'I'm Exhausted But I'm Afraid to Take a Less Stressful, Lower-Paying Job!'

Before you rush forward, take stock of where you are and where you've been.

Le Prince carnaval (1966), Pablo Picasso

Dear Polly,

Longggg time reader, first time writer. I’ve drafted letters to you in my head for years, and even used you in a therapeutic exercise where we were tasked with writing to ourselves in the voice of a “wise & compassionate person in our lives.” In my darkest periods, Ask Polly has shined a light into the grimy little corners of my heart and mind, helping me to feel less alone and scared of being a big-feelinged, weirdly-wired human in a world that seems jammed full of suffering. Thank you, Polly.

I’m a 35-year-old cisgendered, unknowably queer lady, living in an impoverished, rural part of America that feels largely abandoned by the country apart from the constant and brutal resource extraction. I moved here 13 years ago, just nine days after graduating college. I was desperate to avoid returning to my hometown without a plan, and particularly terrified of being forced back into my family’s home where I experienced chronic emotional (and observed lots of physical) abuse growing up. A family culture plagued by unacknowledged trauma, mental illness, substance use disorder, and an intensely controlling, unpredictable parent shaped my psyche in deep ways that I’ve worked hard my entire adult life to unearth and undo.

Seriously, when it comes to therapy, you name it, I’ve done it! Psychodynamic, CBT, DBT, EMDR, ACT, ERP, mindfulness, support groups, intensive outpatient, psilocybin, SSRIs, even an antipsychotic. It’s all helped me in different ways at different times, and I’ve amassed a ton of tools, but nothing has ever seemed to make the kind of dent that lasts, that would make me feel “whole” in this fantastical way I imagine and yearn for. It feels like I’ve been playing whack-a-mole to try and alleviate my chronic, (at times debilitating and scary, like “I’ve got a plan” level of suicidal ideation scary) psychache. I’ve been previously diagnosed with generalized anxiety, depression, OCD, and PTSD. I’m also extremely suspicious that I’ve been a high-functioning autistic person with ADHD all this time, as almost every single bit of information I read about these paired neurodivergent states hits me like a freight train and appears to explain so much of my constantly vigilant life thus far, working so hard to appear “normal” and please everyone around me.

My career has taken up a huge amount of space in my life, just as academic excellence and competitive sports did before that. Not a thing ever felt like it came easy for me, like ever, so I had to work my fucking ass off to achieve the level of “effortless” excellence that was expected in my family. If it helps paint the picture, three snapshots of exhausted, little-me come to mind most often when I feel like an overwhelmed child in the body of a middle-aged adult (which is so much of the time now!): 1) A chubby, red-faced kid who can’t sweat due to a side-effect of the medication treating her seizure disorder, pushing herself into heat sickness on the soccer field on a sweltering morning in swamplandia, rooted on by her rabidly screaming parent/coach. 2) A disassociated, self-starving teenager taking leftover ACL-surgery Percocets that she doesn’t actually need, trying to disappear for a few hours after school from a life that feels like someone else’s. 3) A college freshman forcing herself to endure a sexual assault because she feels like she deserves it for daring to break up with her heartbroken highschool sweetheart.

I guess what it feels like is an unending series of tests where I have no choice but to abandon myself and leave it all on the field. I’m like one of those dogs who can’t stop chasing the ball and would run its literal heart out. Or as my similarly hard-working sibling once said, “Life feels like a pie-eating contest where the only reward is more pie.”

This willingness to put in work with seemingly absent self-regard or awareness of my own limitations got me pretty far in this capitalist hell hole, so long as I didn’t slow down and check in with my mind or body, and never questioned whether or not I was happy. But now, after all that therapy and repeating multi-year burnout cycles that seem to land my ass closer and closer to a true rock bottom, endangering my life as well as my marriage to a sweet weirdo who loves me a whole lot but can’t take much more of this shit... I’m at a real crossroads, Polly!

I’ve devoted my identity and entire adult life to being a helper. I’ve sacrificed much of my personal life and creative energy at the altar of helping people and trying to solve unsolvable problems. In my job, the one I’ve had for over a decade, I’ve been often simultaneously: an activist, a youth advocate, a community organizer, a social worker, and a team leader / manager. I’ve gotten to travel around the world, mentor and help amazing young people living in awful fucking situations, and just generally make good shit happen. I’ve loved my coworkers, who have been like a surrogate family to me, celebrating each other’s life events and milestones, commiserating and mourning losses, and showing up for each other during crises. I’m part of an imperfect, disjointed, sometimes harebrained, but big-hearted and skilled team of humans doing their best to reduce the harm of terminal capitalism and empower those most impacted by injustice to take action and stand up against it.

