Editor's Note : I QUIT!

My back is broken from carrying it all. I’m no longer the fixer.

I have lost a few people in my life whom I wasn’t in communication with at the time of their deaths. I loved them dearly. But somewhere along the way, something happened, communication broke down, and I reached a point where I decided to stop reaching out. Perhaps I was tired of always being the one reaching. Perhaps, for once, I wanted to see what would happen if I stopped. And when I stopped, they didn't think to check in either.

Then they died.

Grief is difficult enough without the added weight of unfinished business. So alongside mourning these people I loved, I found myself wrestling with guilt. I wondered whether I should have called one more time. Tried one more time. Swallowed my pride one more time. Fixed it.

Maybe I didn't do enough. I don't think I realised how deeply those experiences affected the way I approached relationships afterwards.

I became the fixer.

I worked extra hard to hold on to people. I tried to resolve things quickly. I reached out. I checked in. I explained. I forgave. I tried to understand. I tried to be the glue holding relationships together because somewhere in the back of my mind was the knowledge that people can leave this earth with things still unresolved between you.

And I didn't want to live with that guilt again.

But there is a problem with appointing yourself the fixer: you eventually start believing everything is yours to fix.

If a friendship isn't working, you wonder what more you could do. If a relationship is struggling, you assume some responsibility for saving it. If a project at work isn't succeeding, you internalise the outcome as though the entire thing rested on your shoulders.

You become the person who carries it.

Until one day you realise your back is broken.

Mine is. So, I quit.I quit the completely imaginary job I gave myself of being responsible for making everything work.

I am no longer the fixer.

That doesn't mean I have stopped caring. It doesn't mean I will stop showing up for people I love or suddenly become indifferent when something matters to me. I will still apologise when I am wrong. I will still reach out. I will still fight for relationships worth fighting for. I will still take responsibility for the things that are actually mine. But I am learning that there is a difference between taking responsibility for my part and taking responsibility for the outcome.

Because it takes two. Two people to maintain a friendship. Two people to nurture a relationship.

Two people to repair what has been broken.

And in our professional lives, it takes teams, systems, leadership, resources and collective accountability to make things work. Yes, somebody may be leading the project, but leadership doesn't make that person omnipotent.

Sometimes things fail despite your best efforts.

Sometimes people don't meet you halfway.

Sometimes you stop calling and discover that the relationship only existed because you kept calling.

That discovery can hurt. But perhaps it is also information. I have spent too much of my life interpreting those moments as evidence that I should have tried harder. I'm beginning to see them differently. There is something deeply exhausting about constantly positioning yourself as the person who must save the day. We call ourselves dependable. Strong. Reliable. The one everyone can count on. And those can be beautiful qualities. But somewhere between being dependable and becoming indispensable, we can start carrying responsibilities nobody actually asked us to carry. Nobody appointed me the messiah of every relationship, friendship or project I entered.

I appointed myself.

And if I appointed myself, I can resign. So this is my resignation letter.I will love people deeply, but I will not love for two. I will show up, but I will notice when I am the only one showing up. I will take accountability, but I will not automatically convert every disappointing outcome into a personal failure. I will reach out, but sometimes I will stop reaching-and allow the silence that follows to tell me something. Most importantly, I am trying to make peace with the relationships I couldn't fix before people left this world. I loved them. The fact that we weren't speaking when they died doesn't erase that love, nor does it mean the responsibility for everything left unsaid belonged entirely to me.

That has taken me a long time to understand.

Perhaps that's why I'm finally ready to quit.

My back is broken from carrying things that were always supposed to have more than one pair of hands underneath them. I'm putting them down.

It takes two.