The Slow Burn I Didn’t See Coming
It didn’t hit me all at once. Burnout crept in like a dodgy flatmate who never pays rent on time, steals your wifi, and slowly eats all your snacks. I told myself I was just tired, just needed to fix my routine, maybe drink less wine and more green tea. But no amount of hydration could fix the chaos brewing in my brain. I wasn’t just tired. I was fried. Scrambled. Served with a side of identity crisis.
For three years, I had kept going like I had something to prove. After leaving my ex-husband behind in Scotland, I jumped straight into survival mode. No rest, no pause, just go. Divorce? Check. Rebuild life? Check. Job after job after job with zero stability? Triple check. Then my dad died in June 2024, and everything inside me just snapped. It felt like the universe kept pressing “shuffle” on the grief playlist.
By December, I was one big eye twitch away from spontaneously combusting. I wasn’t just burnt out. I was crispy. Everything made me cry, and I hadn’t even hit perimenopause yet. I couldn’t focus, I couldn’t rest, and my brain had developed the processing power of a dial-up modem. Every day felt like performing in a play I no longer had the script for.
The Meltdown You Didn’t See Coming
One morning, I woke up and my first thought was: nope. Not today, Satan. Not because I didn’t care, but because everything, my limbs, my brain, my hope, felt impossibly heavy. My thoughts were already doing laps before I even sat up. The soundtrack of my mind was a chaotic medley of “I can’t do this” and “why am I like this.”
Emails? Ghosted. Messages? Ignored. Friends? Avoided. Food? Forgotten. Sleep? Who’s she? My entire system had hit CTRL+ALT+DELETE and refused to reboot. And yet, I still showed up. I smiled, and I nodded. I got things done while internally screaming into the void. No one knew I was falling apart, which somehow made it even worse.
I felt like a weird little alien trapped in a human suit. There was no spark, no sense of self, just this shell of a person who vaguely remembered joy but couldn’t find the way back. I needed more than a nap. I needed a full soul renovation.
Rest Isn’t a Reward, It’s a Rebellion
I used to think rest meant a sheet mask and a couch session with a Savvy B. Cute, right? But when burnout hit, I realised rest wasn’t about sleep or skincare. It was about stopping. Completely. No pretending. No people-pleasing. Just… stop.
I started small. I deleted the blog drafts that bored me to tears, I roamed the streets like a woman on the verge of a very chic breakdown, hair unbrushed and slightly bewildered. And of course, I drank tea and stared out the window like some emotionally unhinged Jane Austen character waiting for a telegram that never came. At first, I felt like I was breaking some cosmic rule. Then I realised I was just finally listening to myself.
I started choosing softness. I cried when I needed to. Said no without an essay. Let my nervous system finally exhale. I did therapy. Slowly, I felt little glimmers return. Laughter. Presence. The ability to feel something other than “make it stop.”
Rebuilding With Crumbs and Tea
There was no grand awakening. No makeover montage. Just tiny, clumsy steps towards feeling like me again. I apologised to my ex-boyfriend-turned-bestie for being a chaos goblin. Then, I ate some vegetables, wrote down some things that mattered. I slept. I cooked. And I moved like a person who was allowed to go slow.
Most of all, I gave myself permission to take my time. I stopped expecting to bounce back. Some days were still rough. Some mornings I still thought, “ah shit, not this again.” But I let those feelings be what they were instead of shoving them in a drawer labelled “later.”
And somewhere in that soft mess, I found myself again. Not the hyper-productive, always-smiling version. The real one. The one who knows her worth isn’t based on her to-do list. The one who fell apart and got up differently. Softer. Braver. Slightly more chaotic, but deeply whole. I’m no longer crispy. I’m golden-brown, flaky in places, slightly buttery but still warm
Rest isn’t lazy, it’s the only reason I haven’t spontaneously combusted.
The Slightly Unhinged Final Thoughts
If you’re feeling like you’ve lost the plot, you probably have. And that’s okay. You don’t have to keep pushing just because you’re scared to stop. The world doesn’t need you at 100%. It needs you real, it needs you hydrated. And, it needs you in bed at 8pm with Cheezels and boundaries.
Rest isn’t selfish. It’s survival. And it’s your birthright, not something you earn after a breakdown. Burnout doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It means your body and spirit are begging for a reset.
So let yourself stop. Cry in the shower. Walk barefoot on the grass. Cancel the plans. Be a bit unhinged if that’s what healing looks like right now. You’re allowed to fall apart. Just don’t forget you’re also allowed to rebuild.
If this sounded like a page from your diary, I’d love to hear your story too. Or maybe just take a moment today to ask your nervous system what it needs. A nap? A scream into a pillow? A jaffle? Honour it. You deserve to feel like you again. Even if the journey back is weird, wobbly, and involves an embarrassing number of matcha lattes.
We Need to Stop Clapping for Basic Decency – Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity
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