Death and Rebirth
Much of what I post on my website has to do with creativity and inspiration presented with a positive attitude despite the horror tales I write. This time, however, I wanted to talk about some major changes in my life that aren’t so light-hearted or whimsical. It’s been a period of inspiration, yes; but that inspiration has been born out of a great deal of strife. It hasn’t been fun or easy. Rather, it is very much in line with the concept of the Death card in the Major Arcana. Death is painful, but oftentimes necessary in order to be reborn with a different vision and a healthier path forward.
NOTE: For those who may begin reading this and are sensitive to topics related to mental health (especially suicide), you may not want to continue with this particular post unless it’s helpful to know that the story does not end in despair or tragedy.
The Death card from The Wild Unknown Tarot deck
I can still remember with crystal clarity a particular cold day in late 2017. I was at my standing desk in my tiny cubicle at work sorting through documents and chugging coffee to make sure I made a deadline with a perfect work product in hand. All of a sudden, I felt my heart begin to skip every other beat and my chest tightened. I’ve had panic attacks and anxiety most of my life, but this was different. The palpitations and shortness of breath continued to worsen until I finally went to my workplace’s health clinic. The nurse on staff took my vitals, and within moments, she told me that I needed to get to an Urgent Care or she was going to call an ambulance.
Not long after, I was hooked up to monitors that confirmed my heart was doing an unwelcome dance and my blood pressure was higher than it had ever been. The urgent care doc swaggered in and told me it was “just” stress. He said he saw it all the time in D.C., and that I really just needed to take two weeks off work to reset. Of course, I didn’t have the leave or time to take off two weeks, and even then, I knew that wasn’t a long term solution for what my situation was quickly turning into. When I left the urgent care, I just took my anxiety medication (again) and decided to keep forging ahead.
Things would get better for a while. I was praised for the quality of my work, my positivity, and my strong work ethic. One of my more astute managers, however, pulled me aside and cautioned me. They explained how pleased they were with my performance, but that the brightest fireballs are the ones that burn out the fastest. According to them, they’d seen this trajectory many times before—the rock star employee goes all-in; receives the best compliments; keeps going harder to maintain that reputation and rise through the ranks; then destroys their wellbeing until their body and mind can’t handle it anymore.
It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the warning or even that I didn’t believe them. The problem was that there was no other choice for me. Burn-out had become the culture within the workplace, especially amongst my peers at the time. If you wanted to keep up your reputation and fly, you had to press harder. Doing so resulted in awards, bonuses, and a higher salary. In my mind, all of that equaled something I didn’t really have growing up—Stability. And there was nothing I wouldn’t do to create more stability for my family at that point. I was going to give them everything I could. By proxy, that meant my workplace would get everything I had to give as well.
And right there is the seed that would eventually sprout vines which would begin to choke the life out of me.
I was the happy one at work… the person everyone knew would run events; create activities; check in on people; ace the projects to which I was assigned. My colleagues as well as my managers knew they could depend on me. I was even jokingly asked if I was planning on running for president of my team since I seemed to be everywhere all at once.
What they didn’t know was that nearly every morning, I stared at the train speeding into L’Enfant Plaza and contemplated whether or not to jump in front of it. That intrusive thought became so strong that I began having to step back on the platform until I knew I couldn’t possibly jump far enough to clear the edge and end my life. Eventually, there was never a commute where I didn’t weigh the pros and cons of what seemed to be the only way to make the overwhelming anxiety and depression stop.
The one thing that kept me from jumping was my kids… because without me and my income, they wouldn’t have the one thing I was convinced I had to give them—Stability.
By late 2019, I was allowed to take on more telework. I’d expressed my severe and persistent suicidal ideation to my partner enough times that we decided moving away from D.C. was worth it if it meant some peace of mind. I loved the mountains and rivers of West Virginia and was always happiest there. After finding what we thought was a great rental, we relocated the family, and I began increased telework.
At first, I did feel more peace. My kids were happy in their new school; the mountains provided plenty of space for me to hike on days off; the local attitude was far from the constant go-go-go of the city. I actually found myself enjoying the couple of days a week that I’d commute into the office because it gave me a chance to see my colleagues, knowing I’d return to a safe haven later that evening.
Then, the Pandemic hit.
I was lucky. Because telework was already an option at my workplace, most of us were able to transition to being remote with little disruption to our usual productivity. Unlike so many people, I never lost a paycheck, and I couldn’t have been more grateful for that.
My kids still had the one thing I knew they needed—Stability.
The trouble was, the same chronic burn-out culture translated to the virtual space just as easily as the rest of the work. In fact, it appeared that for many of us, it increased. For those of us who had few boundaries in place before the Pandemic, creating them during it was nearly impossible.
