The quitters path to peace

Three years ago, I threw all caution to the wind and walked away from my lucrative career. 

A few months into the pandemic, I had finally reached a breaking point with my job. I was deeply unhappy and desperate for a change, despite my manager’s wishes. The pandemic found many of us with more time on our hands to think than ever before, a global introspection of sorts. Like many others, I began to reevaluate my life and question the trajectory I was following. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I would become one of the earliest members of “The Great Resignation.” 

Details stick out to me from that day. I made my husband drive me to work to meet my last client, because I knew that with my mental state, I shouldn’t have been behind the wheel. I remember picking at my fingernails nervously and fidgeting. I couldn’t focus on anything, I forgot everything at home and walked into my office with just my phone in hand.

The appointment was over before it began- I spoke like a mad woman, desperate to get out of the office and back home to assess next steps. I had five minutes to kill before Ed came back to pick me up. Electricity crackling under my skin, I burst into a work friend’s office.

“I’m f***king done. I’m giving Dave my notice. Seriously. I’m done.”

His jaw dropped and before he could ask for any further details- “Ed’s here, gotta go.” I left as quickly as I had entered. 

When I got in the car, the weight of what I was about to do began to hit me. I was manic. Still talking fast as my husband’s eyes widened, I called my best friend. At first, I was angry, shouting and recounting the last conversation I had with Dave, moments before the appointment. And slowly, as the rage and toxic sludge was expelled, I began to deflate. Adrenaline was replaced with a blanket of exhaustion. By the time we got home, years of acting like an emotional robot unravelled and I began hysterically weeping. 

The same three words kept pouring out of my mouth, along with a river of sorrow.

“I did everything”

In retrospect that was clearly the problem, and a recurring theme in my life. 

For years I tied my self worth to my career. I volunteered, sat on committees, and put in long hours. I worked weekends, I answered clients at all hours of the day and night. “Vacation” was not a part of my vocabulary. I was consistently recognized and earned awards; a rising star who made sure to keep her name on senior management’s lips. I prided myself on saying “yes” to everything.

Meanwhile the immense stress and pressure that I was living under had taken over my life and I was in a constant state of anxiety. I began losing my hair and menstrual cycles. My body fat was so low that I needed a space heater for my office to keep the temperature at 26℃. I kept ignoring the increasingly frantic signs that my health was deteriorating, ramming myself against a brick wall and then wondering, “Why does my head hurt?” 

A (former) Financial Planner, I was not one to act recklessly. My career was built on playing it safe, it was who I was. I had outlined my financial, professional, and personal future for the next 5, 10, 15+ years with meticulous detail complete with S.M.A.R.T. goals. Was I really going to throw away everything I had worked so hard for?

I stared at my phone, ready to dial Dave. For a moment, everything went quiet. It may have been an hour, I cannot say. 

I didn’t wake up the next day with a renewed sense of purpose. I couldn’t believe what I had done. Thanks to COVID-19, I didn’t go backpacking and find myself. I sat on the couch, ate ice cream, listened to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours on repeat and cried. My outfits, once pressed blazers and stilettos, now became sweatpants, a ponytail, and bags of chips. Over the next month, I mourned a loss of my identity. Some days I asked myself what I could have done differently. Other days I bargained with my husband about how I could be rehired for a different position and maintain my dignity. I had no income, no sense of importance and worst of all – no clue what I would do next. 

The old cliché about fires clearing the way for new growth- no one tells you how much it hurts to burn away the rotting trees of the past. Yet to flourish, we must strip away the deadweight no matter how painful because there can be no growth without discomfort. 

I had to face some uncomfortable truths about my life and let go of what was, truly, a false sense of self. My career did not define me but I had allowed it to consume my essence. I had lied for years to convince myself that this was the right path – why then, did it feel so difficult to walk? More importantly, who was I going to be now? 

When I think back on this period in my life, I realize now that I had experienced the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. 

The thing about acceptance is – it’s skittish. Every other stage of grief comes naturally and flows through you, sometimes you even dart back and forth between phases. But acceptance is like a shadow, only once you cease to chase and turn towards the light does it follow. 

Quitting my job was an invitation to release the ironclad grip I had over my life and to let the new growth of acceptance in. It was a chance to walk through the woods of my mind and fill my heart with the rustling breeze in the leaves. Where would these new winds guide me?

Every single step of the new path was challenging. It involved uprooting my husband from his job, moving to a new city and cutting our income down by over half. Along the way I dealt with a year and a half of crippling insomnia and my marriage went through periods where it was shakier than it has ever been. I have wondered on many occasions if I chose correctly and asked the universe what I was being punished for. 

Three years later, I’m completing the second year of my BSc in Nutrition and Food Science with a specialization in Dietetics. The thought of going back to school, nearly a decade older than the average student in my cohort, was horrifying to me. But I knew that I had two painful choices – stagnation or growth. I couldn’t possibly have known it at the fork in the road but today, I am happier than ever. 

Sometimes, the journey can take us through dark places and naturally, we assume this to be a regression. It is in our nature to avoid discomfort. Remember that inner peace is not a destination, it is a state, like sadness, grief, and fear.  The only thing to do is to keep moving, one foot in front of the other and realize that peace and acceptance can find you at any point in your travels. All you have to do is allow it.