But as grateful as I feel for all of it, I’m also undeniably, crispily burnt out (again). Despite the purpose and values-aligned nature of the work, the healthcare benefits and relative economic security of my job, I always seem to end up back in this exhausted, husk-of-a-person place. I completed grad school last year while keeping full-time hours, and it was after crossing that particular finish line, in the constant shadow of genocide and fascism that I feel deep complicity and moral injury over, that it seemed like I started to unravel (fast) again. And this unraveling was bad, Polly. I had to take over three months of leave from work. It scared me and everyone who knew what was going on enough to eventually — once I wasn’t just couch-rotting every day — push me to start trying to leave the job.

I applied for and was offered a position with far less financial stability and no health benefits because it would allow me to work toward a therapy license doing something I strongly suspect I would love. I’d still be a helper, but I’d have a lot less responsibility, no management of others (which costs me all the spoons every day even though I love my people), less multi-tasking, and hopefully it would have a big pay-off in terms of my mental health. Maybe I would have the energy to make art again, or fix up our old house, or I don’t fucking know, join roller derby or become a yoga instructor or some shit. I don’t even know whether or not I’d like to have a kid? I think I pushed that off the table onto the floor a long time ago because I’ve just been fucking tired every day all day, overcome by despair about the state of the world, so adding a dependent to the mix mostly sounded like a recipe for disaster. Also, I can’t get my own shit together, how could I ever be a good parent?

So I just don’t fucking know! I feel lost in the wilderness and can’t imagine ever being found! I know a career change won’t fix me, but there’s also this yelling inside me that it’s time for change, I hear it constantly. Every Zoom call that makes me feel like jumping out of my skin, every new ask no matter how reasonable that makes me want to throw my phone into the river. There are sweet, lovely moments sprinkled in that keep me limping along. But I know how this goes. Those little moments stop reaching my heart more and more, evaporating on the surface of me, until I feel like I have nothing left to offer anyone, let alone myself.

Both staying and leaving feel like a big, messy gamble! On the one hand, I could sit still where I am until the depression wolves carry me back into the bad place, where at least if I go in-patient it wouldn’t bankrupt us. (I mean, I know how to do this job, I just don’t know how to survive it long-term). I guess my work is good enough that my managers mostly seem willing to allow this to keep playing out for as long as I can take it. On the other hand, I could take a risk and try something new to see what happens, even if it means we’ll need to pull from our savings for healthcare and live more frugally. Can I bear to give up this security (even though I know security is basically always a mirage) just to see what could open up in my life?

I’m fucking scared... I’ve always been so scared. I’m so tired of being scared! I’m scared of being found out as the neurologically fucked up imposter that I am, scared of trying something new and failing, scared of losing the identity placeholder that this job has provided, scared of unmasking and finding out who I really am (whatever the fuck that even means), and also scared of never daring to know myself. I feel like a cornered cat with no claws that everyone’s expecting to perform some amazing new trick but I can’t even figure out how to get this sock off my head.

Thanks again, Polly, whether you read this or not. You’re a forever-balm to my spirit either way.

Warmly,

I Just Can’t Help Myself

Dear IJCHM,

Thank you for your kind words. It’s nice to imagine that I’m a FOREVER BALM whether I write something that helps you or not, and even whether I read your letter or not. It’s amazing, actually, to imagine that I could just feel satisfied with what I’ve already done for you or anyone else. Because lately I find myself focusing on what I’m not managing well, what I haven’t done yet. Every morning without fail, instead of getting to work, I remind myself of what I’m not doing, where I’m failing, how I’m stalling and time is running out for me.

This past weekend, instead of getting up and writing, I read a profile of David Sedaris in the New York Times. I was flat on my back, holding my phone over my head, no caffeine, barely awake, when I discovered that Sedaris owns two Picassos and two apartments in New York City. Moreover, he’s written for the New Yorker since the ‘90s. He writes six hours a day without fail. He finishes new books every two years like clockwork. All of his books are bestsellers. He sells tickets to his events and they always sell out, too.

But does he sign books for fans afterwards? I wondered, imagining a black limo speeding away, back home to the Picassos. Yes, as it turns out, David Sedaris signs books for hours. He speaks to everyone, takes his time, draws cute cartoons next to his thoughtful dedications. He also replies to all of his reader mail.

I got out of bed in a shitty mood. As I made my tea, I couldn’t stop thinking, My god. I fail every single day. I fail to finish my new book, I fail to reply to reader mail, I fail to sell expensive tickets to book events that don’t exist and sign nonexistent books for nonexistent lines of fans. I fail to own Manhattan apartments and Picassos.