Now, there were no breaks between meetings. Twice as many meetings could be jammed into my schedule than before. Lunch-time became just another slot for even more meetings. And in between meetings? Well, that was more time to hammer out more work and increase productivity.*
On top of that, many of my colleagues were scared and hurting because hell—we were living an actual nightmare. We couldn’t leave our homes, and for some, work became the only time they interacted with another human being. Allison Gunn couldn’t handle others feeling alone. So, what did the Queen of Cheer decide to do? Create more programs and schedule more face-time with people who needed to talk, of course. Once more, I was applauded for my optimism and drive through the darkness the world was facing. Three cheers for the consummate performer.
But the cracks had started to spread.
*I want to emphasize here that the cause of burnout is not at all related to telework. I stand firm with many workers who state that telework is actually beneficial to their wellbeing and work-life balance. Where it can be implemented, telework is a fantastic option all the way around. The issue here was not the telework piece.
A shift toward increasing production over wellness and boundaries is the core problem.
In 2020, my child faced a severe medical emergency. The nature of the emergency required treatment in D.C., and I soon found myself working from hospital and hotel rooms. While my supervisor and team mates supported me, I still found myself trying to keep up with the performance level I’d always operated at. And the thing was, some had begun to believe that that was indeed the level I would always maintain; that being a super star was my constant state of being. On top of that, the nature of my job meant the workload grew even more specifically because of the pandemic, so there was no way to avoid moving faster, and I was going to do it with a smile, goddammit.
I had to keep up the facade, of course. Increased productivity meant I gained more of what I was confident my kids needed—Stability.
However, my body and mind had begun to disagree.
I missed an outdoor Christmas gathering with my family that year. One morning, I woke up to discover my toes and fingers were a bizarre shade of red and purple, and they began blistering. My joints ached, and I felt like a train had hit me. Naturally, I thought this was COVID and immediately isolated.
To my surprise, I discovered it was not the virus. Instead, we soon discovered I was experiencing the onset of an autoimmune disorder which my rheumatologist identified as being triggered by stress. She advised taking time off. Ha, ha, ha.
The symptoms of said disorder would come and go, and I ignored them 90% of the time. I had work to do, and I was going to get it done, dammit. I started working longer hours, even after saying I was going to go part time to take care of my daughter.
I had to churn out more work if I was going to continue creating that thing I was obsessed with—Stability!
Soon, other symptoms began to pop up. My anxiety was through the roof. I’d begun shaking all the time. I’d wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat thinking about work. I started dry-heaving into a trash can in my office right before logging onto yet another meeting. I found myself sobbing at random times, though this was admittedly not new. Even as a new hire, I could be found in a bathroom stall once a week quietly crying… and so were other colleagues, though I didn’t know it at the time.
But I still didn’t listen. Instead, I had my psychiatrist increase my meds to numb my body’s warnings. I added in CBD both for mental wellness and to shove back whatever autoimmune and GI symptoms were constantly recurring. I did yoga and tried to meditate until naturally, there was no time left in the schedule for this. I buried myself in my writing on the weekends to escape my full-time job, but Monday always inevitably came.
When those things weren’t enough, I started drinking as soon as I logged off to help me quickly come down from a stressful day. It worked for plenty of my colleagues, so why not for me? Not too far from “the end,” I picked back up the absolute worst habit I had when I was a youngin’ and started smoking again. Pretty soon, I was chain smoking and my caffeine intake had skyrocketed.
Still, I was churning out the work like a BAMF. And I was happy! Everyone knew I’d be the one smiling on camera when we logged on for a meeting. I even spoke about mental health at a work event and how to best manage it. Pretty hilarious, right?
Not really. By this point, I was back to day dreaming about suicide. At one point, I even hoped a tractor trailer would side swipe me so I didn’t have to take my life. It could just end neatly, and my family would even get my life insurance benefits because guess what that would mean? STABILITY!
From the start, I shared with a couple friends and my partner that I was struggling. To be honest, though, with my mental illness, I was constantly afraid it was “just my Bipolar and anxiety” trying to trip me up. Seven years in, however, these same friends as well as my partner were essentially screaming that it was not at all the disorder doing the talking. I still didn’t listen.
About a year ago, I quietly shared with a couple of work friends that I was descending into a dark place… well, darker than it had been before. They encouraged me to not follow down the same path other colleagues were and burn out entirely. I didn’t listen.
I had to create MORE STABILITY for my kids, and the only way to do that was to work more, do more, produce more, and make more money. It’s the responsible thing to do. It is what earns you accolades and makes your family proud. It’s what society says defines your worth. It’s what begins to dictate every decision you make because you are so terrified of what happens to you and your family if you don’t have it.
