The Invoice Always Arrives

I’ve burned myself out… Yet again.

I’ll correct that. I burned out a couple of months ago, at a time when I just had to keep going because I didn’t have a choice. And then kept going, even after the day I kept saying I’d let myself crash.

That day was a month ago, and besides the days my body chose violence, I haven’t stopped.

The idea of stopping feels impossible. I now have a business that expects weekly output. And yes, I know I’ve built this engine of hell myself, but this is what I need and want to be doing. I can finally see a clear business model where I can make a shit ton of money doing what I love. And I don’t want to give up on it.

The funny thing is that I was probably constantly burned out before DBS, but I was able to shove the truth deep down below a thick layer of grit, stubbornness, determination and the overwhelming fear of disappointing people.

Before DBS, I could push through almost anything. The consequences still existed, but they arrived later. Sometimes much later. I could finish the competition, the project, the work week, and the crisis. Then I’d collapse when nobody was looking.

Even my collapse usually looked somewhat productive, unless I was around people who understood how hard I was working, then I could kind of just collapse for a bit.

I could pretend I was fine for months on end.

My motto was there’s no rest for the wicked. That sentence was repeated in front of me until I believed it. And it is a great motto to live by, especially when you move ten times slower than most people.

I grew up surrounded by people who admired grit. The ability to keep going no matter how tired, sore, stressed, or overwhelmed you were wasn’t seen as dangerous. It was seen as admirable.

Somewhere along the way, I learned that rest was something you earned. Something that happened after the work was done. The problem was that the work was never done.

Now my body doesn’t negotiate. It sends the invoice immediately.

Sadly, DBS makes it impossible to ignore what my body is telling me, and that’s the worst part.

If I bury the invoice under obligations, timelines, or too full a plate, my body eventually finds a way to crash-tackle me into paying at least some of the debt.

I know I should probably say how grateful I am to have been taught that pushing myself way beyond my limits indefinitely was breaking me. But when your only success mechanism was breaking yourself for the first twenty-three years of your life, it stops working. You kind of have to learn better strategies from scratch. None of which works anywhere near as well as ignoring your body.

After three years, I still have no clue how to make grit overpower the ever-present exhaustion. Or even how to fix that exhaustion.

The programming that makes me less tired does very little for my dystonia, and yet, my body is the only reason I have this thing.

I know I’m a lot healthier now, I’ve learned to eat better, to rest, to say no to things (occasionally, of course) and to just listen to my body. But this version is still nowhere near as effective as the kid who could just do it all and pretend she was perfectly fine.

I think I’ll always be grieving the person who could just keep going. The person who just white-knuckled her way through life and maybe took a few days off every few months, if she was allowed. That person got shit done.

The thing I keep forgetting is that she also paid for it.

I remember the achievements, the projects, the competitions, the impossible deadlines that somehow got met. I remember being able to push through almost anything.

What I don’t always remember is the cost. The pain. The exhaustion. The crashes that happened behind closed doors after everyone else had gone home.

Maybe that’s why this is so hard.

I know this version of me is healthier. I know she’s kinder to herself. I know she’s learned things the old version never did.

But some days, especially when I’m tired and behind and staring down another deadline, I still miss the person who could simply decide to keep going.

Even if she was breaking herself to do it.

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