Hello, My Name Is Tired
There was a time when people would ask me, “How are you?” and without missing a beat, I would respond, “tired.” Sometimes I would try to soften it. “I am okay, but tired.” But most times, I could not even pretend. Just one word: tired. That was my status. That was my truth. It was not a momentary feeling. It was my baseline.
Eventually, I noticed how often I was saying it. I would hear myself repeating it to friends, family, coworkers, strangers. The truth was, there was nothing else to say. I had no space in my life to feel anything else. I had become a high-functioning shell. Still producing, still delivering, still performing. But behind all that was bone-deep fatigue.
My weekends were not weekends. They were recovery missions. Friday evening would arrive and I would exhale, but that relief never lasted. Saturday was spent trying to restore what the week had drained out of me. Sometimes that meant sleep. Sometimes it meant errands or catching up on tasks I could not complete during the week. But rarely did it mean joy. By the time Sunday came, I might start to feel the faintest flicker of energy again, only to realize it was already time to prepare for another cycle. Wash clothes. Cook something. Pack a bag. Brace myself.
I remember almost missing my birthday celebration in 2020 because I was so worn down. I had planned it weeks in advance. Friends were coming. There was a dress I had been saving. But when the day arrived, my body said no. My soul said no. The only thing I could offer was presence. I skipped my makeup. I skipped the performance. I dragged myself there in the most literal sense. I did not have the energy to show up fully. But I went. And in hindsight, I am glad I did. One month later, the world would shut down. COVID came and with it, another level of exhaustion that none of us were prepared for.
But the truth is, my burnout started long before the pandemic. It began the higher I climbed. The more responsibility I took on, the less space I had to breathe. At every rung of the ladder, I lost something. Time. Peace. Stillness. At the top, people assumed you had arrived. But what they did not know was that the view from the top is lonely. And the air is thin. Balancing work, family, friendships, and leadership left almost nothing for me. Even when I “rested,” it was not real rest. It was numbing. It was collapsing. It was the kind of rest that left you still waking up tired.
I was a leader who knew how to plan. I knew how to execute. I knew how to anticipate everyone’s needs. But I had no practice in caring for myself. My calendar was full of other people’s deadlines, other people’s demands, other people’s needs without regard for my own. I was constantly rescheduling myself. Deprioritizing my body and health. Postponing my joy. And still, I kept producing. I kept succeeding. I kept being called brilliant, strategic, and effective. But I was also falling apart. No one really talks about the cost of being the strong one. The capable one. The one everyone depends on. It costs you your evenings. It costs you your health. It costs you your softness. Eventually, “tired” stopped being a feeling and became an identity. It was not just that I was tired. I lived tired. I breathed tired. I dreamed tired.
And the more exhausted I became, the more invisible I felt. People noticed the outcomes, not the effort. They praised the results, not the sacrifice. I remember thinking, if one more person tells me how amazing I am while I am literally unraveling, I might scream. So many of us are carrying this same weight. We are exhausted, not because we are weak, but because we have been holding too much for too long. We are exhausted because we are living inside systems that reward over-functioning and punish stillness. We are exhausted because survival became our normal, and now we do not know how to live.
When I think about the years I spent living in this loop, I do not feel shame. I feel grief. I grieve the birthdays I barely made it to. The weekends that never refueled me. The mornings I woke up already behind. The evenings I fell asleep with my teeth clenched. I grieve the joy that got deferred. The laughter that got rationed. The beauty that got buried beneath my to-do list. But I also feel something else now. I feel a quiet rebellion rising. A refusal. I am no longer interested in being tired as a way of life. I am no longer interested in measuring my worth by how much I can endure.
I want a life where Sunday is not the only day I feel a glimpse of myself. I want a life where rest is sacred, not earned. I want a life where my body does not have to scream to be heard. I want a life that does not apologize for needing to slow down. The Burnout Blog is part of that reflection and reclamation. It is a place to name what I could not name when I was too tired to feel. It is a way to bring truth back into the conversation. Not the curated kind. Not the polished version. But the raw kind. The kind that says, I was not okay, but I am beginning to choose differently.
Maybe you have lived this story too. Maybe you are reading this with bags under your eyes and a calendar you do not remember saying yes to. Maybe you have forgotten what it feels like to be rested. Maybe you do not even remember what joy feels like in your body. If so, let me say this clearly. You deserve rest. Not as a reward. As a right. As a birthright. You are allowed to reclaim yourself. Even if you have to start tired.
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