I don’t think I am close to burnout anymore — I think I’m already living inside it

Dear Delyara, I used to imagine burnout as collapse. I’m starting to understand it can also look like functioning without freshness for so long that numb competence starts passing for normal life. The lunches still get packed. The forms still get signed. The house still moves. The emails still get answered. The children still feel loved. And still, inside, there is a deadening. A thinning. A flattening. A growing distance between effort and aliveness. That is where I think I am. Not broken enough to be dramatic. Too overused to be well. That middle state frightens me because it hides so easily behind reliability. And reliability is one of the masks I wear best.