(or why my nausea finally makes sense)

Yesterday, I did one of the hardest things I’ve done in a long time.
I walked into the clinic where I have poured more than a decade of my life—my heart, my care, my precision, my sparkle—and I walked out for the last time.

Just me. My bag. My dignity.
And Clyde waiting for me at home like the good boy he is.

I left my keys.
I left a thank you note.
And I left behind every single one of my crystals—my crystals, the ones that have been tucked gently in spaces there and through a thousand seasons of patients and stories and healing and heartbreak.

But those crystals were humming with the clinic’s energy now, not mine.
They vibrated with all the unspoken tension and the gaslighting and the quiet “it’s not you, it’s me” nonsense that became the soundtrack of too many broken promises.
They weren’t mine anymore.

I walked out without them.
A conscious uncoupling from quartz.

“We don’t belong here anymore.”

My body knew.
It always knows.

By the time I returned the keys, I felt everything—
the heartbreak, the betrayal, the relief, the exhaustion, the “finally.”

And then this morning—because the Universe has the comedic timing of a drunk circus clown—I got a text from the clinic upstairs.

They were confused. People were showing up for a Tai Chi class that wasn’t happening at the clinic—because why would it be? It’s happening at the new qigong school.
And they didn’t have my boss’s number.
OF COURSE THEY DIDN’T.

They texted me, because even without me there, I’m still the one who fixes everything. The one who knows. The one with the answers.

I had to tell them, “I don’t work there anymore.”
And then, because I’m me, I gently guided the lost Tai Chi humans to the correct location.
Because kindness costs nothing and I refuse to abandon confused people in a parking lot.

But I didn’t forward anything to him.
Not my problem.
Not my circus.
Not my qigong monkeys.

My professor joked this morning that he’s waiting for the inevitable front-page New York Times feature, because, well… the last time a man blindsided me and walked out, it did end up splashed across the national news.

But this? No.
He doesn’t get that kind of press.
He doesn’t get a think piece.
He doesn’t get a photo.
He doesn’t get my rage or my heartbreak or my spotlight.

He gets… silence.

The same silence he gave me.

What he does get is a tiny footnote in the book of my life:
a bad-juju boyfriend I should have broken up with earlier,
a lesson in boundaries I clearly needed,
and the reminder that when the Universe wants you out, it will make you sick to your stomach until you listen.

So here I am.
Waking up today without keys, without crystals, without the weight of a place that could not hold me.
My nausea is gone.
My anxiety is quiet.
Clyde snored on my feet all night in full approval.

I know this much now:
I didn’t lose anything.
I got my freedom back.
This is the messy, painful, holy part of the story where the door closes so loudly you jump…
and then realize you’re already walking toward the door that’s opening.

I’m okay.
Better than okay.
I’m free.

xo,
nakedjen