More Rest for the Wicked

HLR on publishing industry burnout, psychosis and the lifesaving necessity of sleep.

I feel like I am running on empty—like if I shut my eyes they’ll never open again. I don’t know how I’m still standing. I’ve made over 43,000 edits at work this week, and it’s not even Friday. No, 43,000 is not a typo—I’m a Senior Editor at a big media publishing company, and I also edit novels and poetry manuscripts as a freelancer because my “real” job doesn’t pay me enough. 43,673 edits and counting, because certain Important Writers actually don’t know how to use commas, and the guy who usually does all the formatting and typesetting for my clients has taken annual leave already, three weeks into the new year, because of stress and exhaustion, so everything’s down to me. The cover of February’s Cosmopolitan magazine professes in aggressive red font: “You spend 84,365 hours at work...” Even though I love my job, and can’t see myself ever switching professions, this is a depressing statement because my hours-of-your-life-spent-at-work figure is definitely higher than the national average. This week will not be my first ‘50,000+ Edits in 5 Days’ experience and, as long as I’m well enough to keep working, it definitely won’t be my last. I walked out on my previous editorial position at HarperCollins a few months before it became the cool thing to do, so I thought that my days of watching dangerously overworked editors subsisting on diets of caffeine and cocaine fall asleep standing up in the elevator were over, but it turns out the publishing industry is fucked beyond comprehension wherever you go.

Chilling.

On a cigarette break, I type in the group chat, my nail extensions tapping the cracked screen with millennial speed: Oh my god, I am SO fucking tired, lads. I swear I have never known tiredness like this *pain face emoji* *crying emoji* but my thumb hovers over ‘Send.’ I am doubting the veracity of this statement. Someone once said that I have a tendency towards exaggeration, that I rely too heavily on hyperbole to express myself. “Not everything is the end of the fucking world,” he said (of course it was a man). I live in perpetual fear of being perceived as annoying and that one comment from one arsehole ten years ago still haunts me. I’m also trying to be more “mindful.” Mindfulness is a concept I’ve always loathed and scoffed at. The thing is, I have a personality disorder that loves to veer into full-blown psychosis with nary a warning, plus untreated C-PTSD and generalised anxiety disorder. I do not want to be any more aware of my gigantic, overwhelming feelings than I already am. But I’m trying to make a conscious effort to think more before I speak these days—mainly to save myself from future embarrassment, but also because as a poet, as a writer, as an editor, I feel that every word must matter, so my everyday expressions should be delivered with at least some level of intention. So, have I genuinely never met this level of exhaustion before?

Everything online must be either The Absolute Worst or The Absolute Best, and no one gives a shit about the in-between. The in-between okayness of life does not get you clicks.

Social media has fostered a culture of exaggeration that is, depending on the subject, either refreshingly hilarious or utterly insidious. People tweet flippantly about wanting to kill themselves because Starbucks got their order wrong. Kids on TikTok call their cravings for McNuggets “intrusive thoughts.” Instagrammers shove their wealth and possessions in our faces and tell us they simply manifested their Bentley, that the Universe decided they were lucky and that if we peasants only tried a bit harder, we would be lucky too. Everything online must be either The Absolute Worst or The Absolute Best, and no one gives a shit about the in-between. The in-between okayness of life does not get you clicks.

But is this current tiredness the absolute worst I’ve ever experienced? Compared to the exhaustion that follows a deep psychiatric crisis, this is just standard young professional fatigue—the feeling of doing too much while somehow still not doing enough. This present longing for a week spent asleep is the result of being busy living, busy working to live, busy working out, busy trying to draft my new book while worrying about making other people’s books perfect. This tiredness is the result of weightlifting and hot yoga classes, going above my paygrade for ungrateful clients, worrying that every person I’ve ever met secretly hates me, staying up too late reading long novels and responding to incessant emails, not eating enough calories, and saying yes to everything, even though I would rather die than see your boyfriend’s awful band play at a depressingly empty venue that only sells small batch craft beer. All this while fighting illnesses that are actually trying to kill me, during a cost-of-living crisis in a shitshow of a country run by politicians who want people like me dead. But Of course I’ll be there!! Can’t wait xx.

Psychosis told me with such credibility: You were the one who melted the icecaps. You were the one who caused the tsunami. You were the one who murdered those babies. You were the one who did it. Everything bad in this world is your fault.

