2025 - My Year of Loss, Grief, Burnout, and Self Reflection

The Loss ¶

One year ago today at 10:30am, I opened our closet door to find that my spouse and soulmate had ended their own life in there. I didn’t know it yet, but this was the day that my life, as I knew it, was over.

In fact, I didn’t know much at the time. The moment I saw them in there, I dissociated. It was instantly like I was watching a horrible movie, not participating in it. I called 911, and I had a really hard time following their instructions. My brain didn’t seem to work anymore. The police came first and talking to them was pretty difficult. They had lots of questions and I didn’t have a ton of answers. There was no note.

My job was gracious enough to let me take 2 months off (a duration I asked for), which I used to plan and have the funeral, be with my family, and try to get through this.

Eventually I went back to work, and dove head first into a large and complicated project.

The Burnout ¶

I put myself into my work. I was absolutely using it to avoid feeling, and before too long, it was what I was spending most of my time on.

I began having trouble sleeping, and so I’d open up my laptop and plug away. This was most days, including weekends.

As the project matured and got closer to release, more people became involved, more coordination, more meetings, more refactoring, and the company wanted to start doing demos.

Something started to happen to me that I didn’t understand at the time. I had removed all the obstacles and taken the project as far as I could on my own and now I was hitting roadblocks that I could not remove myself. The company was very busy and everyone was working on things. Moreover, not everyone wanted to be working day and night, and so, my defense network of working so I don’t have to feel started to crumble.

I started feeling like people were actively trying to prevent me from succeeding. But not just people, everything. Like red lights were red just because I was there. That GitHub was down specifically for me. I became angry and started snapping at my coworkers. Snapping at my pets, my daughter, the guy in the park who doesn’t clean up after his dog.

I thought about quitting. Not just the job but the career.

Eventually my manager stepped in and suggested I take some more time off. At this point something had to give, so I agreed. I went and saw my doctor, told him, my therapist, and my psychologist what was going on. My doctor recommended that I take 12 weeks of FMLA leave as the prescription for Burnout.

As of today, I have about 2 weeks left of that leave, and yesterday was the first time I touched my laptop (or any computer) during leave. I wanted to write up this post to let people know what’s going on and to explain my experience, maybe it can help someone else in the future.

Self Reflection ¶

Immediately after the funeral, I tried finding a therapist. I knew I was in trouble, and though I hadn’t really had any good experiences with therapy, I was fairly determined. It felt like a life and death situation to me.

It wasn't easy to find one, but eventually I did.

My first couple of visits were a little awkward. I was pretty skeptical to start out due to my previous experiences, and when she had me playing with sand and painting pictures, I wondered if it was going to help at all or just be an awkward waste of money.

On the third visit, something changed. I’m not sure if it was her or me that suggested it, but that day we decided to spend the hour on a walk around her neighborhood. For whatever reason, this worked for me. I’ve been seeing her once a week since then, and we've spent the hour walking every single time.

When you hear about something like this happening to someone, I don’t think people usually consider the whole reality of the situation. Or at least I didn’t. Maybe you think, “oh that’s terrible I don’t know how I could lose anyone I am close to” but it’s more than that. When you lose your partner, you don’t just lose them and the interactions you had and would have had with them, you lose the life you were building together — your very future. There is a version of “you” that only they knew, and that’s gone too. You lose your purpose. Like I said in the intro, my entire life, as I knew it, was over. It is very disorienting. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was full of grief and everything I thought I was working for seemed to end. I was lost.

My doctor told me the leave didn't mean I should stay home and do all the things I didn't have time to do before, like fixing the bathroom sink or cleaning the house. I should be relaxing, avoiding stress, and going easy on myself. Absolutely no work.

That sounds fine on paper, but I’ll tell you one thing, there isn’t much that can prepare you for how you feel when you’ve been going at 110% for as long as you can remember, to suddenly stopping.