I couldn’t stop thinking about how different I am from David Sedaris. These differences felt insulting to me. “But I have talent, I am funny, I love my writing,” I said to myself, trying to muster a few ways that I am like David Sedaris. I like Picasso, too! I like New York! I have written for the New Yorker occasionally! But obviously I don’t handle my career as well as he does. I am not productive enough. Maybe after all of these years I have the raw skills, but I still get in my own way, over and over again!

In other words, I JUST CAN’T HELP MYSELF! I COULD BEEN A BIG STAR, FABULOUSLY RICH AND IMPOSSIBLY FAMOUS! BUT INSTEAD…

Instead. Instead of literally being David Sedaris, I became myself.

This might sound like the moment when I fell into a state of eternal gratitude. But no. Instead, I went downstairs and talked to my husband Bill about everything I don’t do. I told Bill that I should obviously do more DAVID SEDARIS-LIKE writing (which I love, btw, of course I do, it’s fucking great!). I mean, I already write funny stuff! Foreverland is funny! Now I just need to work much harder, be even funnier, get more motivated, hold more events, sell tickets, talk to people more, do a speaking tour, snaking lines, shaking hands, drawing cartoons, the whole PRINCE CARNIVAL!!!!!

I was fully caffeinated, so I talked about this for a while. Finally, Bill looked at an incoming text and then noticed the cute photo I’d sent him of our two daughters earlier that morning.

“That was 2011,” I said. “My phone made a slideshow of just the girls together in 2011 and it was incredible. I must’ve been taking pictures every single day for a while there!”

Bill looked at 2011 on his phone.

“I don’t have anything,” he said. “That was the year my phone fell in the pool.”

Finally he found one video from late 2011. He shot the video from bed (you can see his feet). I have dark brown hair and I look slightly chubby. I’m wearing a weird gray dress with a short, flared skirt that accentuates my big arms and my thick waist. My daughters are two and five. I begin to sing the first verse to “Dancing Queen” by ABBA. My younger daughter has a hot pink plastic microphone. She’s in the front and is supposed to be the lead singer, but she keeps looking at me and my older daughter. We are doing back-up singer choreography.

No one knows what they’re doing. I’m holding down the song along with various instrumental parts, and I am also indicating what the moves are. At some point my younger daughter says, “No, no, you…”

“Oh you want to be back up now?” I say. “Okay, give her the mic.”

The video goes on for four minutes. I’ve never watched it. For years, I’ve steadfastly refused to get too nostalgic or glorify my role as a mother. I worked hard not to be consumed by that identity. I had shit to do. The year that video was taken, we were in massive debt and I had just quit a terrible staff writing job and my editor at my new freelance gig was ignoring me for months on end. My confidence as a writer was at an all-time low.

What I find truly strange is that I am very calm. I look round and honestly, the extra pounds look good on me. I am going with the flow. The song and dance are actually not that bad while also being hilarious. The kids never squabble or complain. They’re smiling. Everyone is having a great time.

My mood changed radically after watching this video. I haven’t thought about working harder to become more like David Sedaris since then.

I don’t need to do more in order to be better. I’ve never needed to do more. In fact, I’ve always been at my best when things start to break down and fall away. In spite of various problems and feelings of desperation and encroaching irrelevance, in spite of a filthy house and no job and a lack of cash to take the kids anywhere fun, I could always find a way to

MAKE FUN OUT OF NOTHING AT ALL.

I am exceptionally good at entertaining and engaging people while also rallying them around a project. I am good at making dumb, little things seem important. I am good at getting everyone in the mix and adjusting to their needs and abilities. I am good at taking a boring day at home and making it seem exciting. I am good at HAVING A GREAT TIME DOING STUPID SHIT. I am also good at listening and also analyzing your story and also telling a better story about where you’re going and where you’ve been.

IJCHM, you’re the same way. You show up and you’re present. You’re intuitive. You know how to rally people and get them excited. You hate managing (me, too) and juggling (me, too) in part because you love situations where you can give someone ALL of your focus and attention, and really dial in and attune yourself to them, and give them your energy and your concern and your love. You love to feel necessary and needed.

Every single dysfunction or pathology or obstacle or condition or challenge that you list is related to these talents. Your list of troubles is also a list of skills. I’m not bending your talents into skills; I’m saying they’re the same thing. You are FULL. It’s not just that you’ve helped so many people and now you have to stop because you can’t take it anymore, you’re too broken, you’re too fucked, you’re too depressed, you’re too burnt out, you’re failing, you’re flailing, you’re not enough. Nope.