Living with Borderline Personality Disorder means that “balance” is something of an alien concept to me. Stability? Never heard of her. Even when, on the surface, I appear to be high functioning—thriving in my professional and writing careers, engaging in an active social life, committed to my gym routine, staying clean—my brain and body are constantly swinging between extremes, wildly oscillating from experiencing one intense emotion to an opposite but equally overwhelming one. And what looks like self-care for one person isn’t necessarily the right thing for another. Sometimes isolating myself from my friends and colleagues is a warning sign of impending crisis, yes. But increasingly it’s because I’d actually rather stay in on a Friday night and write my sad little poems than go out and be sociable all for the sake of being able to say, “See! I’m okay! I’m doing really well! I’m not hiding in bed crying or holed up doing drugs! I’m out! With people! I’m living my best life!” Is this why I feel the need to say yes to everything I’m invited to? To prove to people that I’m doing okay?

Since social media has turned our art into “content” to be churned out as often as possible, for fear of becoming “irrelevant” if we go dark for a while—although incubation, turning inward, is what creative work most often needs—this constant pressure to produce, to submit, to get published, to make a difference with our stories and poems and essays, this is yet another level of exhaustion in the shitty layer cake of 21st century burnout. We have to decide which is worse: crippling FOMO (being perceived as a boring, loser recluse who is wasting their youth, knowing your friends are having fun without you because they’re all tagging you in their stories), or letting your terrible first draft remain a terrible first draft.

But what happens when you’re so tired you can’t do either of these things? When you’re too tired to socialise, to write, to exercise, to do anything other than try to get through each working hour with enough concentration to avoid getting fired, all to do it again the next day for a wage that still leaves you too broke to turn on the heat or go on holiday? What happens when you feel that what you really, desperately need is to sleep for a week?

What if Aurora did it on purpose because she was tired?

The last time I slept for a week, I woke up horrified to still be breathing under harsh hospital strip lights, having survived another serious attempt on my life. During those seven days asleep, my body was exhausted from being drip-fed sedatives and painkillers, exhausted from my organs fighting to continue functioning, exhausted from having met Death and danced for a night on the threshold of the afterlife. That is tiredness. Unliftable. A state so extreme that it cannot be cured by naps, or overridden by caffeine and amphetamines, or soothed with a hot bath and herbal tea before bed, but only managed by a period of medically induced unconsciousness.

And how to even explain to my friends the exhaustion that comes after my cerebral cortex has been squeezed for days or weeks in the vise of hallucinatory psychosis? Those times when my poet brain decides to try fiction for a change—invents insane and terrifying imaginings and dictates them back to me as fact, as truth, as autobiography. The gang of faceless men raping me. The blazing sun shouting down at me, its mouth open, spewing hateful rays onto my body and burning me alive, my skin blistering. Those insects in my veins—the speaker of my psychosis told me that it was essential to empty my vascular system by taking a knife to my femoral artery because my blood was poisonous. I did what I was told. Bloodletting complete, my kitchen floor a ruby flood, I believed that there was no poison left in me, just miles of vacant tunnels. Then I felt thousands of tiny ants walking those empty corridors, their tiny feet tapping the walls of my veins—I literally saw my skin crawling. And the time my brain said that the clouds were angry at me, furious, they wanted to choke me to death, that they’d smother me the instant I breathed fresh air. The understanding that it’s not safe to leave this house, this room, this corner, that there are enemies everywhere, they are all enemies. The conviction that every item on BBC News is about me. Psychosis told me with such credibility: You were the one who melted the icecaps. You were the one who caused the tsunami. You were the one who murdered those babies. You were the one who did it. Everything bad in this world is your fault.

These are the realities of life that take everything out of me. That is tiredness. Not this. I delete the message I’d typed in the group chat and send a screenshot of an idiotic tweet instead.

Hashtag burnout culture.

