Unemployed Chronicles

Day 2.

I quit my job 2 days ago. (for my own sake, I’ll state the date for the record: Tuesday March, 29 2016).

It was a lot more anticlimactic than I thought it would be. I woke up [quite late] with the resolve that it was going to be my last day. I ended up 55 minutes late to be exact. When I finally got to work, barely anyone from my team was there. *cue Twilight Zone theme music*

perfect.

I proceeded to log into the phone. took calls. got emails. promised folks I’d call them back with answers to their pressing questions. and after every call, I took things from my desk and slipped them into my bag. pictures came down and quietly settled into the blue recycling bin under my desk. with each picture that fell, the cubicle became an unfamiliar, yet befitting, pale, vomit color. The day was quiet, and outside I was composed, and no one noticed my disappearing act. I was sitting there in my ambivalence thinking

real G’s move in silence like lasagna.

Don’t judge me.

My manager was off-sight that day, so I sent her an 2 line email thanking her for… I don’t even remember what – I was just attempting to keep from burning the already rickety bridge. I hit send and shut my computer down for the last time.

When I left, instead of my usual, flaccid “see you tomorrow,” that day I left it at “have a good night” with a Stevie J-esque smirk.

and that was it.

I went home and told my dad I quit. His face is something I’ll never forget. It had “you left a good paying job with a 401(k) and a pension… wyd?” written all over it. But he said in a calm voice okay… what was the last straw?

It’s been the last gotdamn straw since I took my first real phone call. I can’t believe I made it this long without… well.

I can’t sit and be yelled at. I can’t brush it off. I don’t internalize it because I do not know the person on the other end, and quite frankly I don’t give a flying fuck about that person; however, the whole experience was triggering for me on a multitude of levels.

I didn’t realize that until my current therapist helped me articulate that.

the therapist I got after my third breakdown this year and my first panic attack since 2011 when I was diagnosed with PTSD and [a well-known] anxiety disorder and depression.

those weren’t straws. those were all big ass boulders that were breaking my back. for a paycheck.

I read all the articles: Don’t Quit, You Entitled Bastard; Quitting is For Quitters: 13 Reasons Why YOU Shouldn’t Be a Quitter; [I Am A Middle/Upper Class White Person and] Here’s Why You Should Quit Your Job Today; I Quit My Job Because I Wasn’t Happy, and I Found Something Better and everything in between.

but listening to myself, obviously enough, was really what helped me have the courage to do what I now know what was right for me. I kept invalidating my own feelings because that’s what external voices were telling me. Grow a thicker skin. I’ve done this for X years, you get used to it. What’s better for you out there? It’s just another year. Stick it out. You don’t have to take the work home! the money. the money. the money. Fuck the money. I would literally rather starve than have to sit somewhere shaking at a desk for 8 hours a day because I don’t know if someone is going to call me up screaming at me. I don’t want to and mentally cannot deal with that. I tried. I wrote, I breathed, I talked, I yoga-d.

but my brain didn’t give nary one iota of a fuck.

It just wasn’t for me. so I left.

the bulk of the guilt has worn off. It’s a little hard annoying seeing folks’ disappointed faces when I tell them I don’t work at my job anymore, because that job was a big accomplishment for me, but now I see that the job meant more to others than it did to me. and that’s not my problem.

The guilt would most likely resurface were I to tell folks why I quit. It isn’t anyone’s business, so I don’t go into detail. However, given the stigma around mental illness, I probably would get the old and tired lecture on how not to be depressed and how to buck the fuck up and take peoples’ callous words and actions because that’s what being an adult is and because that’s how it is, I should accept it, suffer it in silence, and trudge through the fucking mud and numb myself with food and drink when I get a minute after work or during the brief-ass weekend like every other adult does because how else are you going to drown out the voice that’s screaming for a reprieve?

I refuse.

I reject that version of life. that is why I quit. because I know that isn’t how [my] life is supposed to be. I don’t want to live in pain or add to the pain that I’m currently enduring. I… can’t bear it.

so here I am. now.

unemployed.

able to take deeper breaths while thinking about the depletion of my checking account.

Netflix, my car insurance provider, and the like don’t care who quit what.

I finally have the inspiration to write again. I haven’t felt that in…

so here I am.

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