Quitting is the Easy Part

What a feeling. Or rather, more accurately, what a plethora of feelings. Relief, joy, sadness, confusion, happiness, peace, trepidation, overwhelmed, anxious, ecstatic. I don’t know which emotion to feel first or which takes up more space in my heart and brain at this moment. 

When did I know I had to leave? It was the day I realized hating my job was becoming my only personality trait. All of my conversations were about work, all of my anger revolved around work, all of my excuses stemmed from work. My life was not my own, it was controlled by my job and I could feel myself changing for the worse. So a decision had to be made, me or the job. 

It is so easy to lose yourself in your job. Jobs give us a sense of accomplishment, and a title we allow others to judge us by. It may provide us with confidence or even purpose. But we are more than our jobs, and when we work in the wrong places we end up somewhere we never thought, somewhere dark and destructive.

Finding yourself in a toxic workplace is much like finding yourself in an emotionally abusive relationship. You said it’d never happen to you and one day you wake up right smack in the middle of one. It doesn’t happen all at once. It happens slowly. Maybe it starts with some late evening messages or a one-off over aggressive deadline. Then the longer hours and the insane deadlines become normal. Then come the weekend emails, Saturday slacks, and texts for immediate answers at 7am. Your slack notifications are always on, your laptop comes with you on every vacation, you answer every unknown call in case it’s a client. You express your irritation and hear apologies. You stay a while longer. You voice frustrations and they throw some money on it. You convince yourself the money makes it worthwhile. You communicate your exasperation and receive promises of change. You tell yourself maybe it will get better. But it doesn’t. In fact, the worst thing happens, you change, for the worse.

So I chose me, for the first time in a long time. I decided that I was important enough to make myself the number one priority, to make the decision that was best for my mental, emotional and physical health.