Death at My Old Company

The reader reflected back something I hadn't quite articulated: I was clinging to a title more than I was holding onto the work itself. The resignation letter wrote itself across two days. When I finally sent it, there was an unexpected lightness to it all.

Ten years is a long time to inhabit a role. It becomes part of your identity, the way you introduce yourself at gatherings, the lens through which you see your own competence. But somewhere along the way, the fit had shifted. I was still showing up, still performing, but the person who had arrived ten years ago—hungry, uncertain, eager to prove something—had long since moved on.

Death, in this reading, wasn't about loss. It was about transition. The old form had to dissolve for something new to take shape. The Hermit reversed whispered a caution: Don't isolate yourself in this ending. Don't retreat into silence or shame. An ending is not a failure; it's a threshold.

What surprised me most was how quickly the dread dissolved once I'd written those words. For months I'd carried the weight of the decision, the guilt of abandoning a place that had shaped me. But the moment I acknowledged that this chapter was complete—that no apology was required for outgrowing it—I felt something in me settle.