I Didn’t Just Decide to Quit

There have been a few people who have been saying that me leaving my six figure, high paying job, was wreckless. That I just decided to leave on a manic whim. Like one morning I woke up, chose chaos, and handed in my notice before lunch.

That’s the story that makes sense to people, isn’t it? That I had some kind of episode. That I wasn’t thinking clearly. Because the alternative — that I thought about it very clearly, for a very long time, and still chose to walk away — is the version that actually unsettles people. Because that version asks uncomfortable questions about what they’re choosing to stay in.

It wasn’t an immediate decision. It wasn’t even a quick decision.

It was a hard decision. I effectively gave up a six-figure salary to quit and do — who knows what. No clear plan. A small safety net. No neat “what comes next”. Just the growing, undeniable certainty that if I stayed, I would lose something I couldn’t get back.

That’s not something you do on impulse. That’s something you do when staying becomes the thing that’s actually insane.

---

It wasn’t just one thing. One moment. It was a collection of them. Over years. A slow, grinding accumulation of mental breakage. Not one dramatic event. Not one terrible meeting. Just moment after moment after moment, each one small enough to explain away on its own, but together? Together they painted a picture I couldn’t unsee.

It was when I saw a colleague slowly get outcast and made invisible. Not fired. Not confronted. Just... edged out. Excluded from meetings. Left off emails. The kind of quiet organisational cruelty that doesn’t leave fingerprints. And I watched it happen. And nobody said a word. And I understood that this was how it worked.

It was when I saw another colleague get used and driven to the point of burnout. Someone brilliant, someone who cared deeply about the work, who kept saying yes because they believed it mattered. And the organisation just kept taking. And when they messed up? It was framed as a personal failing. Not enough resilience. Not enough self-care. Never — never — that perhaps we asked too much of someone who was too good to say no.

It was when I was told my mode of talking wasn’t appropriate. Not what I said. Not that I was wrong. The way I said it. Because apparently there’s a correct tone for telling the truth, and I hadn’t learned it. I’ve thought about that a lot since. What a beautifully corporate way of saying: we need you to be less you.

It was when I saw a very experienced woman with twenty years in the industry get handed the same role as a guy with a few years’ experience. And nobody blinked. And when you pointed it out, when you tried to advocate for that person, they explained it away. This person hasn’t got experience in corporate. Which is corporate speak for: she hasn’t learned to play the political game yet. As if that’s a failing. As if twenty years of actual expertise counts for less than knowing whose ego to stroke in which meeting.

It was when I realised it didn’t matter how good I was. It genuinely did not matter. Not unless I was willing to shut up and take it. To nod in the right meetings. To phrase my disagreements as questions. To perform deference to people who hadn’t earned it, because the hierarchy demanded it and the hierarchy was never, ever wrong.

It was sitting in customer meetings and having to stay silent because the political relationship mattered more than doing the right thing. Watching us tell a customer what they wanted to hear instead of what they needed to hear. And knowing — knowing — that I could help. That I had the answer. And being told, in so many unspoken ways, to keep it to myself.

It was when even changing teams didn’t fix it. When I realised I still had to jump through hoops just to share my knowledge with the world. That they weren’t going to do anything with it — but they didn’t want anyone else to have it either. It was just trapped. Doing absolutely nothing. Sitting in someone’s intellectual property vault, gathering dust, helping no one. And I was supposed to be fine with that. Supposed to accept that the things I knew, the things I’d built, the things that could actually help people — they belonged to an organisation that had no intention of using them but every intention of keeping them locked away.

It was seeing that no matter what I did, none of it mattered, because everyone was trapped in the same system. A system that told them their individual contributions mattered more than the collective. Not in words — because the appearance of collaboration matters. But in fear. In markdowns for saying the wrong thing. In being penalised for not being "positive" enough. The message was never spoken out loud. It didn't need to be. Everyone understood. Not in words. That performance reviews and promotion metrics and personal brand were the point. Not the work. Not the people. Not whether any of it actually made things better.

It was seeing countless waste and inefficiencies and knowing exactly what to do about them — and watching the processes refuse to change. Not because the ideas were wrong. Because change is uncomfortable, and comfort was the point. I’d go to these elaborate corporate events and listen to people complain that this year we didn’t get ice sculptures. Ice sculptures. And it was realising that whilst my colleagues grew up around wine vineyards, I grew up around people threatening to beat me up with golf clubs if I didn’t give them my spare change. I grew up with people threatening to set my house on fire. And I believed them because they did it to other houses. That was the distance. That was the gap I was trying to cross every single day. And no matter how hard I tried, I would never belong — because I always had more to lose. They were risking a career. I was risking the entire life I’d clawed my way into.

It was spending each week crying. Not occasionally. Each week. And feeling awful about who I was as a person, because I just couldn’t. Couldn’t play the game. Couldn’t stop caring about the things I wasn’t supposed to care about. Couldn’t stop seeing what I was supposed to overlook.

It was when you have to literally avoid meetings because you can no longer keep from worrying and crying and hating yourself for not just being able to deal with it. When you’re sat there before a call thinking: I cannot do this. Not because the meeting is hard. Because you are broken. And instead of recognising that, you blame yourself. You tell yourself everyone else manages. Everyone else copes. What is wrong with you that you can’t just hold it together for one more hour?

