No. #04: I know I’m Leaving… So why am I still here?

There's a specific feeling that comes every Sunday evening.

It starts somewhere around 6pm. A heaviness that arrives quietly. It’s not dramatic, not a panic attack, just a slow settling weight that sits in your chest and doesn't move. You're doing something ordinary: making dinner, watching something or even half-present in a conversation. And underneath all of it, the same thought comes again and again, running on a quiet loop:

Tomorrow I have to go back.

Not back to something hard exactly. Back to something hollow. And somehow hollow is worse than hard. Hard at least means something matters. Hollow means you're going through motions that stopped meaning anything a while ago and you're the only one in the room who knows it.

That's where I am right now.

I've already left this job. Not officially of course, I still show up, I still answer emails, I still sit in the meetings and say the right things at approximately the right moments. But inside, in the place where motivation used to live, something has gone very quiet.

I used to be genuinely good at this. Strategic thinking, finding angles nobody else had spotted, pushing things forward because I actually cared where they went. That version of me was real.

Now someone mentions planning for next quarter and something in me just stops. A wall comes up, quiet and absolute. For what. I won't be here.

And the thing is I can't explain that to anyone around me. Because officially, on paper, in every conversation that has happened… I'm still here. I’m still part of this, still counted on. The decision I made in my own head hasn't fully landed in the real world yet. So I carry it alone. Showing up every day to a place I've already left, performing a version of myself that feels increasingly like a costume.

The thing I've started doing that feels like a crime

Late at night sometimes or early in the morning before anyone else is awake I open my laptop and I look.

I look at job listings and what's out there. Whether someone like me, with this background, these skills, this particular combination of experience even has a place somewhere in today's market.

The thing is, I don't apply. I just look. And even that feels like a betrayal so specific and so sharp it's almost physical. Not a betrayal of the company. Of my dad.

He already knows I'm not staying. We had that conversation. He was completely fine about it. Supportive. Understanding. Meant every word.

And still. The idea of actually sending my CV somewhere. Of a stranger reading it and deciding if I'm worth their time. Of potentially sitting across from someone in an interview room and being asked where I see myself in five years….

It feels like leaving twice. Like the first time wasn't enough. Like I have to do it again, more concretely, more irreversibly, and watch my dad's face process it one more time.

The fear that lives underneath the betrayal

What if I apply to thirty jobs and hear nothing? What if the life I’m choosing doesn’t want me? What if I walk away from something real and the alternative I imagined isn’t waiting on the other side?

And then there's the opposite fear. Which is somehow just as bad: What if someone does want me? What if I get a call? An interview? An offer?

Then it becomes real. Then I have to tell my dad. Then the in-between, as exhausting and hollow and Sunday-evening-heavy as it is, ends. And something I can't take back begins.

So I close the laptop. And I go back to the motions.

What I've figured out about the in-between

Here's the one thing I've come to understand about this place I'm in and I think it applies to anyone living in their own version of it.

The in-between isn't cowardice. It isn't indecision. It isn't weakness dressed up as responsibility.

It's the cost of being a person who takes seriously what their choices do to other people. Who can't just blow things up and walk away because other people are standing in the blast radius.

That's not nothing. That's actually something worth naming clearly because the world tends to celebrate the people who leap boldly and rarely acknowledges the ones who stay a little longer than they want to, out of love, out of loyalty, out of not wanting to leave things worse than they found them.

You're not stuck. You're being careful with something that matters.

The difference between those two things is worth knowing.

And when the moment comes, when the in-between finally ends and the next thing begins, you'll leave knowing you didn't burn anything down on your way out.

This week's reflection:

If you're in your own in-between, answer this one question:

What are you protecting by staying a little longer? And is that thing worth what the staying is costing you?

There's no right answer. But knowing what you're actually choosing — and why — makes it slightly less heavy to carry.

Want to go deeper? Copy this into Claude or ChatGPT:

"I've made a decision but I'm still in the in-between — physically present somewhere I've already mentally left. Here's what that looks like for me: [describe your situation]. Help me understand what's really keeping me here and what it's costing me. Ask me questions to go deeper."