When I last left off, I tried to take unpaid time off and was refused, the school where I worked wanted to negotiate my time off and then upon my return expected me to return much earlier and work more.

D-O-N-E. That’s what I was.

I had a doctor’s appointment the day I received the negotiation e-mail from one of my supervisors. I’ve known my doctor for years and I adore the man. He has seen me cry countless times, usually when I come in sick with a fever. He gets me. I don’t know how or why, but he does. He walked in and I was crying. Anxious. In pain. Everywhere. From my innermost physical body to the center of my soul. I ached. And Dr. R could see it.

“We’ve been dealing with a lot of these chronic symptoms for quite some time and while I think part of your issues stem from the enormous amount of stress you have been under with your job and your parents, I think you may have fibromyalgia. He said a few other things which I don’t remember very well, something about my high blood pressure which I had for several months and was lingering. I got stuck at the fibromyalgia part.

Me: “Is that a real thing? I know some doctors don’t believe it is.”

Dr. R:”I believe that it is. I have seen this type of thing too many times in my patients to ignore it. It’s real.”

While having all this info sinking in about my health and realizing the potential ramifications of all of it and the mystery of the fibromyalgia, I picked up the phone and made the first of several rash decisions. This one I didn’t regret. Not at all.

Me: “Yeah, blah blah, I quit. Effective immediately. I’ll be in on Monday to collect my things.” He said a few nice things which I know he didn’t believe because those things hadn’t sincerely been said to me in seven years.

Some of you might be thinking what a first-class unprofessional jerk I am for quitting effective immediately. I get it. I would think the same thing. Reminded constantly that I was an independent contractor (when it suited their needs and it suited their needs often) and had no benefits or stability with the company (not even invited to the annual Christmas LUNCH they did for an hour and a half on a weekday — that was their Christmas party), I felt ZERO obligation. For once. I always felt obligated to someone, for someone, but not this time. They pushed me to the point of no return and I didn’t feel bad.

Oh. Yeah. I quit my job. I was unemployed. It’s not like I had a spouse or significant other either to at least have a little cushion. Nope. I was single, owned a home, had a car payment and a kid in college. I had a little money in the bank and knew my dad had a small life insurance policy that my brother and I were co-beneficiaries. So there was that. Which, looking back was probably why I finally felt no obligation to the place I worked. A little cushion to live off for probably gave me the nerve. The “I don’t need you” kind of nerve. I knew it wasn’t a long term solution, but it literally bought me some time. And some relief. Sort of.

After calling one of my bosses to quit, I had a few more phone calls to make — the families of the students I worked with privately. I didn’t want them to find out any other way than from me. I explained. Most of them understood. “It’s not just about the way I am treated, ” I said. “I am shutting down — mentally, emotionally, physically. I can’t do this anymore.” Some did not understand. Some kept calling me. Begging me. I understand. I do. This is their child who they would do anything for. I jumped ship. That’s my one regret of it all. But if I stayed, I wasn’t sure how long I would survive. Do I sacrifice my own child’s welfare for the welfare of someone else’s child? I explained my position to one parent and me not coming back wasn’t an option for her.

In the meantime, I was experiencing pain — mostly back pain, shooting leg pain, and weird pains with my rib cage and spine. If you put pressure anywhere on those places, just pushed in gently, it would hurt. But the real pain happened after you removed the pressure. I felt that sensation for 20 seconds or so after I hadn’t been touched. “Great,” I’m thinking. I was falling apart in every way and it hurt to have someone freaking hug me. Perfect.

I slept. And slept. Some days I didn’t get out of bed. Showers were optional. Was it depression? I don’t think so. I honestly think it was relief. I had eliminated something from my life that gave me the most stress. I think I was so rundown that I just needed to rest — my mind, body, but especially my soul. My inner self was suffering as much my outer self. I continued to avoid certain phone calls from parents. One was never going to let me walk away. I knew that every time I answered it would be more of the same. I loved this family — loved their daughter, but I couldn’t get her to accept my truth — I was gone and I wasn’t going back. Ever. Not for all the money in the world. My condition was so much worse than my guilt at that point. I wanted to crawl up into a ball and hide in the corner when I saw that name pop up on my phone’s screen.

There was another downside to quitting my job besides the money. I ditched a fellow member of the tribe, Tricia. She still worked there. I abandoned her, and honestly, she wasn’t any better off than I was. Worse in some ways. This place we worked sucked the souls out of bodies like dementors from Harry Potter. They chewed you up and spat you out. It was all-consuming. I left a man behind. That was the worst part. Besides the frequent phone calls I avoided for my sanity. Tricia came over one evening and simply stated,”Blah Blah won’t be calling you anymore. I called her and asked her not to and told her…..”. I didn’t really hear the rest of what she said. I started crying. From relief. And from Tricia being a good enough friend to protect me while I left her there in that awful place. I cannot even describe the relief I felt knowing that parent wasn’t going to call me anymore. I have no idea what explanation Tricia gave, and I don’t think we even spoke about it again other than me being grateful to her. It didn’t matter what she told her. I didn’t care.

What time I managed to physically drag myself out of bed (or sometimes while in bed) I would read up on fibromyalgia. It’s like a mystery — but it explained so many of my symptoms. I felt like there were other people out there like me. I knew from common sense and reading that I had to start moving more. I had to get out of bed. The more I moved, the less I would hurt. I was also having cramps in my legs and in my stomach — not like PMS cramps. These were different — like where a group of muscles tightened up and wouldn’t surrender. Charley horses but in weird places.

Soon it was the holiday season (my mom’s absolute favorite time of year). I know a lot of people say that, but I cannot tell you the lengths my mom would go to to make the most idyllic childhood memories a person could ask for. She loved to wrap presents and wrapped them to perfection — each one being a work of art. And it was our first Christmas without my dad, second without my mom. First for me without a job in a long long time.

What this meant for me was that I had time. Time was something that I didn’t have a lot of for a good long stretch. Everything seemed to go into slow motion. I felt foggy a lot of the time, which I figured could be any number of things.  I actually was able to enjoy the holiday season. I wasn’t in a rush to get the tree up or decorated or to bake or shop. It was all on my timetable. I had time to reflect, time to think about how I did get to this point, and time to think about how I was going to get back to normal. But what was normal? What was normal for me?