I didn’t burn out. I broke character.

From Tee Dee💌

On costumes, cultures, and the Monday morning my body finally said no. One wintry Monday, I came to the office as usual.

I made coffee, chatted about my vacation, and then went into a meeting. I sat there listening to people talking. I found myself constantly losing focus. Someone was speaking and I had to will myself to listen. A thought came to me: I don’t want to be here. I hate this.

I started to feel really sick. I felt like I was going to throw up. I went home and cried. I was in bed for days, couldn’t eat, couldn’t do anything. My boss called and all I could say was that I was sick and would be sick for a while.

I felt the world collapsing on me. Or myself collapsing on the world. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I looked inside and was devastated to see only a void staring back.

I went into a panic. Which character was I supposed to perform? Who am I? Was there a me?

I cried in therapy sessions saying over and over that I was very scared, that I felt lost, disconnected, dissociated. In fact, I couldn’t remember what living felt like.

* * *

I grew up a happy child in Vietnam. My parents were strict, but I was a rebel. I was comfortable in my skin and did not feel the need to change myself to fit in.

My mom repeatedly told me that I would do well being less stubborn and be more “like the other girls”. I snorted at this remark every single time, and vowed to “never be like the other girls”. In fact, I might have hated being a girl altogether.

Growing up, I was always a popular kid, with a lot of good friends. I thrived in my tomboy costume.

Things started to shift in high school. The boys started to notice the girls. The girls started to get pretty. I started to get uncomfortable. I felt like I didn’t know how to be a “girl”. Moving to a different school from my friends did not help. I constantly felt like

an outcast, the dreaded “unpopular kid”. I played the aloof kid and pretended I didn’t care. Secretly, I scrambled for a way out.

I succeeded going abroad, and my life changed overnight. I gradually and painfully learned how to dress up, how to date, how to have sex. I was absorbing the world at a dizzying pace, like a newborn baby all over again. Some things were uncomfortable, like growing pains, but I was happy being imperfect.

* * *

A few years later, I moved to the Netherlands, moved in with my then-Dutch boyfriend, and started my first full-time job.

Everything changed again. The college kid needed to become a working adult. I felt lost, again. My colleagues were great and I made new friends, some of them became my best friends. But I always felt like an outsider. I joined all social events, dressed up appropriately, did my job to the best of my ability. But I always felt like I had bitten off more than I could chew.

I imitated other people, I tried bubbly, I tried serious, I tried professional, I tried friendly. Nothing seemed to work. My body didn’t move by itself, I always had to move it like a puppeteer and her marionette. According to my performance review, I always did well, though. Outperformed, even. Salary raises stroked my ego, telling me I was doing well.

2020, the world was in quarantine. So we spent all our free time going for walks in quiet places, doing things with just the two of us. Everyone, for once, was doing the same thing, suffering from the same problem, and wanting the same freedom. I was not an outcast, not different. I couldn’t do anything wrong.

It felt like a dream. I missed the social contact, but I didn’t miss performing. I loved just being at home, and somehow it felt peaceful. Sometimes boring, but deeply peaceful. I felt my body moving seamlessly, almost flying, across forests and grass fields. I absorbed the sunlight, the birds’ singing, white clouds moving. I smelled rain, newly-cut grass, decaying woods. I felt connected to my husband, and to the world at large.

My mom called me one day out of the blue. She didn’t call me often, but asked how I was doing. I was happy we had a nice mother-daughter conversation. And then she

asked “so when are you guys gonna have a baby”. I went quiet. Was I not enough? Was my worth only determined by obeying my biological function? And by my societal function?

It was not that I didn’t want to have a baby. I was not sure if I wanted it myself, or I wanted it because everyone seemed to want it.

It started to feel too quiet in the house, and we decided to add one more to the little family of two. I thought I longed for more laughter in the quiet mornings. I imagined a lively dinner with a child’s voice, telling me funny things that happened at school, and us putting up the Christmas tree together, their little hands trying to reach for higher branches, while I chuckled and lifted them up.

Things changed again, forever this time. I was to become two different selves, at once. I just didn’t know it yet.

