It was a long exhausting day and when I came back to find my Bobby lying dead on the floor, it was just too much. I sat down and cried. I cried while burying his body, and cried on and off that whole night.

Work had started to feel like one never-ending pregnancy, and every day I traveled to office with a roaring heart and clenched muscles, like my body was tensed for a fight. I’d taken on more than I could handle, I wasn’t doing a good job of managing it, and even worse I thought I could manage it all without complaining. It wasn’t until tears filled my eyes at some gentle criticism that I realized I was a stressed-out mess. Ironically, the one time I could forget my stress was when I was absorbed in my work and anything related to it. Work spilled into my off-hours and took over my evenings.

My father was a workaholic who didn’t explain his actions, and certainly didn’t complain to his friends, colleagues or family. He worked late, worked silently, worked twice as hard as anyone in his office. The workaholic slowly became an alcoholic, and he boozed on his time off, slept it off, went to work on his next shift all cleaned and pressed, and returned only to booze again. This cycle repeated daily for fifteen years with increasingly bitter and violent quarrels at home, until one day he nearly killed himself from an overdose. The episode left him weak and almost crippled but he recovered and manage to scale back on the booze.

To this day the sight of a drunk makes me tense and irritable. Even the funny ones.

I promised myself I wouldn’t be like my father because I’m acutely conscious that I am my father’s daughter. But I’d already taken my first step down that road, and it took the concern of my teammates, and my kitten’s death, to shock me into awareness.