I do not think my job is making me only tired — I think it is making me smaller

Dear Delyara, Tiredness can be fixed in theory. A smaller self is harder to recover. I can feel the changes. The over-checking. The softened voice. The carefulness. The way I no longer trust my first reaction in a room because I’m too busy wondering how it will be interpreted. The way I still carry certain people’s tones home and let them sit at the dinner table with my family hours after the actual conversation ended. Work has started shaping my nervous system. Not just my schedule. I don’t want income to come at the cost of becoming less recognisable to myself. And yet, if I’m honest, I think that cost has already started being paid.