Five More Days

It’s Sunday again, and the heaviness has returned.

There’s a particular kind of dread that creeps in when you know Monday is coming—not just because the weekend is over, but because you’re walking back into a place that takes from you more than it gives. A place where your work gets doubled, your effort is unnoticed, and the phrase “it’s not my job” doesn’t seem to apply to you… because someone always finds a way to make it yours.

Five more days. That’s what I keep telling myself. Five more days of being the one who gets dumped on, passed over, and expected to carry more than what’s fair. It’s not just the tasks—it’s the expectation. The silent nod that I’ll pick up the slack again. That I’ll be the one to figure it out, fix it, or finish it.

And the truth is, I’m tired.

It’s not just work. It’s everything. I’m someone’s caregiver, someone’s lifeline, someone’s steady hands when the world shakes and seizures steal peace from our home. I’ve learned how to hold it all—his pain, my fear, the finances, the emotions, the uncertainty—and still show up to a job that doesn’t see the war I’m already fighting just to get there in the morning.

I’ve always been the strong one. The capable one. The “she can handle it” one. But strength has a cost, and tonight, I feel the full weight of the bill. It’s in the pit of my stomach. It’s in the sigh I keep exhaling. It’s in the part of me that just wants a break from being needed so much.

Sometimes I want to scream, “Stop handing me what’s not mine!” But I don’t. I take it quietly, because that’s what the world expects. And yet, tonight, even in the quiet, I want to remind myself—and maybe you, if you’re reading this and feeling the same—that we are allowed to be tired. We are allowed to feel the unfairness of it all. We are allowed to say this is too much without guilt.

So I’m holding on for five more days. But I’m not promising to carry everything this week. I’m not promising to smile while I’m being buried. This week, I’m promising myself this: I will do what I can. I will take breaks, even if they’re just in my mind. I will draw lines, even if they’re invisible to others. And I will not forget that I am more than what I produce.

Because somewhere in the chaos, in the noise, in the overwhelming unfairness of it all—I am still here. Still standing. Still breathing. And that counts for something.

Even if they never say thank you.