I Want to Be Candid About How We're All Feeling

Christy Choi is a freelance executive producer and presenter with Reuters. She has covered the protests for The Guardian and The Telegraph, and has also worked with Bloomberg, the SCMP, the LA Times and German wire service dpa

Twelve to 14-hour days. Fifteen weekends of work. Tear gas, rubber bullets, smashed glass, burning barricades, people beaten and people beating. Group chats, live streams, witnessing in person, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, LIHKG, email, conversations with friends, family, strangers. There's a toll from this bombardment.

I've been watching the press corps fray at the edges for weeks now, everyone struggling to keep up with the news as the protesters "be water", deluged under the sheer amount information and misinformation being peddled out there, unable to switch off from the traumatic scenes, but also spurred on by some beautiful hopeful moments.

But how much can we do if we burn out? What do we do when our fight or flight responses are so constantly switched on in a form of PTSD that we see threats everywhere? Can we really make good judgment calls int he middle of all this?

And yet this is something that we confess rarely. Sometimes I get messages, calls, whispers asking: "How do you do it so effortlessly, how are you so tireless, and bold?"

I don't, and I'm not.

It seems effortless when all you see is the result. I don't seem tired, because when you see my bylines you're not seeing the bags under my eyes, feeling the tension in my muscles, listening to the stream of information going through my head. I seem fearless, because calm is how I react in an emergency. Super-calm under pressure, my instinct is to snap into problem-solving mode, but I inevitably pay for it weeks later when I get run down and sick, and I don't realise the pressure has reached an unsustainable level.

I want to address this, to be candid about how we're all feeling: We are not tireless, what we do is not effortless, and we are scared.

We are human.

We need to have time with our loved ones, we need to have moments when we feel safe, when we're allowed to switch off.

I haven't been able to do that enough for four months and I feel the toll. I'm cranky, I feel like I'm being a bad friend, a bad daughter, and at times even a bad journalist, because I don't feel as sharp as I should be and am normally.

I feel like I'm often reacting, and that all I want is to be able to step back and take a long hard look at what's going on.

And so right now I'm glad to be on vacation. it's only now in New York that I finally feel able to switch off. like my head and heart are being given the space, the distance for some measure of reflection to happen.

This morning I spent time getting my nephew ready for school, listening to him chatter about his taekwondo practice, and getting in some serious cuddle time. And it's in this space I'm finding a renewed sense of direction.

I'm less tired, and am nourished by the beautiful, ordinary moments of life. Buoyed by the silliness of my nephew, hi ingenuity and curious excitement about the world. Reminded of why I became a journalist in the first place. That curiosity, that wish to explore the world, to see things many ways.

And so I leave you all with this image of both of us in the bathroom, playing around with mirrored cabinets, the doors brough together at an angle where our faces are reflected in an infinite loop of faces, laughing and playfully asking which of those are the true us.

I hope it nourishes you as much as it does me.