Summer break came. And even though the workload was lighter, and vacations were close, the girl didn’t sleep better. She didn’t feel better. She even went to Norway — and now, barely a year later, she remembers almost nothing from the trip.
She was in burnout. But she didn’t know it yet.
If you’re new here, you might want to go back and read parts 1 and 2. For those who’ve stayed with me this far — thank you. We’re getting closer to the moment I finally exploded. (You can find that part in: What Burnout Looked Like for Me.)
It breaks my heart that I barely remember my vacation in Norway. I was constantly exhausted. Some days I didn’t even want to leave the accommodation — I didn’t have the energy.
And yet, I went back to work in September 2024 thinking everything would be fine. Thinking I was fine.
I wasn’t.
The thing about burnout is: it hits the people who care the most. If you don’t give a damn about your job, you won’t work the extra hours or push yourself until you collapse.
I did like my job. I know it’s weird — but I did. I still do.
I cared about helping my clients. I had built strong relationships with them. I always tried to provide helpful insights in my reports. That mattered to me. Deep down I knew I was overworked and that it wasn’t a normal situation, yet I thought they would do something about it, they would hire new people.
But by September, I learned that two people in my unit were quitting. One wasn’t a big loss for me — we never worked together. But the other one? My colleague. The one who got sick in March. The one who helped me survive that insane season by working nights with me.
That hit hard.
By October, I was doing almost all of my jobs alone, until “new hire comes”. Only one of my assignments had another person on it — the rest, I had to handle solo. Normally, we only start working nights in March, during peak season. Yeah I did say ‘”normally”, we truly did consider it normal.
I was already working nights in October.
My headaches got worse. I wasn’t sleeping. I started throwing up before work. I had a constant knot of pain between my shoulder blade and neck since March 2024, and it was getting worse. It hurt to move my arm. And it would hurt randomly during the day, but mostly it would get worse every time some new task would be added to the growing pile. Even now, writing those words, I can feel the ghost of a pain there. Sometimes people had to repeat things three or four times before my brain could process them. That’s how bad it was.
I was like a zombie. Waking up, getting ready, showing up, analyzing financial records with a brain too tired to focus or to comprehend them. Juggling several jobs without a manager. Remembering every detail for every client, because my director could call at any moment to ask something about any files. And that was “normal.”
I was a senior. Seniors are expected to manage multiple jobs.
At least, that’s what they told me.
And still, I kept going.
Because I thought my clients needed me.
Because I thought I was the problem — not productive enough, not organized enough.
Even writing a simple email became a struggle.
By December, things that used to take me an hour would take an entire afternoon.
And that made me feel even worse — guilty, ashamed, like a fraud.
Like I didn’t belong in that company.
But the truth is:
They didn’t deserve me. My clients didn’t need me. I wasn’t saving lives.
I was just ruining mine.
Thank you so much for reading my story.
If this resonated with you, I’d truly love to hear from you — whether it’s in the comments or in a DM.
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