In one of my final meetings at a workplace I’d eventually leave, the whole staff was brought together to learn about a major new initiative. We were told it was something they had been thinking about for years. For many of us, however, it was the first time we had ever heard of it.
We did what responsible people do during serious conversations. We analyzed the proposal and considered how the idea would work in practice. We named strengths and weaknesses. We asked about timelines, staffing, risks and alternatives.
Then the mood shifted.
We were told not to be so negative and to focus on the positives.
At once, the room seemed to understand what had happened. People began adjusting themselves almost immediately. Some newer staff softened their questions into observations. Others reached for optimism, as if to clear the air. Some tried to downplay the moment into a simple communication gap.
But those of us who had worked there for years recognized the pattern right away. The meeting wasn’t an invitation to think together. It was an invitation to affirm what had already been decided.
In these meetings, collaboration was allowed, but only up to a point. Questions were tolerated, but only if everyone remained in their lanes. So I sat in silence and watched the familiar pattern unfold. I recognized the way people adjusted themselves to fit the narrative being handed to them, because that had been me, too.
Young, ambitious and eager
When I first entered that workplace 10 years earlier, I was young, ambitious, and eager to prove myself. The desire was simple and sincere. I wanted to contribute to something larger than myself, and I wanted to know that my work mattered.
There was nothing wrong with the wish itself. Giving my best had carried me through university and graduate school, through every stage where effort had been rewarded. So I brought the same mindset to work.
But what I didn’t know then was how easily that mindset could work against me.
In my desire to do good work, I tried to be useful in whatever way the team needed. If the work required me to stretch, I stretched. If it needed me to hold back, make room for others or carry more of the load, I did.
Some of that was growth. Some of it wasn’t.
The difference wasn’t always easy to tell, especially in a work environment where discomfort often came with an explanation. When things didn’t sit right, they were framed as learning. When situations were uncertain, they were framed as requiring flexibility. When decisions became ambiguous, they were framed as cautious. Leadership, I was told, required sitting with tension, contradiction and ambiguity without rushing to resolve these things. I was also told that young people were often too sharp, too quick, too sure.
Eventually, I learned to translate concern into suggestion, hesitation into alignment, disagreement into “something to consider.” That fluency began to look like competence. I became someone who looked composed, held competing needs in my hands at the same time, and made difficult things sound manageable.
But the more fluent I became, the more contradiction I internalized. As my responsibilities grew, it became harder to act from what I knew. I thought that tension was simply part of becoming a leader.
By the time I finally felt depleted, the only language I had for it was burnout.
Living like a cactus in a box
That was partly true, that I was burnt out. I was tired. But only later did I understand what I was really feeling: the exhaustion of living like a cactus in a box. My burnout came from staying too long in a place that was the wrong fit for me.
For a long time, I thought I was the problem: too straight, too sharp, too inconvenient for the place I was in. Every difference of opinion felt like proof that I needed to soften. Every disagreement felt like evidence that I had failed to fit in. So I kept adjusting myself into something people could tolerate: less of a problem, more of a solution.
But the truth was, neither the cactus nor the box was wrong. They were simply not meant to fit together.
Fit isn’t moral superiority, just as endurance isn’t proof of health. Once I could see that, I could stop treating every difference and disagreement as a personal failure.
Leaving the workplace I’d helped build, and had given nearly 10 years of my life to, felt strangely ordinary. It was the thought of staying that had begun to feel unthinkable. When I walked out of that office on my last day, there was no party, no moment of inner triumph, no sudden reinvention and no clear sign that I was finally free.
Instead, I was just tired.
Healing in silence
Even months later, when there were no meetings on my calendar, no lingering paperwork with Human Resources, and no remaining trace of my role in any official capacity, the tiredness stayed. Feeling better took nearly a year, and it didn’t happen all at once.
It took long periods of silence during which no one needed me to translate myself into something that was easier to accept. It took months for my body to believe that what had ended on paper had really ended in real life. But bit by bit, something in me unclenched. Like a long-held muscle, I slowly realized I no longer had to brace.
Then something returned.
Not a new job. Not a new identity. Not even ambition or confidence.
Discomfort no longer feels like a weakness I have to overcome. A sharp edge no longer feels like a personal flaw. And fitting in no longer feels like my only purpose.
What returned was my own voice in my head. My thoughts. My own reading of things. My ability to hear myself without a filter.
In this new phase, discomfort hasn’t disappeared. There is still doubt, rejection, uncertainty and all the ordinary friction that comes with work and life. But discomfort no longer feels like a weakness I have to overcome. A sharp edge no longer feels like a personal flaw. And fitting in no longer feels like my only purpose.
Growth takes effort and discomfort. So does learning to take up less space. Both ask something of us, but the former kind of discomfort grows us into ourselves. It gives us more room, not less. The latter type teaches us to become smaller, until we begin to mistake that smallness for maturity, flexibility or strength.
I see now that there are places where what I bring to the table is welcome, and there are places where those same qualities are unwelcome. However, the point isn’t to declare every difficult place “wrong.” The point is to stop calling every failure of fit a failure of character.
From time to time, I think back to that meeting and how, for years, I’d tried to belong in that room.
Now I understand it differently.
It wasn’t that I had nothing useful to offer.
It was that the room had already decided what kind of truth it could hold.
For years, I mistook that limit for something wrong with me.
But not anymore.
«RELATED READ» BEYOND EXHAUSTION: When rest isn’t the remedy»
images: Depositphotos
