"I quit my job, my relationship, and my city — all in the same week"

Everyone thought I was having a breakdown. My mother called it a crisis. My friends used words like "impulsive" and "reckless." My therapist, to her credit, just asked me how I felt.

Terrified, I told her. And also, for the first time in five years — free.

It started on a Tuesday. I'd been sitting in a meeting that had already run forty minutes over time, watching my manager talk about Q3 synergies, and I realized I had completely stopped caring. Not the low-grade disengagement I'd gotten used to. Real, total, bone-deep not caring.

I left the meeting early. I wrote my resignation letter in the parking lot. I didn't send it that day — I want to be clear about that. I'm not impulsive. I'd been thinking about leaving for two years. That afternoon just made it obvious there was nothing left to wait for.

The relationship ended three days later. That one was mutual, which made it both easier and harder. We'd been comfortable for so long that we'd stopped asking whether comfortable was enough. It wasn't. We both knew it. We just needed someone to say it first.

The city was the hardest. I'd lived in that apartment for four years. I knew which coffee shop had the best light on winter mornings, which park bench was the right distance from everyone else, which route home made the day feel smaller. Leaving a city means leaving a version of yourself behind. I'm still not sure if that's grief or relief. Maybe both.

Six months later, I'm living somewhere new. I'm consulting part-time, sleeping better than I have in years, and I've started writing again — something I gave up when I convinced myself that stability required sacrificing everything that made me feel alive.

I won't tell you it was the right decision. I don't know if it was. I'll tell you it was necessary. Sometimes burning something down is the only way to find out what actually matters to you. I found out. That part, at least, was worth it.