2025 has been the ugliest year of my life. I’m not calling it a “lesson.” I’m not dressing it up with spiritual glitter. I’m calling it what it is: brutal. I have never felt so squeezed, so dragged, so drained. Even when I still had my job earlier this year, I was already exhausted. Burnt. Disappointed. Running on fear and fumes. I kept saying, “Maybe next month will be better,” and every month walked in, laughing in my face. This year didn’t teach me patience. It tested my breaking point. And today, it took another swing.

By Murielle Hebbo
A quiet status change. That’s all it took. No warning lights. No phone call. Just a cold switch inside a system, shifting me from resident to… whatever I am now. “Overstay.” Illegal due to slowness. Illegal by trust. Illegal because I waited too long for companies that have my documents, my time, my energy, and still no answers. Not because I broke rules. But because the rules took their time, and I ran out of mine.

A Year of Waiting Until Something in Me Snapped
You think burnout hits like a crash. It doesn’t. It seeps in. Slow. Quiet. Step by step until one day you wake up and even breathing feels like an effort. I spent months refreshing inboxes like someone trying to keep themselves alive: interviews, tests, silence. Then hope again. Then silence again. People say, “Be patient.” As if patience is some holy trait. As if it doesn’t eat your sanity one day at a time. I didn’t pause my life for a dream. I paused it because I didn’t have a choice, and life showed me how cruel waiting can be when your entire future hangs in the balance of someone else pressing the submit button.

Patience is romantic until you realise it is a cage.

The Shiny City Nobody Warns You About
Dubai is beautiful. I know it, I lived it, I believed in it. But there’s a version of this city nobody glamorises: the part where your worth depends on documents, approvals, system updates, internal sign-offs, people replying when they feel like it, where you can do everything right and still be sitting on the edge of legal existence because someone in an office hasn’t ticked a box. Where skyscrapers climb fast, but paperwork crawls like an injured snail. They sell ambition here like it grows on palm trees. But the truth is, ambition here can swallow you if timing doesn’t favour you.

I didn’t come here asking for miracles. I wondered about stability. I worked for it. I earned it. And somehow, it still slipped through my fingers like dust.

When the Clock Hit Zero and Life Didn’t Care
The day the grace period ends isn’t dramatic. It’s quiet. Almost rude in its quietness. The city keeps moving. People go to work. Traffic flows. Air smells the same. But inside you? Panic sits like a stone. Not because you did anything wrong, but because the system moved more slowly than your visa did. Suddenly, you are standing in your home city, feeling like a trespasser, simply because approval emails don’t recognise urgency.

And let me say it: it feels humiliating. Not in a pathetic way but in a furious way. Like, how did doing everything right land me here? How is this my reality? How does a person who worked, waited, followed every rule end up in limbo like this?

I Am Tired in a Way That Doesn’t Have Words
This is not tired like “I need sleep.” This is tired like “I am sick of fighting.” Tired like every nerve is buzzing. Like every muscle is tight from holding in tears, anger, and pride. I am exhausted from being optimistic and exhausted from giving the benefit of the doubt. Exhausted from pretending the world is fair if you work hard. Hard work did not save me this year. Hope did not save me this year. Nothing saved me this year.

I am here because I refused to collapse. But refusing to collapse comes with a cost. And I am paying it with every breath.

When It Works Out, People Will Call It Destiny
One day, I will get the email, the offer, the stamp, and the “we are pleased to inform you.” And the world will clap and call it fate or faith or “your time finally came.” They will never see this part. They will never feel the dread, the waiting, the humiliation, the nights spent bargaining with life like a prisoner begging time to slow down. They will call it luck. But I will know this year has almost cracked me to dust.

I Am Still Here… Don’t Ask Me How
I don’t have a happy ending for you yet. I don’t have a wise sentence to wrap this up. I am not grateful for the pain right now. I am not inspired by it. I am living it. And it is ugly, heavy, and real. I am showing up every day out of stubbornness, not motivation. I am breathing out of discipline, not peace. I don’t know what tomorrow brings. But I do know this: I am still here. And that has to mean something, even when nothing else feels steady.

Question to the universe and anyone who ever felt trapped between hope and humiliation:

How much can one person endure before life finally gives them a break?