It was the continuous collection of moments that made it very clear: the skill that made me useful — the ability to see systems, to name what’s broken, to cut through the noise and say the thing nobody else would say — that skill was only useful when it didn’t challenge the people I was working with. The moment it did? The skill was to be managed. Contained. Abused when convenient, kept hidden and out of sight otherwise.

It was being absolutely, constantly terrified about speaking about any of this. Not just uncomfortable. Not just cautious. Terrified. Of being fired. Of being performance managed — that quiet, procedural violence where they build a paper trail to make your removal look justified. Of being sued for slander. Of being discredited — having your reputation quietly dismantled so that even if you did speak up, nobody would believe you. Because that’s the trick, isn’t it? They create an environment so hostile you can barely breathe, and then they make you afraid to even describe it. You can’t speak about what’s happening to you because speaking about it is the thing that will finally destroy you. So you stay silent. And the silence is what they’re counting on.

If they’re reading this right now, they will be wondering how to sue and discredit me for this post. How to do appropriate damage control. And honestly? That tells you everything you need to know.

And I want to be clear about something: I don’t blame anyone I worked with. Everyone was genuinely good. Good people, trying their best, inside a system that made it nearly impossible to do the right thing. But when you’re trapped in an environment where everything is designed to funnel upwards — where every decision, every conversation, every piece of work exists to serve the layer above — it’s inherently fear-driven. Even when nobody explicitly says it. Nobody has to. The structure says it for them. And good people, caught in that structure, end up doing things they’d never choose to do on their own. That’s not a people problem. That’s a system problem. And no amount of individual goodness can fix a broken system.

---

And honestly, this was so tiring.

I was so tired. Not the kind of tired that a holiday fixes. The kind of tired that lives in your bones. The kind where you wake up and the first thing you feel isn’t sleepiness but dread. I was so tired of constantly performing that my ability to mask was non-existent. And, I was so tired of masking.

If you know, you know. And if you don’t — masking is when you spend every waking moment in a professional environment performing a version of yourself that is acceptable to the people around you. Monitoring your tone. Filtering your reactions. Suppressing the way your brain actually works so that it fits neatly into the way things are supposed to be done. It is exhausting. And when you’ve been doing it for long enough, and you’re already broken from everything else, you simply can’t do it anymore. The mask doesn’t slip — it shatters. And then people look at you like you’re the problem, because they’ve only ever known the mask.

And I just didn’t want to do it anymore, I didn’t want to keep failing at not being good enough. I didn’t want to keep chasing this impossible standard I was never going to meet, all the while automatically expected to be good at the things I was never good at, whilst used and markdown for the things I was good at.

---

So I left.

And isn’t it ironic — that leaving is when people question my sanity? Because who in their right mind would quit their high-paying job to spend time doing something they actually enjoy? Who would walk away from the prestige, the salary, the security? There must be something wrong with her. She must be having an episode. She must not be thinking clearly.

Funny, that.

Ironic, how they never showed concern when I was genuinely struggling in an environment that could not support me. Nobody questioned my mental state when I was crying every week. Nobody pulled me aside when I was visibly breaking. Nobody said “are you okay?” when the answer was obviously, painfully, no.

But quit? Now they’re worried.

And I was so tired of seeing another support plan. Another complex list of things put in place to “support” me. Reasonable adjustments. Action points. Follow-up meetings about the follow-up meetings. A whole bureaucratic apparatus designed to look like help without ever actually addressing what I’d said. Because I’d told them. I’d told them clearly, repeatedly, plainly. The one thing I needed.

The ability to have honest and open dialogue.

That’s it. That’s all I ever asked for. Not special treatment. Not a different role. Not a quiet room or a modified schedule. Just the ability to say what I saw without being punished for it. The ability to have conversation — real ones, not the fake positive ones — about what was working and what wasn’t. Without the terror. Without the politics. Without the performance.

They couldn’t give me that.

And beyond all of it — beyond the exhaustion, the masking, the fear — it wasn’t worth it. I’d already decided that large institutions were causing the majority of the world’s greed and problems. I’d already decided that by staying, I was part of it. I couldn’t sit there and keep being comfortable, taking a large salary for doing a hundredth of the work I could do outside. That’s the deal, isn’t it? They pay you well enough that you stop asking whether the work matters. They pay you well enough that leaving feels irresponsible. The salary isn’t compensation. It’s a leash.

And I decided I was done being leashed.

---

And you want to know what madness actually looks like?

In the past few weeks — since I apparently lost my mind and threw away my career — I have explored my city more than I have in years. I’ve thought of more product ideas in a month than I did in a year of being told to stay in my lane. I’ve danced. I’ve sung. I’ve laughed. I’ve done art and painting, something I haven’t touched in years because I was too tired, too empty, too busy performing someone else’s version of me to remember what I actually enjoyed.

A couple of months ago, I was so broken. I felt so bad about who I was, about my differences, about being autistic and not being able to make sense of the incoherence. But leaving allowed me to start remembering who I am. The girl who always saw the positive in a pile full of misery. The girl who never stopped dreaming. The girl who never stopped believing.

That’s what happened when I quit. I didn’t fall apart. I found myself. I came back to life.

So please tell me again that I’m the one who isn’t thinking clearly.