WORK / SAFETY

Letter 025

There Was Nowhere I Felt Safe.

It started at work.

Or at least, that's where I first realized I couldn't keep pretending I was okay.

In January, meetings started feeling like traps.

Certain conversations had become almost impossible.

I would see that I had to talk to certain people and my body would react before the conversation even began.

Heart racing.

Chest tightening.

Panic.

And then the meeting would start.

I would listen.

I would respond.

I would try to sound completely normal while some part of me was desperately trying to get out of a room I wasn't physically in.

That's difficult to explain to someone who has never experienced it.

I wasn't afraid of meetings.

I was afraid of being trapped in an interaction my body had already decided wasn't safe.

And eventually it wasn't happening occasionally.

I was having panic attacks almost every time I had to talk to certain people.

But I kept working.

That's what I did.

I kept showing up.

I kept answering.

I kept doing the job while becoming less and less capable of convincing my body that I was okay.

Then work ended for the day—

and home didn't feel safe either.

I didn't feel safe with my husband.

So there were nights I stayed in hotels.

Think about that for a second.

The place where I worked had become somewhere my body panicked.

The place where I lived had become somewhere I didn't feel safe.

Where exactly was I supposed to go?

There wasn't an off switch at five o'clock.

There wasn't a front door I could walk through and finally exhale.

There were hotel rooms.

There was my phone.

There was the next morning.

There was another meeting waiting on the calendar.

January became February.

And eventually I couldn't keep doing it.

I took about two weeks off work.

Not because I suddenly stopped caring about my job.

Not because I didn't want to work.

Not because I couldn't handle being busy or stressed or challenged.

I stopped because something in me had finally reached its limit.

For a long time, I called what happened a mental breakdown.

Maybe that's still the easiest phrase for it.

But breakdown makes it sound like one dramatic moment.

Mine wasn't.

Mine was cumulative.

It was panic layered on panic.

It was trying to remain professional while my nervous system was sounding an alarm.

It was leaving one place that didn't feel safe and realizing the other one didn't either.

It was sleeping somewhere that wasn't home because a hotel room felt safer.

It was waking up knowing I still had to function.

It was doing that again.

And again.

Until I couldn't.

I used to look at those two weeks away from work as evidence of how badly I had fallen apart.

I don't anymore.

Because eventually something had to stop.

And apparently, the first thing I was finally willing to stop was pretending.

I wasn't okay.

I wasn't functioning normally.

And being able to perform some of the things expected of me did not mean I was okay.

That's something I needed to learn.

Functioning is not the same thing as feeling safe.

Neither is showing up.

Neither is answering the question.

Neither is finishing the meeting.

Neither is making it through another day.

I came back to work.

But I don't want the lesson from January and February to be that I survived it and therefore I can survive it again.

That's not the lesson.

The lesson is that I should never have to deteriorate that far before believing myself.

I don't want to become better at hiding panic.

I don't want to become better at enduring situations that make my body beg me to leave.

I don't want another hotel room to be the first place I realize how exhausted I am.

I want to notice sooner.

I want to believe myself sooner.

And I want to remember that needing somewhere to feel safe is not asking for too much.

Because in January and February, I didn't need to become tougher.

I needed somewhere I could finally stop bracing.