I DON’T LIKE THIS PERSON I AM BECOMING.

I feel so harassed, so … bullied,  that I can't relax, i can't trust, i can't focus on the important things.

I am losing the essence of who I am.

I go to college, and I feel so stupid,  I am so tired at class that I am not learning.

And at work, the demands grow, they loom over me, and I am turning into someone else. I am short-tempered and irritable. I try not to act like a bitch. But it's hard when the phone is ringing off the hook, and everyone is taking a loooooong lunch at the same time, of course, since they are all together in the restaurant, and they forwarded all their lines directly or indirectly to me. So by the time they come back all refreshed from the lunch I am ready to bite somebody's head off.

This is not me. I swear. This is not me.

I have started biting my hands again. It is either that, or I'll tell someone to STFU. It doesn't help. It makes me feel miserable and weak, and so terribly alone.

I feel the Void growing inside me. I mean, like in the Neverending Story, one day there was a lake, and next morning there is nothing, not even a hole.

Is it true that cubicles suck the joie de vivre and the sparkle right out of your soul, until all that remains is the shadow, as in the archetype, everything ugly about yourself?

Twice this week, I have locked myself in the bathroom to cry and bite my hands. I had not done that since I was 14.

 

I am exhaused.

I am anxious.

I am depressed.

I  feel beaten and defeated.

I am angry.

I get weepy and miserable. 

I am pathetic... 

 

And sometimes, I get  livid with rage. So mad that I pump my fists, wishing I could just punch something.

I kind of wonder whether I will get used to the new pace, the new way of doing things.

I read somewhere that if you withstand pain for long enough, your brain gets used to it, learns to expect it, and eventually will imagine pain when there is none and create it, whether you are hurt or not.

And I wonder if the same is true of stress.

Maybe my tolerance will grow, and I will get stronger for having survived the crisis. Maybe after surviving the ordeal, you are left with an insight, a truer image of yourself and of the world around you. Maybe this is just a stage in the journey, and the best thing to do is to keep at it, and smile at the old folk you find in your way through the forest, since any and all of them might be witches or ogres or gate-keepers of some sort. Meanwhile, you toil, hard working and ever polite, and at last, you will be delivered from suffering.

But maybe my body will get into the habit tensing my shoulders at work, of grinding my teeth at the mention of some people, and I will pump my fists when I get the urge of punching someone. Maybe I am one of the bad tempered brothers and sisters, cannon fodder, useless to all but the storyteller as a devise to show the hero in an even more flattering light. Maybe this is not the ordeal to be overcome, but the punishment for my misdeeds and my selfish thoughts and acts.

Drama, I know. Way too much drama.

We have joked around the office talking about Karôshi. The situation is quite far from that, so we were only joking.

But, totally for real, I am feeling burned out, and I am not the only one.

It is demoralizing, and things are not looking up.

So I will add a picture of Koko in a shoebox and Tita gnawing on a cardboard box.

These two make it all worth it.

.