A Leap of Faith

I quit my job this morning. (Deep sigh. Breathing through the fear. Reframing. Focusing on the positive.)

I quit my job this morning because my body has been screaming for me to stop doing what I’ve been doing. It’s been trying to tell me that the life I’ve been living is not for me, and that it’s not physically or psychologically sustainable. My body is right, of course, but my head, which has been trained to think by a capitalist society, is loudly disagreeing, noting that you don’t quit a job where you make “good money” and have benefits, you just don’t do it, no matter what. In my case, the no matter what is a succession of illnesses you probably wouldn’t believe but are nevertheless true. Stress is a bitch.

Heck, I’m still shaking. This isn’t the first job I’ve quit, so you’d think I’d be better at dealing with the aftereffects, but this job was different. It paid well and I had benefits! Plus, I really liked my team leader and my team. Unfortunately, the actual job caused me to have daily low-grade panic attacks, high anxiety, and an extreme distaste for life. By contrast, the other jobs I’ve quit were ones that had no redeemable qualities whatsoever, so yes, those were easier to quit and move on from.

With that said, quitting a job is never easy, which is why I haven’t done it a lot or often. It’s stressful, especially if you don’t have a guaranteed source of income waiting on the other side, and I don’t. I do have some money that will get me through several months, but then I really need to figure out what’s next for me. I guess you could say that I’ve taken a giant leap off a cliff without a parachute, putting all my faith in a higher power and in the belief that following my true authentic self is the right thing to do if I want to change my life for the better, and if I want to get back to a physically and mentally healthy state of being.

So, what brought this on today?

Well, it’s not the first time I’ve tried to quit this job. I don’t like the job itself. I’m a call centre person who has always been freaked out by having to talk on the phone, unless of course it’s someone I know and want to talk to… those calls are much less scary.

I started this job in November 2023. By February 2024, I had gained 25 pounds, and I was having daily mini-panic attacks with all-day-long anxiety. I became irritable and depressed. And after having surgery to remove several large kidney stones from my right kidney in January 2024, followed by several procedures to try and break up the one remaining stone, I grew them all back by September 2024. In fact, I grew them all back in the space of two months, as my last x-ray two-months prior had shown only the one, which was considerably smaller than it was in January. And of course, a lot of other things happened in that time.

At the end of April, my father and stepmother returned from Florida early because my dad was super sick. It turns out he had cancer. I was able to take leave from work for a week, so I could be with my family. I will mention here, too, that at the time this was happening, I had a different team leader, and not a good one or a supportive one. Also, during this time, I discovered through one of the routine x-rays or CT scans my urologist ordered that I have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and the pain in my lower back and hips were caused by two things: osteoarthritis in all my joints, and a disintegrating spine. The osteoarthritis in my right hip was so bad, it was clear to specialists that I needed a right hip replacement as soon as possible.

And then my father died on May 21, 2024. There’s a lot of grief and trauma associated with this loss that I don’t want to get into here because it would take way too long to explain but just know that it was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to face. I was able to take a week of bereavement leave.

I tried returning to work. Things, I thought, were going well, but one day while working from home, my internet went out due to a storm. My then team leader was not at all understanding or kind and added to the stress I was already experiencing. You see, I’m the type of person who wants to do a good job, who wants to do the things they’re supposed to do and do them well. I don’t take extra breaks. I don’t try to get out of actual work. I do my job. That’s what I was trained to do. When you go to work, no matter what the job might be, you give it everything you’ve got, and you say, “thank you for the privilege of working here.”  When he blatantly insinuated that I was trying to get out of work, I think he’d hit my last nerve, so I quit. (Yes, the same job that I quit this morning.)

Our supervising manager called me, saying she wouldn’t accept my resignation. She wanted me to think about it more and gave me information, so I’d know my options. In the end, I went to my doctor because at this point, I didn’t want to wake up in the morning and I couldn’t see the point in being alive anymore. I was put on medical leave. I also started taking anti-depressants again and I went back to regular psychotherapy.

I don’t remember the summer of 2024. I remember my dad’s memorial in July, but other than that, I don’t remember the summer. I don’t think I ate or drank a whole lot. I read to forget my life, to be anywhere but here. I was numb yet hurting at the same time. I was confused, frustrated, scared, and feeling helpless. (I should add here that in addition to grieving, I was – I am – dealing with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, as well.)

Then, in the fall of 2024, my doctor decided I should return to work on a graduated return beginning with two half-days per week, I believe. I was scared, but I did it. My new team leader was a Godsend, she was amazing. She was supportive and she was free with guiding information, as our team leaders are supposed to be. She developed a plan for retraining me and for getting me "back to it." By December 2024 I had completed and passed all the requisite testing with flying colours.