You can simply choose whatever you want. You are a FOREVER BALM to everyone you’ve touched and changed and loved and shown up for. You are a FOREVER BALM and that won’t run out no matter what you do next. You were depleted and your life was chaotic and you were getting everything wrong, all the time, and you had too many plates spinning and you don’t want to go back to that. But you touched people and changed lives and that fact LIVES INSIDE YOU FOREVER.

You are very, very good at a lot of things. This is a fact. So one thing I want you to do today is make a little shrine to all the things you’ve already done. Print out a picture, find a letter, gather a flyer for an event. Find evidence that you have made a difference, that your coworkers are now friends, that some of the kids you helped are now adults and they remember. Pull it together. Find journal entries. Take stock of what you are and what you will always own.

When you’re done, look at your shrine. Light a goddamn candle if you need to. And say to yourself: I AM A FOREVER BALM TO MANY PEOPLE. I AM WEIRD AND UNIQUELY GOOD AT THIS SHIT. I AM LOVED. I AM FULL.

You wrote to tell me that you can’t help yourself. I understand. I think the same thing about myself often. And look, I don’t even see myself as a helper or healer or adviser or anything on most days. One reason I don’t reply to enough letters is that it would include taking credit for things I don’t feel that I deserve credit for. I avoid the IDENTITY of healer the way I once avoided the IDENTITY of mother when my kids were small.

Like you, I was more prone to telling people what I didn’t have, what I would never be, what I hadn’t done yet. I still have a terrible habit of saying, “I am TRYING to write a book” even though I’m actively writing one. I tell myself regularly: “I AM NOT IMPORTANT. NO ONE CARES ANYMORE. MAYBE NOTHING WILL EVER COME OF ANY OF THESE EFFORTS.”

Bitch, please. What is this talk? I could tell you the story that this is insecure attachment, it started when I was very small, I am fucked up because x, y, and z have always been true of me. But dude, that’s not even accurate. I know tons of people who grew up healthily and also flail and falter and fall into depressive states because life is fucking hard and caring a lot hurts.

HUMANS HAVE NOISE IN THEIR HEADS. Our culture is fucked up. It tells us that we need to arrive somewhere else in order to feel happy. We believe that we don’t have enough yet, or things are too broken at the moment, too filthy, too chaotic. We are not impressive yet. We are too distracted, too indebted, too anxious, too chubby, too overwhelmed. We will never manage the things that other people do.

No no no no no. Stuff yourself into the ridiculous fucking dress and sing “Dancing Queen” instead. Look a kid in the eyes and say, “Oh wait. You don’t want that? Hold on. What do you want instead?”

Right now, you’re telling me you want something else. You are stopping the song to tell me no, you don’t want this. You want THAT. And what I’m saying to you is simple:

“Okay good idea. Do that instead.”

Take the more relaxing job. It’s time. Work toward a therapy license. Have a kid, too. Don’t put things off until you feel complete, or full, or stable. Don’t put things off until you fall apart again. Look around and figure out who will help you when you need help. Stop making it 100% your responsibility to help yourself and set up several different structured ways that you’re going to get help from others: a group therapy setting, an individual therapist, a life coach, a weekly check-in conversation with two different friends.

Get creative if you need to. I decided that writing was too lonely so the other day I held OFFICE HOURS on my screened-in porch and invited all of my friends to sign up for a two-hour slot during which they were encouraged to COMPLAIN ABOUT ANYTHING while I listened. This doesn’t sound like me getting support but it is, in a way. In a way, what I’m doing is saying to them I AM COMMITTED TO HEARING YOU and LET’S MAKE THIS OFFICIAL and USE ME AS A RESOURCE.

I’m not saying that’s not weird. But I like weird. I’m not pretending that all of my friends are like “Oh, this makes sense, she is great, I love her.” I’m sure many have their own private thoughts about my many issues and pathologies.

But people need more help. They need time and space to complain to someone they aren’t paying. They need to be heard and seen.

All anyone needs to be a FOREVER BALM is others is just to know this and do something about it.

The people who do something about it are often neurodivergent ADHD-afflicted people pleasers and insecurely attached try-hards. We often do something about it and then we feel crispily burnt out. We often try to be heroes until we are motherfucking zeros. Sometimes we talk to everyone in a long, long signing line and other times we just sit at home and tell ourselves that we were always and will always be deeply and resoundingly fucked.

