For the past two months, I feel like I’ve been in severe burnout—like terminal burnout, where I couldn’t see it ever ending. I’ve never experienced burnout like this in my entire life, and it was awful. Yesterday was the first day I was able to be productive and convince myself I didn’t need to scroll through TikTok every hour of the day. How crazy.
My burnout got so bad that I didn’t even clean my apartment for weeks at a time, and it made me wonder if this is what depression genuinely feels like. It felt like I couldn’t get my body to do anything. And don’t even get me started on showering. I already hate showering, let alone when I’m burned out. I can’t believe how bad I felt. All I could think was, This can’t be right. It’s summer. I should be happy and having the time of my life. But I was too exhausted to even go lie on the ground and tan. Crazy how that happens.
Yesterday I was talking to a friend, and I said, “I think I finally made it out of my burnout, so now it’s time for me to start doing everything all over again…just to end up back in burnout.” We both laughed. Isn’t it odd how life seems to follow this endless cycle of good times and then bad times? I’m not saying I won’t try to be more balanced, but I do think that, to some extent, burnout is an endless cycle no matter how hard you try to rest or incorporate more balance. We all go through ruts—some more than others.
Anyways, now that I’ve said all that, I’ll say one more thing. I had a cheeky little crush for about a week or so, and it was absolutely atrocious. I hate, hate, hate having a crush. I mean, I just despise the person I become. I get obsessive, and they seem to live rent-free in my head, and that’s simply not allowed. I just had to keep reminding myself of everything that annoyed me about them and tell myself that I just had a lack of information. That’s the thing about crushes—you fill in all the blanks with whatever version of them you want to believe exists.
As much as I hate it, it is kind of fun to romanticize what life could be like with them, living in a little fantasy for a couple of days. But I’m done now. Back to the lab and working my little butt off for the last season of school.