by LATTE
I’ve worked here for almost a year. In that time, I’ve taken one week off.
I’m not writing that to sound tough. I’m writing it because at some point it stopped sounding alarming to me, and that’s the part that actually scares me.
What the year looked like
For two months I ran the helpdesk on my own. One person, the whole desk. Every ticket. Every escalation. Every “quick question” that was never quick.
Now there are two new colleagues, and I’m the one bringing them up to speed. Also on my own. Teaching while doing, which means doing both at half capacity and pretending it’s full.
It takes a lot. More than I let on, even here.
And I keep telling myself it’s temporary. That it’ll settle. That once they’re trained, once the queue is calmer, once one more thing is handled, then I’ll rest.
There’s always one more thing.
The thing I can’t seem to do
Here’s what I’ve learned about myself this year, and I don’t love it.
I will carry almost anything before I’ll ask for help.
I’ll cover the gap. I’ll stay late. I’ll learn the thing nobody else has time to learn. I’ll be the one you can count on, every single time.
But ask for time off? Bring up pay? Say, plainly, this is too much for one person?
That I can’t do.
It’s not that I don’t know I have the right. I know. It’s in the contract. The days are mine. The conversation is allowed. None of it is a favour I’m begging for.
It’s that saying it out loud feels like admitting something. As if the reliability is the only thing holding the whole arrangement up, and if I set it down for a week the floor gives way.
Reliability becomes a cage
There’s a trap in being the dependable one.
The better you carry, the more invisible the carrying becomes. The work gets done, so nobody sees what it cost. Sometimes I don’t see it either, until I notice I haven’t had a real day to myself in months and somehow decided that was normal.
That’s the quiet erasure of being the person who always manages. You’re so good at absorbing the load that the load stops being visible. To everyone. Including you.
And the longer it goes, the harder it gets to say anything, because now there’s a story where I’m fine. I built that story. I maintain it daily.
Why I’m writing this down
I think I’m writing this here because saying it here is easier than saying it there.
That’s a little cowardly and I know it. But maybe it’s also how you start. Practice the sentence somewhere safe. Get used to the shape of it before you have to say it to a person who can say no.
So here’s the sentence:
I need to take time. Not because I’ve earned it, though I have. Because if I don’t, I go under. And a version of me that’s gone under is no use to the desk, the new colleagues, or anyone I keep telling myself I’m doing this for.
Asking for rest isn’t the failure. Running yourself into the ground to avoid asking is.
I’m still learning to believe that one.
Closing
I don’t have a neat ending for this. I haven’t had the conversation yet. The week off is still hypothetical. The harder talk about what a year of this should be worth is still a knot in my chest.
But I wrote it down. That’s further than I got last month.
So this is me, starting with the word I find hardest to say.
Help.