Money = Stability, and I wasn’t about to lose that for my kids.
It’s probably not hard to guess where this all leads.
In the past few months, I had a veritable SWAT team of medical providers telling me that I needed to take time off work or step away entirely. My network of friends and family members were becoming more insistent that something had to change. Did I listen? Hell no.
One evening in the beginning of June, I finally crashed into that massive wall I’d been speeding toward for years. My partner gave me the ultimatum that I would either have to take leave and get serious medical help, or he was going to take me to the hospital. Honestly, I kind of thought he was bullshitting, but the rest of me heard him loud and clear.
I woke up the next morning barely able to move. My partner wouldn’t leave me by myself, and by now, my children had caught on that I was very much not at all okay. I managed to log on to a meeting with my manager and broke down. I’d been moments away from suicide the night before, and I didn’t think I could make it through the work day.
The soaring fireball had at last burned right the hell out into a cold rock that plummeted to the earth.
I filed for FMLA immediately and began a month of time off.
Lots of changes happened during that month: I started spending time with my kids and partner again (quality time; not what was obligatory to be a decent parent and spouse). I began seeing friends again. I amped up therapy and followed through on appointments to repair my physical body as well. I quit smoking (again). I decreased my caffeine to a reasonable extent. I formed new bonds and went to places I’d never explored in my own town despite having now lived here over four years.
Suddenly, I didn’t need my anxiety medicine as often, and I didn’t need to drink multiple glasses of wine each evening to calm down either. My hands stopped shaking. The autoimmune and GI symptoms went away. I realized I had started singing to music again—something I hadn’t even noticed I’d ever stopped until I had time to slow down. Gradually, I began to feel like myself again.
Then, I found the courage to do what I needed to do. I wish I could say that it came from me and me alone—that somehow, all of the above gave me the clarity to let go. Those same friends, family members, and medical providers were still saying what they’d been saying for years. While that was affirming, I can’t say they gave me the courage to do it either.
Instead, it came from the only two people that it really ever could have come from: my kids.
I was cooking dinner a couple weeks into leave and started chatting with my partner about returning to work. As the conversation was going on, I hadn’t noticed the girls had entered the kitchen. One of them cut in, raising her voice over my partner’s and freezing me in my tracks:
“You need to quit your job, Mom. It’s not the end of the world because we’ll all still be together. We’ll be okay.”
The other one immediately agreed: “We’d rather have you.”
I abandoned the pot on the stove, went into the next room, and sobbed.
Turns out “stability” was never really about money to them. It’s family. It’s me—the healthy version of me.
I quit my job.
I am terrified, yes, but there’s no doubt it was the right thing to do. My body confirmed this even further in the days leading up to and following turning in my resignation. Every time I logged on, my hands began to shake so badly that I could barely type. My stomach turned sour, and I couldn’t eat. I had to go lay down and shut off my phone afterwards, sleeping hours at a time. And this was only to perform minor administrative tasks that required just a couple hours online. My body had finally reached the stage where I could physically no longer perform my duties.
So, what happens now? Unclear. There are quite a few things I’m lining up: some freelance work; beginning my own small business that I’ve had in mind for some time; reviving a podcast I’d started with my best friend years prior; and of course, focusing more on my writing. None of these things, even in conjunction with each other, will provide the same revenue my prior job did. I’m struggling to make peace with that as I crunch numbers and make plans.
The one thing I’m sure of, though? The illusion that making that money had ever created true stability was a falsehood.
In our current society, money is necessary for survival, and I won’t downplay that. I grew up poor and spent most of my 20s struggling to get out of poverty. For a time, I was on public assistance. Believe me when I say, I understand that money is not insignificant. However, it is not the gateway to freedom or happiness that we often believe it to be. As my paychecks increased, so did my bills and the stress skyrocketed right along with it all.
The belief that money creates stability within the middle class was the very thing that nearly took everything from me, including my life and the years I have left with my family. It battered my health; damaged relationships; fostered paranoia; and separated me from my own identity. Money nearly killed me.
So, here’s to death—mercifully not my physical one. Rather, this is the moment I watch one phase of my life pass away while another one is born from the ashes. It’s scary and painful, but it’s also beautiful. Each time I hear my kids laugh or hug a friend, I’m reminded that the world did not end when I resigned. We’re all still together, and that’s what actually matters.
I’d be remiss if I failed to thank everyone who reached out or spent time with me over the past month. I know some of the people who read this have been and/or still are worried about me. Please know that I’m doing much better now than I was even two weeks ago, but kind words are always appreciated! To each and every individual who has provided encouragement and understanding, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’m grateful more than you may ever know.
