Quitting is the Answer Sometimes

 

I accepted a promotion and then asked for a demotion.

Without getting too much into the dirty details, there were a lot of reasons for my request but it really came down to the fact that I wasn’t happy and the stress was killing me in every way. Crying before work was my most revisited pastime. The Sunday scaries were actually the Sunday horrors that paralyzed me with insurmountable anxiety.  

As someone who prides themselves in doing whatever it takes to make sure my mental health is in good condition, I could see the decline and how swift it was, scared me. No one’s body should have to endure that much stress over a job, especially one that does not involve saving lives or performing surgery. Yet, I often felt like Atlas, struggling to hold the world on my shoulders, afraid that any misstep I made would have catastrophic results for people all across the globe. 

Unfortunately, money rules everything around us and I couldn’t just up and leave my job (although I desperately wanted to). I felt stuck and feeling stuck can sometimes lead to other unfavorable thoughts and feelings. I decided the next best thing to do was to be honest about where I was at and request a demotion or hope to be fired so I could collect employment. 

It took two long horrible weeks for the demotion to actually happen as I had to wait for someone else to take my position but once the switch was made, I immediately felt like I could breath and I realized I hadn’t taken a deep breath in months. People started commenting on the fact that I was smiling again at work and the tears stopped falling. Prior to requesting the demotion, I thought that I would feel like a failure and that by not being able to handle the immense pressure, I was somehow not good, had never been good and would never be good at anything. However, those are just pure lies. Turns out, without the weight of the world on my shoulders, I am indeed good at this job, I just needed the platform (if you catch the reference just know, the internet has rotted my brain). 

I’ve shared this story to say, sometimes you need to preserve and push through and sometimes you need to take a break, take care of yourself, take it slower or choose a completely different path. This is your life, there are no rules, no regulations, no what you “should” be doing; you just go in the direction you feel and believe you need to go in and if that means you need to quit something, you quit.