Notes from a Time Traveller by Elke Stevens

When A specific burnout hits, the version of me I’ve tried to keep hidden becomes the version people see. The dark side, the bitterness, the self-pity, the sharpness of my words, escape.

It isn’t who I am, but it’s what exhaustion distils me into. All the quiet work of editing myself, smoothing the edges, softening my voice, is gone. What comes out is beyond raw and unfiltered, even I don’t like what I’m.

I know how it looks. Detached. Self-centred. Lazy. Arrogant. Like I think I’m too clever to care, or too broken to try. People see covert narcissism, intelligence with no ambition, “poor me” on repeat. Like a distorted mirror.

But what they’re really seeing is collapse. They’re seeing the wreckage of carrying a mask for too long, with a smile that smiles even with pain. They’re seeing the fracture between what I feel and what I can show. They’re seeing me without the survival strategies, not because I’ve chosen to drop them, but because I’ve run out of strength to keep them up. So the distorted image is all that remains.

This is the cruel paradox: when I need connection most, I look least deserving of it. The world sees the shadow, not the woman inside it. They turn away, and I am left with the echo of wings, the fragments of myself, and the unbearable aloneness that no one can resolve.

But storms are not forever. Even the Morrígan, after the shriek and the ruin, becomes the goddess of renewal. There must be a story, beyond the everyday for, women like me!

©️Elke T.B. Stevens 04/09/2025