During the fall, I also met with a pain specialist in Kingston. I was hoping for a shot of something to help with all the pain. You see, I’d also been living with ever-increasing pain coming from my hip, my lower back, and my kidney. I could barely walk and needed a walker to ensure I didn’t fall and hurt myself. I also couldn't sleep in a bed any longer, so I was spending the majority of my time in my reclining chair.

The pain specialist didn’t give me the shot, as he explained that the surgeon wouldn’t operate within six months of having it, and I wanted the surgery with no delays. I finally met the orthopedic surgeon in person that fall, as well, shortly after seeing the pain specialist, and she assured me I would have my hip replaced within three to six months of our meeting.

In January 2025, I was working four half-days per week, I believe, when I discovered a date had been set for the surgery. February 6, 2025. Ironically, my follow-up kidney surgery was supposed to be early in the new year, as well, but couldn’t be directly after the hip surgery for obvious reasons. I was once again put on medical leave to prepare for surgery. There is a lot you need to learn and a lot you need to buy for the after-surgery care. In addition, I needed to go to regular physiotherapy sessions, which I did.

My actual hip surgery did not go well. Neither did the four-day hospital stay, but that’s a completely different story, one that I won't share here. I did get my hip replaced, which according to my surgeon was touch and go there for a bit, and without the help of an extra surgeon who just happened to be available at exactly the right time, it wouldn’t have been done. But it worked out and now it’s working fine with the only remaining pain being in the muscle tissue where the extra long (and deep) incision was made. (According to the surgeon and the physiotherapist, the incision was about two-thirds longer than what is normally done.)

Shortly into the recovery period, which sucked at first, I was called with an appointment for kidney surgery but had to turn it down because it was too dangerous to my hip’s healing to be put in that position. So, I had to wait. My hope was to have the surgery completed before returning to work.

In late May, not long after the first anniversary of my dad’s death, and following a follow-up visit with my family doctor, I was expected to return to work on June 1, but then I received a call from the urologist’s office. My surgery date was set for June 6, 2025, and so my medical leave was extended to two weeks following the procedure.

This kidney surgery was different than the first. In the first, they drilled a whole through my back and into my kidney to extract all stones but one. They couldn’t reach that last one. In this year’s surgery, they went in through my ureter and used a laser to break up all the stones into tiny particles, which required the insertion of a stent to ease the passing of those particles when I urinated.

The day before I was to return to work, I had to return to the hospital to have the stent removed. That was on June 25, 2025. I had to drive myself – with my mom and her car – to the Ottawa General Campus, which for me is a high anxiety producing task. To say the drive there and the search for an available accessible parking space didn’t go well would be an understatement. In the end, I had a panic attack, but this time it was a major one and I didn’t have any Ativan with me.

You see, I hadn’t had an attack that bad in years, not since my sexual assault in 2016. I was still sweating profusely and shaking when the procedure was done, and we were waiting for the elevator to take us down a floor so we could leave. A worker who was also waiting for the elevator was concerned, she said I didn’t look well and she wanted to know if I needed to go to emergency, but all I wanted was to go home. So, that’s what we did.

The panic attack was brought on by the stress of driving to and parking at the hospital, but I knew it was energetically backed by my anxiety about returning to work. I didn’t feel ready, which I had told my doctor the week before, but she thought it would be good for me to return, good for my mental health. (I should add here that during that same appointment she told me the results of my knee scans showed deterioration from osteoarthritis, but we should wait to think about surgery despite the extreme pain when walking or bending down. She also told me I was borderline pre-diabetic and would need to lose weight, as I’m medically obese, and she also said that I should stop eating bread and pasta.)

Okay, so back to June 25, following my procedure in Ottawa and my panic attack. That afternoon, I was pretty sure I was going to need to quit my job because I didn’t think I’d be able to go in the next day. In the end, exhausted from the panic attack and stress, I laid down for a nap and slept for four hours. I didn’t want to decide when my mind wasn’t clear.

When I woke up, I felt a little more stable and I decided that I would get everything ready as if I were going to work in the morning, and provided I didn’t have an attack, I would go because I needed the income and the benefits coverage. (I hadn’t received unemployment insurance since early in March and I was using my credit card until I was able to extract a bit of money from my "locked in" investment when I turned 55, which just so happened to be two days after the one-year anniversary of my dad's death. Also, in a blessing for me, my roommate was buying my groceries for me.)

On the morning of June 26, I woke up too early and couldn’t return to sleep. I also woke up sick to my stomach. It felt like my body was screaming at me to wake up, to acknowledge that this job was not the right place for me, that it wasn’t the healthy choice, and so, this time, I chose to listen to my body. I emailed work with my resignation effective immediately and then I emailed my financial advisor asking to remove the bulk of my money, which wasn’t much, but would see me through until I figured out what to do next.

And here we are.