The Hustle Culture Nearly Killed Me

I don’t remember the exact moment I stopped recognizing myself.

Maybe it was the third night in a row I fell asleep in my car with my laptop still glowing on my thighs. Or maybe it was the morning I coughed up blood into a paper napkin, wiped it clean, and just… kept typing. Like a machine. Like a woman possessed.

I used to wear my exhaustion like a badge of honour. “Busy” was my answer to everything. Too busy for dates. Too busy for dinners. Too busy to feel anything besides the crushing weight of deadlines and the high that came from productivity highs. I used to think hustle was noble, that burning myself out was some kind of spiritual sacrifice for future success.

But the truth is, hustle culture doesn’t reward you. It devours you slowly. And by the time I realized I was being eaten alive, there wasn’t much left to save.

At first.., it felt like purpose.

I was in my early twenties, freshly out of college with a journalism degree and a mountain of ambition. I wanted to matter. I wanted to be someone. I remember writing articles for five different outlets, managing a client portfolio on the side, and interning at a media startup, all while working weekends at a bookstore to make rent.

Sleep? Who needed it.

Rest was for people without dreams.

I remember my mom’s voice on the phone one night, soft and worried:

“When’s the last time you ate something that wasn’t coffee?”

I laughed. She didn’t.

Back then, I didn’t think of it as dangerous. I thought of it as earning it, my place in the world, my name in bylines, the claps, the likes, the inbox full of “you’re doing great” from people who didn’t know me at all.

It started small.

Panic attacks that I passed off as caffeine jitters.

Numb fingers. Tingling toes.

Tears that came for no reason and refused to leave.

I remember one night staring at my computer screen and seeing double. My vision blurred, and I felt like I was underwater. I blinked, shook my head, slapped my cheeks. I had an 8AM deadline.

I kept working.

I kept working when my period vanished for three months.

I kept working when my hair started falling out in the shower.

I kept working when I started hallucinating voices whispering my name at night.

And I kept working even after I collapsed in the kitchen, cracking my chin open on the tile floor. I lied to urgent care. Told them I slipped while cleaning.

Because what was I supposed to say?

“I broke myself chasing a dream that doesn’t love me back”?

Hustle culture sells you the fantasy that if you work harder than everyone else, success will love you more. But it doesn’t. It’s a toxic, manipulative relationship, one that gaslights you into thinking rest is weakness and worth is measured in output.

I became addicted to that dopamine rush of getting things done.

Even as my body screamed, my mind said, Just one more task.

Even when I stopped sleeping.

Even when I started shaking during Zoom calls.

Even when I forgot birthdays, missed funerals, and stopped calling my little sister back.

I remember finally breaking down in a hotel bathroom during a work trip. I sat on the cold tile floor, fully clothed under the shower, sobbing so hard my ribs hurt. I whispered, over and over:

“I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to die like this.”

Recovery wasn’t pretty.

Slowing down felt like withdrawal. I didn’t know how to be still. I felt guilt when I rested, panic when I didn’t check my email, shame when I told a client I was stepping back. I cried in yoga classes. I stared at ceilings. I tried to remember who I was before my identity became “the girl who never stops.”

But slowly, painfully, I’ve been learning to breathe again.

To wake up and not reach for my phone.

To say no and mean it.

To eat breakfast sitting down, with both hands.

To be a person again, not a brand, not a machine, not a success story in the making.

If you’re reading this and seeing pieces of yourself in my story, I’m begging you:

Stop before it breaks you.

Your worth is not tied to how much you produce.

You don’t have to hustle to prove you're alive.

The world will keep spinning if you take a nap.

But you??

You won’t keep spinning if you don’t.

And I promise... the quiet, the slow, the soft parts of life you’ve been skipping?

They’re not distractions.

They’re the real thing.