* * *

Once the baby was born, something shifted between me and my mom. We video called every day. My mom gave me all sorts of tips that I mostly ignored. But I loved that we connected on a different layer now. We were both moms. And it warmed my heart knowing what she felt when she had me. Love, a lot of it.

One sunny afternoon, I was feeding the baby, when the phone rang. My brother. He never called me on the phone. I picked up right away. I heard crying on the other side. My heart sank. “Listen, we are on the way to the hospital. Mom was found collapsed in the kitchen. Nothing is certain yet. I will call you later when I know more.”

I went back to feeding the baby, telling myself that she would be alright. The doctor would save her at the hospital. After all, there was nothing I could do, and my baby needed me here.

What followed was 48 hours of chaos, tears, and everyone in shambles. My mom had a fatal stroke and she was not coming back.

I was in denial. I was messaging my mom in the morning, and she was dead that afternoon? It was impossible.

Three months later, I came back to work shattered. Sleep-deprived and grieving. I hated everyone around me, for having it so easy, while I was drowning. Well-

meaning advice felt like a personal attack: take care of yourself, focus on your baby, everything takes time. What did it even mean, taking care of myself. I just wanted to have a long, deep sleep, and that didn’t seem like an option.

* * *

I struggled to perform my role as a mom. I didn’t know how a mom should be. My only role model was my mom, and I always told myself I wouldn’t be like her (don’t we all tell ourselves we wouldn’t be like our parents).

I imagined myself as a fun and patient mom, playing with my baby, always smiling, hugging him when he was tired and fussy. I was indeed smiling, but also crying and screaming and feeling everything at once. I suffered from migraines and some sort of illness every week. I felt guilty leaving him at daycare most of the week, but also relieved that I didn’t have to be with him, and felt guilty for feeling that way. Going to work was somehow preferable. At least I got to go to the restroom by myself, and coffee could be drunk hot.

My child arriving reminded me of the child inside me. I wanted for him that happiness but even more so for myself. But I was exhausted every second of the day.

I forced myself to get up, feed the kid, clean the house, go to work. I missed my life before, when I didn’t have to be a mom, and didn’t have to be without my mom. I missed being just a woman. Or just a professional. Life seemed so much easier and simpler.

Sometimes, my life felt overwhelming and unbearable. I wondered if I forgot how to breathe. My lungs felt empty no matter how much air passed through my nostrils. I often stood in the kitchen, staring at the window, trying to remember what it was I had wanted to do.

* * *

That Monday morning, my body had finally pushed the stop button. And it took me months to realize what I was making it do. For years, I pushed and pushed and pushed, ignoring all signals it was trying to show me — the emptiness, the exhaustion, the constant sickness.

I had been playing too many characters for too long.

When did it all begin? Was “not to be like the other girls” my first character?

I was on top of a house of cards, and if any card fell, then I would fall into the abyss. I did not want to look at who was behind the costumes — I was scared of my own flaws, my messiness, my vulnerability. A professional has to be tough, a woman has to be likable, a wife has to be nice, a mom has to be kind, the list goes on. I did not know how to just exist.

And when the house of cards finally fell, the costumes came off. I became angry, at everyone and everything. At me, for ignoring myself, at my kid, for ruining my life, at my husband, for not getting me, at the world, for always turning. I had to learn who I was again, like a baby learning to walk.

I am not performing. I broke character. And I think I might finally be meeting the real one.

Slowly, I am breathing again. It used to be impossible for me to ride my bike or drive my car without really loud music on. For the first time in years, I’m riding in silence. And I like it.

About the Author:

Tee Dee is a Vietnamese writer based in the Netherlands, where she has lived for over a decade. Through her Substack, Living Between Worlds, she writes personal essays about identity, belonging, and the quiet complexities of building a life across cultures, languages, and expectations. Her work explores themes of burnout, migration, grief, and the search for a sense of home within oneself. Living with her Dutch husband and their son, Tee Dee continues to navigate life between worlds—and still finds herself thinking in Vietnamese when she’s tired.

Substack ID: Tee Dee

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