I am not leaving by choice, but by necessity.  The knots in my stomach, the throbbing in my head, the sick feeling in my chest when you give me the side-eye for daring to leave at 6:30 pm.  I must go, because of you.

Don’t make it personal, you always said.  But this isn’t personal, because I am not human to you.  I am a well-oiled machine, a complicated combination of skills, a sum of parts.  I am the hands that make charts and powerpoints, a head with a moving mouth that spouts the figures you need and makes the presentations you don’t want to make, a pair of legs that runs for taxis to go to airports to fly to meetings you couldn’t bother to attend.  

Because I am a thing, I am replaceable.

You will not mourn me, and I will not mourn you.  You are a building, a tax code, a profit margin.   You are not my family.  You are not my friend. 

And you are not my future.

Very Sincerely,

Former Workaholic