By Kelly L. Stone
Have you completely lost your mind? I asked myself as I walked down the hall to the office of my boss. In my right hand I clutched the resignation letter I had typed the night before.
No, you haven't, the small part of me that wasn't scared to death whispered back. Remember what happened a few months ago?
Oh yes, I remembered it well.
I had worked for the same company for over a decade, my dedication and long hours finally paying off when I was promoted to upper management while still young. I had tons of responsibilities, and there were deadlines and daily crises. The stacks of paper on my desk grew taller as the weeks passed, and phone calls, faxes and e-mails dominated my life. I took great pride in my work, and mailed home some business cards to my parents so they could see the title under my name.
One by one, relationships with friends dwindled as I lived and breathed my job. It had become my whole life, and I gave it 110 percent. I pumped myself up with caffeine during the day and took over-the-counter sleep aids to fall asleep at night. I had five kinds of headache remedies and dozens of antacids in my purse as I pushed myself beyond my limits. I started keeping a pad and pen near my bed so I could take notes during those middle-of-the-night anxiety attacks that started to plague me.
Finally, my body said, No more! I had taken three days off and planned to go to Florida and soak in the tranquility of sun, ocean and beach, but the morning I was scheduled to leave I couldn't even get up. My body refused to move. I was utterly exhausted and drained. I slept all day, getting up only to eat before collapsing back into bed. The next day the same thing happened. I tried to bribe my body by imagining a dazzling mental slide show of our vacation, but my body said, Thanks, but no thanks. I need to be where I am.
By the third day I was scared. After forty-eight hours of almost nonstop sleep I was still exhausted and unwilling to move, so I called my doctor, and his office worked me into their schedule.
I lay on the examining table while a technician ran blood tests. I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror and was shocked - an older woman stared back at me. Who are you? I wondered. She didn't answer. The doctor came back in and pronounced me the healthiest sick person he had ever seen. "You have hyperstress," he said, and wrote a prescription.
"What am I supposed to take?" I asked. In a barely legible scrawl he had written on the pad: "Get a different job."
That day I made a promise to myself: I will carve out time for myself every day. When the clock says it's 5 p.m., I will leave, no matter what. The first day back at work I had to force myself to do it, and was actually shocked when the sky didn't fall. What a revelation!
I started walking my dogs again, trying to pay them back for all the times I'd left them. I picked up my journal, blew dust off the cover and began writing. Words came slowly at first, then more freely as my inner voice was finally allowed to speak. During the next three months it said: quit your job, over and over again.
I'd been working since I was seventeen, part-time to put myself though college, and then full-time immediately after graduation. Now I had a strong feeling there was a person under all those diplomas and titles who was literally dying to get out. So, with no firm plans for the future, I gave a thirty-day notice and then spent that month alternating between panic, regret and hysteria. The real shocker - that I was easily replaceable - came when the company filled my position two weeks after my notice. The last day on the job I looked into the bathroom mirror and asked: Who are you?
The silence was deafening.
Suddenly, I had no job on which to hang my identity; I was putting all my trust in the great unknown, and I was truly scared. But there was also a strange, previously unknown faith buoying me up, telling me, Don't be afraid. Everything will work out. Believe in yourself! I clung to that like a frightened child to her mother's hand.
Finally, I was free to embark on my journey of self-discovery. After a while, I realized I'd never really forgotten who I was - I had just covered it up with work, work and more work. As I took long, slow walks in the woods, I rediscovered my inner core. I listened to my body and slept when it was tired, ate when it was hungry. I reconnected with friends, read dozens of books and wrote in my journal.
That faith did not fail me. Two months later, a friend heard of a low-stress job and helped me get an interview. I got the job - and a hefty pay cut as well - but I don't regret it for a second. That eight-week sabbatical changed my life and taught me that a life without balance isn't worth living - it isn't even livable! I felt a profound gratefulness to my body for sending me such a clear message.
I had dipped my hand in the well of restoration, and I will never forget it. I had finally learned to define myself from the inside out, rather than the outside in.
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