Twelve-hour shifts will break anyone. I know this intimately. Not just from nursing, but from the way emotional labour strips you down to raw nerve endings.
In the hospital, I was constantly performing care. Checking vitals, managing pain, holding hands during vulnerable moments. People think nursing is about medical skill. It's not. It's about absorbing other people's suffering without cracking. I got good at that. Too good.
When burnout hit, it wasn't sudden. It was a slow erosion. My capacity for empathy calcified. Patients became bodies, then statistics. That's when I knew I needed to leave.
This work as an escort is different. I'm still performing emotional labour, but now I choose the parameters. I set boundaries. In nursing, boundaries were theoretical. Here, they're contractual. My emotional energy is my own currency.
Do I miss the clinical precision? Sometimes. The way a perfect blood pressure reading feels like solving a complex equation. But I don't miss the systemic exhaustion, the NHS's impossible demands.
Bodies are bodies. Whether I'm checking a temperature or providing intimacy, I'm still observing, still caring. Just on my own terms now.