The problem is not that we are anxious, can’t juggle, can’t commit, or fall to pieces sometimes. The problem is that we DON’T IDENTIFY AS NECESSARY. We don’t identify as HELPERS AND HEALERS. It’s always the goddamn celebrities who do that! They’re so good at identifying as literally ANYTHING THAT SOUNDS GOOD, those actors! They do it like it’s their job because it is their literal job.

You and I can both do lots of jobs. The jobs themselves are far less important than the anxious and dread-filled stories we tell about the present and the future. Instead of peering nervously across our dashboards for so many hours a day (this is why we can’t help ourselves, btw), we need to look serenely in our rearview mirrors (this is how we CAN help ourselves).

We need to look back and say “Wow. I’ve done a lot.”

We need to look back and feel amazed that we did it all in spite of so much struggle and angst and pain and worry.

We need to understand that WHEN WE WERE DOING OUR BEST, MOST IMPORTANT WORK, while looking right into the eyes of someone else (or in my case, reading their words and feeling their words), we were FULL.

We need to say to ourselves, every single morning, “I know how to feel full.”

We need to say, “I am full. I am a healer. I am a forever balm. I have healed many and I will continue to heal many more.”

Now look. I get that I’m telling you that we should both sound like Jesus all the time. I understand that, to someone who doesn’t really want to help others, the idea of glorifying the way we help people is bound to sound VAINGLORIOUS. We are already paranoid about this, you and me, to the point where WE MOVE AWAY FROM THE THINGS WE LOVE BECAUSE OTHER PEOPLE MISUNDERSTAND OUR RELATIONSHIP TO WHAT WE LOVE.

That’s related to my obsession with David Sedaris. I actually love that he told us about the Picassos. That’s normal behavior. What’s not normal is pretending that your life is different from the way it is. He loves art, he’s rich, so fucking what? Do excellent writers have an obligation to be poor while absolute psychotic billionaire ghouls become INFINITY RICH and INFINITY POWERFUL and never slow down for a second to address INFINITY RAPING the planet?

David Sedaris is rich enough to own a Picasso in part because, in his writing, he owns who he is and he always has. I’m not saying he’s a god. I’m saying that you and me, a youngish queer lady and an oldish straight white nightmare, need to own what we are and what we do and why it matters. We need to take what we do seriously and romanticize it, even. We need to notice that our afflictions are supernatural powers that work well for us AS LONG AS WE CELEBRATE THEM.

Celebrating who you are and what you’ve already accomplished is now your part-time job, which I expect you to do while you’re also doing your new, more relaxing job. Reducing your costs should be a big goal, simply to make your day-to-day life less stressful. In fact, everything you do right now should be aimed at making life easier.

But sometimes SOME of the things that make you feel too busy actually make your life easier. I think that as long as you have a supportive, hard-working partner, kids fall into this category. Most people don’t agree with me but like I said, I am weird and this is how it’s been for me. Exercise also goes in this category. Reading very long books fits in here, too. Studying for a new profession also fits. Any and all weeding and gardening and time spent outdoors also does.

Don’t strip away everything with the story that you’re impaired and will always fall apart. Build yourself a life that is the right kind of busy, filled with things that feed and soothe you. Move through your day saying, “This is what works for me” and “I am fucking weird.” Replace all of your diagnoses with the word “weird” while you’re at it, if that feels right

I like “weird” because that’s what feels right to me. When I say I’m weird, what I’m really saying is, “I’m just doing what feels right. I’m experimenting. You can do what feels right, too, and I will respect it, even when I don’t understand it.”

There is no way for me to understand everything about you or anyone else. I can’t tell you the exact best route forward. What I can do, though, is tell you that I see you. I see you. You gave me what you yourself needed. You told me I was a forever balm. You changed my day in saying that, and maybe you even changed my life, because you reminded me that I don’t have to keep working forever and ever in order to keep feeling valuable. I am valuable right now and I always will be. I’ve already done enough.

So have you. I know you don’t believe that. But I can tell. You’ve given so much already.

I want you to feel full, every day. That’s your new part-time job. I want you to engage with life and work and love and kids and friends in the exact ways that feel good to you, like a chubby mom waving her big arms in the air singing “YOUNG AND SWEET, ONLY SEVENTEEEEEEN!”

Don’t think about what WON’T feel TERRIBLE as much now. Instead, dare to think about what would be FUN for you, IJCHM. Think about how to do THAT.

You deserve to have fun. You deserve to feel full. I believe you can do both. I want you to believe it, too, no matter what else is going on around you. I want you to have fun and feel full and embrace how much love is all around you, now and before and forever.

You deserve all of that love. ALL OF IT.

Grateful to you,

Polly

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