I am absolutely burnt out. Sometimes I ask myself why I’m even still in this job. Was this ever truly my passion or did I just stumble into it and stay because I didn’t know what else to do? Day after day, I sit across people who pour their hearts out to me. And day after day, I swallow my own screams.
Because if I were honest and bruuutally honest, there were moments I wanted to shout at them. “Oi Stupid! Are you listening to yourself? Your husband is abusing you. That’s not love. That’s a textbook narcissist trait. And you’re still clinging to him, telling me you love him, wanting to make the marriage work?”
But I can’t shout. I can’t even sigh too heavily. I sit with my polite half-smile, my neutral nods, my careful words. Because professionalism demands it. If I dare to suggest they leave, I risk losing everything. The license, the career, the credibility. All it would take is for one client to say, “She pushed me. She coerced me.”
So instead, I let them talk. I watch them cry. I hear them cling to fantasies of a “whole family,” kids growing up with both parents in the home. And meanwhile, my mind is screaming, “your children are already bleeding from this. They are absorbing the violence. The shouting. The cold silences. The bruises you try to hide. You think you’re protecting them, but you’re not. They are breaking right alongside you.
And every time I hold those words back, every time I swallow that scream, I feel another piece of myself corrode inside.
I know I should be detached. I know I should practice the sacred balance of empathy without entanglement. But the truth is… I am failing. I am feeling everything too intensely.
So I decided that I need to see my supervisor. That’s what supervision is for. People don’t realise that counsellors have to be counselled too. That we have to sit down and empty ourselves before we drown in the flood of everyone else’s pain. Supervision is supposed to keep us grounded, keep us human, remind us that we are not sponges designed to absorb every drop of sorrow without rotting.
I sat across from her and she looked me in the eyes with that steady, unnerving calm. “How are things at home?” she asked.
I lied. I smiled and said, “Fine.”
I told her about my husband. About my four kids. Alive, fed, clothed. What more could anyone want? But the truth? I don’t really know how they are anymore. They breathe. They exist. But are they really well? I don’t know. By the time I drag myself home each night, my tank is empty. All of my care, my concern, my gentleness have already been handed to clients across that tiny counselling room. All that’s left is enough to put dinner on the table. I glance at them, but my heart doesn’t stir. Numbness is my only company at home.
I know this isn’t right.
And then there’s him. My husband. For the past six months, he’s been radiant. Extra happy. Extra affectionate. Rubbing my feet. Asking me about my day. Listening, smiling, laughing. Anyone else would call it bliss. A husband suddenly attentive. A husband who notices.
But I know better.
Because six months ago, he borrowed my laptop. And he was careless. He left his Gmail signed in. And there it was, the truth laid bare, flashing like a wound I didn’t want to touch. Romantic emails. Sent to someone called “Lady S.”
I kept his account signed in. I didn’t confront him. I didn’t rage. I didn’t cry. I just watched. For six months, I’ve been watching. Pretending. Letting him pamper me, letting him play the doting husband, as though he’s pulling off the performance of a lifetime. And all the while, I know.
So yes, while I sit in a tiny room with women begging me for help with their marriages, I am carrying the ruins of my own.
Yesterday, I was back in my supervisor’s office. She was talking to me, but then an urgent call came, a client of a trainee had a breakdown. She had to leave. She told me to wait and I sat there, alone in her office.
I have always admired her desk. Such solid wood. I tapped it absentmindedly, tracing the grain. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. A flicker on her laptop screen. A notification.
I almost ignored it. Almost. But my eyes darted instinctively. And then my heart stopped.
It was his name.
My husband’s.
And suddenly, in one sickening flash, everything snapped into focus. Lady S wasn’t some mysterious woman. Lady S wasn’t a stranger in the void.
Lady S was her. My supervisor!
The one I trusted. The one meant to help me stay grounded, to keep me from shattering.
And in that moment, I felt the floor beneath me give way. My job. My marriage. My sanity. All crumbling in a single heartbeat.
I sat there, staring at the laptop, at the name, at the betrayal carved so cruelly into the glow of the screen. My throat tightened. My stomach lurched. And all I could think was, I want to vomit.
Because it wasn’t just my husband who betrayed me. It wasn’t just my marriage that collapsed. It was the very ground I stood on, the trust that was supposed to anchor me.
Now I don’t know which pain is worse… The weight of my clients’ grief or is it my own wreckage that cuts deeper? My marriage rotting beneath the smile of a man who thinks he’s clever. And that woman! The one who was supposed to steady me, to guide me through the storm of everyone else’s chaos, turns out to be the storm herself. My husband’s Lady S. My supervisor. The very person I leaned on so I wouldn’t collapse.
So tell me, which is worse? To drown in the ocean of everyone else’s sorrows or to choke on the betrayal in your own home, in your own office, in the very air you breathe?
I can’t decide. All I know is that either way, I am suffocating.
NAME (PSEUDONYM) : Nurul Aini
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