You wake up, you lay in bed, and you think “now what?” “What the hell am I supposed to do???”

It is extremely unsettling, and it left me laying there with only my thoughts for the first few days. The thoughts I was avoiding.

My partner was sick for years. They became extremely anxious during the pandemic and never really got over it. They became agoraphobic and never left the house. They lost interest in doing things that we did before, and eventually, it felt like they lost interest in us, too. In the meantime, I did most of the work. I paid the mortgage, I drove our daughter to school, I did the housework, took pets to the vet, etc etc, even when they didn’t seem to have anything left for me. Furthermore, they didn’t seem interested in fixing it. I became resentful. I started coming to terms with the thought that my life just wasn’t going to be what I hoped it would. But I didn’t leave, I just thought it was what I deserved.

It took a very long time before I was able to stop blaming myself for my partner’s suicide. That it was not my fault. That I did do everything I could, and more, and even beyond what I should have been doing.

But, how could I be giving more than I should and still feel like it was my fault? Well that’s easy. Because I never feel like I’m doing a good enough job. I never have, in any aspect of my life, even the things I’m best at. There have been times (plural) when I thought I was getting fired and instead got a raise.

The worst part is, I wasn’t unaware of it. I knew there was a disconnect between reality and my mind when it came to viewing myself in a positive light, but knowing it didn’t change anything. I thought that was just how I was.

When I started therapy, I thought it was going to be more “I just need to talk to someone because my life is really dark right now and I don’t know how to cope”, not “I need to find out why I am the way I am so I can be who I want to be”, but I guess that’s just how it goes.

Through my therapy, my doctor, and even random therapy shorts on TikTok (I basically hopescroll TikTok now), I’ve found that what happened to me isn’t all that uncommon.

That people like me can experience an "awakening" in their 40s where everything that seemed to matter before suddenly doesn't anymore.

I found a talk on exactly this, and if any of what I’ve been saying here is hitting home for you, I urge you to listen to it. First time I heard it I watched it several times in a row with tears in my eyes: Alan Watts: Why Life Actually Begins at 40

Essentially he’s saying that before 40, you’re often living the life you thought you were supposed to have, the one your parents would have been proud of. The one society approves of. The one you think you should be living. You have the values you were assigned, not the ones that really mattered the most to you.

My therapist gave the following analogy: Billy is given an Easter basket for Easter. Inside are the usual things: toys and sweets. What toys and sweets? Why, the ones his parent put in there, of course! There’s candy corn, malted milk eggs, and tootsie rolls. Unfortunately, Billy doesn’t like tootsie rolls. Oh well, he’s not about to complain, candy is candy. It happens year after year until Billy is grown. Billy was never asked what he wanted in his basket, and he never considered that he could request other items. Eventually Billy is grown, on his own, and has to fill his own basket. He doesn’t really know what’s available so he just fills it with the same stuff his mom did, and he continues to eat the tootsie rolls even though he doesn’t really like them.

The basket is your life, and the things that are in it are values. When we are children, our values are given to us. We don’t get to choose. At some point, we should pick our own values.

This was me. My entire life, I was working toward values I thought I should have, even when they were sometimes in contention with what I felt. When my partner was suddenly gone, a lot of the things I was doing in life seemed pointless.

I cannot express how disorienting this is. How tough it is to see a future when the one you thought you had is ripped away.

Without therapy, I’m not sure I’d have been able to move on from that.

When my doctor said “12 weeks no work” I couldn’t see how 10 years, let alone 12 weeks would fix this. How it could even put a dent in it. And I felt that way until just a week or so ago.

I can honestly say, though, that I do feel quite a bit better. Over time, the “life or death” feeling I’ve had about everything over the last couple decades of my life has started to lift a bit. That things don’t feel so dire. That sometimes I can look back and feel grateful for what I had and will have instead of being full of resentment.

I still haven’t figured out everything I’d like in my basket, but at least I know it’s entirely my choice.