While writing this essay, the issue of burnout and constant fatigue becoming the norm among young professionals has weighed on my mind. In looking over my medical records—researching my history to fill in the memory gaps I need clarified in order to write my next poetry collection—something I’ve noted with a combination of keen interest and abject fear is that every one of the most catastrophic psychiatric crises I’ve experienced has occurred when I’ve been suffering from sleep deprivation in the days or weeks leading up to the breakdown. “Patient reports insomnia preceding episode.” That is the one consistent circumstance surrounding each of my psychotic breaks that were severe enough to require me being detained under the Mental Health Act and cause suicide attempts that ended in hospitalisation. Did I want to kill myself because I was tired and couldn’t sleep? No, but also yes. I remember crying to one boyfriend because I was so desperate to sleep and I just… couldn’t. I begged him to knock me unconscious, to put me out of my misery. He refused to punch my lights out and pressed another ineffective zopiclone tablet into my palm, then quickly fell asleep beside me while I lay there despairing and genuinely thinking about cutting my own head off. I know now how critically important sleep is to my safety, wellbeing, and sanity. I’m lucky that I’m finally on a combination of medications that work for me in that my antipsychotics put me to sleep within thirty minutes of taking them every night. On the rare occasions that I’m not adequately sedated enough to drift off, I take an extra dose. Because sleep, or lack of it, can be a matter of life and death for me—and that’s not hyperbole. It’s the truth.

The toxic work culture in publishing (and in so many other industries under capitalism), the constant pressure to produce in a highly competitive and oversaturated independent art scene, the need to prove to your social media followers that you’re living your best life, the classic (deranged) quip, “It’s fine, I’ll just sleep when I’m dead!”—How much of this constant performance of daily life is actually worth sacrificing our wellbeing?

In writing this and thinking about how great the risks of constant tiredness are for me and so many others, I’ve already cancelled my plans to see your boyfriend’s shitty band. At the end of January, when my New Year, New Me promise had clearly failed to be implemented because I was still working on my days off and taking on freelance jobs that I didn’t want but felt I had to, I knew I had to stop. For all of my teen years and the majority of my twenties, I believed wholeheartedly in the motto Live fast, die young. I didn’t want to be alive anyway. But now, on the cusp of my 30th birthday, I see how fucking ridiculous that mentality is. For all of my past efforts, I actually don’t want to die right now, and I’ll be damned if I drive myself into an early grave.

On the rare occasions that I’m not adequately sedated enough to drift off, I take an extra dose. Because sleep, or lack of it, can be a matter of life and death for me—and that’s not hyperbole. It’s the truth.

So I’ve spent the past few weekends staying at home and working on my forthcoming poetry collection, EX-CETERA. Spending time with my cat, focusing on my art, with no hangovers or social anxiety or the need to perform for others has brought me so much more joy than working until 11 p.m. and rushing to the pub for last orders (sorry besties), only to roll home at 2:30 a.m. and start work again at 5:30. There are somehow more hours in the day when you’re actually rested, and my overall mental health has improved now that I spend my weekends working on my own writing rather than other people’s. And I never, ever want to go back to that terrifying unreality of psychosis, nor the terrifying reality of suicidality. I know that I don’t have much control over either of these things—I have severe, chronic mental illnesses; my brain will do whatever the fuck it wants. But I also know that if I don’t take better care of myself now, I’ll wind up back in a medical establishment sooner rather than later, either traumatised on a psychiatric ward or in the morgue.

Huxley was right when he said, “That we are not much sicker and much madder than we are is due exclusively to that most blessed and blessing of all natural graces, sleep.” So as I enter this new decade, I’m making big changes to take care of Present Me and protect Future Me. Because while this tiredness is bad, that other type of exhaustion is one I never want to experience again.

From now on, here’s to saying no. Here’s to quiet quitting, to doing the bare minimum at work because if I died tomorrow, my boss would have me replaced by the end of the month. Here’s to not feeling guilty for skipping the gym to let my body recover. Here’s to eating more than 800 calories a day because my body needs fuel to thrive. Here’s to carving out time for what matters most to me and forgetting everything and everyone that doesn’t. Here’s to poetry instead of partying. Here’s to giving myself permission to rest, to have a day off, to spend a whole day doing whatever I want to do. Here’s to having the energy to dream. Here’s to more sleep, which paradoxically translates into more life. Here’s to more rest for the wicked.

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HLR (she/her) is a prize-winning working-class poet, writer, and editor from North London. She is the author of two poetry collections, History of Present Complaint (First Cut Poetry, 2021) and the forthcoming EX-CETERA (Nine Pens, 2023).

Find her on Twitter @HLRwriter.