My notice has gone in... time for a different kind of work.

Better late than never. It has taken me over 50 years to take my own needs seriously. With limited time to go, I need to get to work.

‘Ping’.

First thing on Monday morning. I had logged on early as ever. Getting ahead of the game in my role as an NHS paediatric liaison administrator. The game had already started, and I was playing catch up.

‘Your performance review will be at 10 today’.

The crack was deafening. The straw that broke the camels back.

‘It won’t’. I said out loud to an empty room. ‘I’m done’.

I had recently been off work for 2 months after I slipped a disc in my lower back. It happened after a long day at work. I bent over to load the washing machine, of course I did, what else would I be doing after a long day at work? Shots of agony. Right down to my toes. The recovery was long, painful and terrifying. My mum walked with a stick in her 60s, started to use a wheelchair in her 70s and now, at the age of 80, requires carers to help her move. I am 51. I could feel myself using the same unconscious adaptations to move – push up from the arms, not the legs to climb out of a chair, back into a car seat and slowly swivel round to manoeuvre yourself in. Terrifying.

After a couple of months of treatment, I started to feel more mobile and slightly more confident, although my lower back still oscillated between pain and numbness. At least I was out of the acute phase of ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ every time I shuffled across the floor. So, I returned to work. Reduced hours. ‘Make sure you take lots of breaks’ etc. But in the real world, breaks are a luxury. Within a week my back had slipped back. Within a month I couldn’t see a way out. Could I really take some proper time out to look after myself?

10 o ‘clock came round quick enough. Sasha, my manager started with the usual. ‘How are you?’ I don’t think she will ever use that opening gambit again. I told her how I was. In pain. That’s how I was. Struggling to sit for hour after hour, the constant barrage of phone calls, tasks, enquiries, reports and referrals anchoring my aching body to the spot. My already flared lumbar discs buckling under the pressure. Work is not supposed to be this stressful. But this is the modern-day NHS – everyone doing three jobs for the price of one. Relentless.

And of course, not my only job. Just the one I am paid for. Wife and mother are my other fulltime, full-on roles. Not to mention daughter of elderly, 200 miles away, slightly toddler-like parents and oh yes, a body managing a hormonal tsunami at any given day of the month. I was slipping. Back to the heady days of overload. Enough was enough.

‘Are you sure you want to resign?’ Sasha asked, slightly dumbfounded by my onslaught. At first no I wasn’t. The news was unexpected even to me and I was the one announcing it. But it didn’t take long for me to feel it in my bones, and my very sore back – this was the definitely the right thing to do.

If I was into marketing or PR or any of those things I don’t really understand, I would be tempted to write, ‘I have left my job to pursue my dream of becoming a writer, come follow me as I evade destitution, battle my inner demons and rise triumphantly as the literary world’s next big thing.’ This would only be half true though. Quite disingenuous and exploitative really. That is not a salty path I want to go down.

The truth is more layered than that. True, I have just handed my notice in at work. True I have no other job to go to and a mortgage to pay. True, I have no idea where this path will take me and if I may slip off into the abyss. Of course true I want to succeed as a writer. But that is not the whole truth. I have also left work as I need to look after myself. And for someone like me, that is a lot of neglected work.

I am no stranger to hard work. I was weaned on the stuff. The thing about being working class is that you have to work. The clue is in the name. Without work you risk being part of, what my dad calls, ‘the underclass’. No trust funds or inheritance to fall back on. Work or benefits. Work every time, every day if he could. We never took holidays as a child. My dad thought them unnecessary. Each working week has its own holiday – the weekend (although my dad often worked those too). Languishing on a beach or relaxing by a pool was an anathema for my dad. Work kept us floating above the underclass and the shame my dad felt at where he had come from.

My mum worked full time too. In the NHS, as a Health Visitor. She retired early due to ill health. Arthritis of the spine. She had worked hard enough. Hard work defined us as a family. Hard work took me from a crappy state school to a prestigious university to study medicine. Before I broke down. Even as my mental health hit regular and alarming lows my dad was always quick to extol the virtues of a day’s work as a cure for all ills. I did sometimes find solace in the routine and normality of work, but in the early days I was just to ill to work. You have to choose your battles.

And I don’t want the rest of my life to be a battle. I have battled enough. And no, I don’t know how we will survive financially. ‘It will be ok,’ my lovely husband reassured me (interest only mortgage, no pension contributions, limited spending and shopping at Lidl, it could be a lot worse). And I know that I have not finished with ‘work’. Look at the state of the world, I have so much work to do putting that right. But selfishly and surprisingly, I just want to live. Time is so precious to me. I have lost so much of it already. I need time to care for me. Time to write, to garden, to put off until tomorrow what could be done today but to hell with it, I have time now! Time to write a book. Time to cook home-made, organic soups and stews (okay I am pushing it with that, but you get the picture).

‘We will always have you back’, poor frazzled Sasha reassured me. I know they will, and maybe, after some time, that’s what I will do. Nobody can live off fresh air forever. But for now, I feel richer than I have ever felt, more content, more at peace and more excited than I can remember for years. The body does keep score. It’s only been a week, and my back feels so much better. My muscles are relaxed and although I am still working my notice, I feel a ton lighter. I still have my job as a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister and a friend but I am now a carer. For myself. A lifelong position which will hopefully lead to a long life. I clocked in late to this job, but better late than never.

Thank you for reading. It means a lot. Please like, comment or restack if you can. Makes me day!