is two things. Firstly, I realised that my childhood (which was by no means all bad) was a long time ago, that the person I have become means that it is very unlikely I’d end up back in the same bounded life. Secondly, I became willing to accept that the job I was in, the conditions in which I was living my life, were crushing me. I learned to stop trying to understand why, trying to tinker with the conditions, to fix myself so I could thrive in a place that was making me sick. I learned to accept that it was just not where I was supposed to be. Although I’m still finding my feet, I have found places where I am supposed to be and I can’t begin to tell you what an overwhelming joy it is.
