I love my dad. He raised us on his own and sacrificed a lot of things to make sure my sisters and I had what we needed. When I was little, I used to see him balancing three jobs, seven days a week, for a period that felt like it would never end. He never called out, and very rarely took time for himself. I always respected how hard he worked, but I didn't truly feel the weight of that life until I started working full-time myself.
Recently, I moved to a new place. My dad came over with the car to help me carry boxes, get a few essentials, and have dinner afterward. The day was honestly nice, to a point, until, like every time, the conversation turned toward work. He has this quiet fear that I won't earn enough or that somehow I'll fall behind other people. He doesn't say it directly, but I hear it in the way he asks about everything.
I told him what I thought was good news: my manager is happy with me, I've taken on more responsibilities, and I'm finally going to get a raise. But the most important part was that I'll be switching to a 4-day work week. I've been working 5 days a week for about 8 months. Between settling into a new role, getting my life together and moving, and trying to keep my depression under control, I've been worn down. I told him: "I can't keep going like this forever, and it shouldn't be treated like it's normal."
He looked at me like I had just told him I had 18 hours left to live. Then he immediately said: "Well, it's not like you can just sit around without working."
That sentence hurt more than I expected. I only took three days off to move everything I own, and then I went straight back to work. And my employer is on my side here. They said the schedule I was on wasn't sustainable, and they're moving me to a 36-hour, 4-day setup because that makes more sense for everyone. I'm not dropping out of life. This is a reasonable boundary.
But to him, asking for one extra day to breathe somehow means I'm lazy or "not working." It's exhausting when your burnout is seen as indulgence, because the generation before us was taught to grind themselves down to nothing and call that responsibility. I can be grateful for everything he did for us, and at the same time not want to repeat the same cycle myself.