Beginning of the End

Well, today, I made it official. Hello, how are you today and oh by the way – here’s my letter of resignation.

Up until Friday afternoon, I was still only 95% certain I knew what I was doing in resigning. The stress, the ‘eh’ cash in pocket at the end of the month, the stress on the children, blah blah blah. But I still had ‘buts’ and ‘wells’ and ‘hmms’ ringing through my brain that made me hesitate to actually say, “Yes. I would like to cash out my vacation and go on my way now, please.”

And then…my boss called. Simple thing, right? My cell phone rang, I looked down and recognized his cell phone number on my caller ID. 3:00-ish on a beautiful Friday afternoon.

Now, for a normal person, this would be no big.

But the way things have gotten for me of late? I got a ‘kicked in the stomach by a mule’ feeling. And my palms went all slick. My heart started doing the cha-cha-cha. My blood pressure probably soared. My head began pounding. I felt vaguely dizzy and disturbingly nauseated.

I felt exactly the way I felt the time I was resting by the side of the trail while hiking, gazing out over the hills in the most peaceful, pastoral manner imaginable, turned my head back to glance the other way and found a forty four foot rattlesnake had slithered to within about half a foot of my right foot. Seriously. He was so close I could see the individual scales on his wee little nose. And people? I wasn’t wearing my glasses.

GAH!!!!!!!! Terror, now with the added bonus of utter paralysis! Can’t move, can’t breathe, must fight or flee, either option wrong, AAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!

I fumbled with my phone and missed twice before I managed to hit the ‘ignore call’ button.

And then I sat back fighting back overwhelming nausea and thought, “What the @*^&@ was that?!?!”

Because, while I am definitely on the ‘non-confrontational’ side of the equation when it comes to Interpersonal Communications, I do not think of myself as being either shy or particularly timid. Generally speaking, if you begin to piss me off or otherwise agitate me, I will look you right in the eye and…say something subtle and snarky that, without actually picking a fight (see ‘non-confrontational’ comment above), will definitely let you know that I’m not playing this game with you.

And I ain’t scared of nobody. Including the boss. Who nevertheless appears to have acquired the power to turn me into a sniveling coward merely by displaying his caller ID on my cell phone?

Oh no. Oh no he di’nt.

It was at that point that my certainty that leaving this job was the thing to do went from 95% to 99.9% - and after I reassured myself over the weekend that, while corset-tight, the post-paycheck budget was a go, well.

The resignation letter was drafted, read a few (dozen) times (and some sniveling rants removed), and sent. And letters withdrawing the children from their assorted daycares were likewise drafted, read a few times and delivered along with the verbal bitching explanation.

Done, done and done.

I am officially no longer working, and officially no longer getting a paycheck, and my children are officially no longer in daycare as of April 20. (Whether or not they will unofficially not be dropped off any longer before then remains to be seen.)

Buckle up, friends. The ride is about to start getting interesting again…