Member-only story
My Job Was Killing Me, So I Quit. Should I Feel Guilty?
My immigrant upbringing did not prepare me for moments like this
In the days leading up to my trip to New York earlier this month, I woke up with blood on my pillow.
Apparently, I’d been biting my lower lip in my sleep. My lips were swollen, I felt uneasy, fidgety, anxious, and just ugly. No medications or ointments were helping.
Then came the headaches, further aggravated by the newsroom’s fluorescent bulbs. I stopped coming into the office and worked under the dim lighting of my bedroom.
The heart palpitations followed, triggered by the headlines of the day. I didn’t have the energy to cope with the onslaught of news, so I kept saving stories to read “later.” I’ve yet to get to them.
But worst of all, I could feel my spinal nerve injury preparing for a comeback.
One fall day two years ago, feeling a bit dizzy, I left work early and fell asleep before 5 p.m. When I opened my eyes, I instinctively attempted to reach across my bed to check the time on my phone, which sat on the bedside table to my right. I sleep on the left. My fingers were tingling, and I couldn’t move.
Maybe if I rolled over, I thought, I could make it from the bed to the ground, crawl…
