Excerpt from Spinning Brightly: Breaking Point

“I quit.”

I could hardly fathom that the words escaping my mouth were mine. But, there they were, out in the world. Inside, I was an emotional smoothie of shock, relief, terror and pride. Every nerve in my body pulsed to the triumph of being alive and free. For the first time in a long time, I could breathe. 

I looked across my desk at Judy, the senior vice president of human resource’s stunned face. She’d been harassing me since I started as the head of marketing at HGTV almost three years ago. She tried anything and everything in her campaign against me, including gossip, slander and false allegations about my integrity. I’d endured hell for a paycheck and a title. I had finally had enough.

“What?” she asked in disbelief, her droopy dog face frozen in astonishment.

“You heard me. I fucking quit,” I repeated triumphantly, my body shaking from the rush of adrenaline that rode shotgun with my courage.

She sat in the guest chair across from me, her cheap Bic pen poised above her notebook and ready for action. I’m sure that sad, little notebook had a concise rundown of all my transgressions, at work and more generally as a human being who didn’t fit her rigid mold of womanhood.

She was frozen, statue-like, a fitting monument to schoolmarm human resource professionals everywhere. 

“Go! Get up and get the FUCK out of my office! We’re done here!” I boomed.

Through the glass walls of my office, I saw heads pop up as people stood to see what the ruckus was about. On most days, the offices at HGTV felt like a posh mausoleum. Slightly raised voices were cause for alarm. Ruckuses were an all-out terrorist strike. 

As the HR busybody slowly realized her victory, she scurried out of my office to the nearest desk to pick up the phone. Who knew droopy polyester could move so fast? I couldn’t imagine who she was calling. Security? The police? My mom?

I strode to the doorway of my office, yelling to my assistant Callie, “Call Liz right now and tell her I need to see her. Tell her it’s urgent and can’t wait.”

My eyes glanced over my HR nemesis like she was invisible. She stood at an empty cubicle with a phone in her hand, stultified and unsure of what to do next. My assistant’s voice interrupted her reverie.

“Liz says come right up,” Callie said.

I quickly reviewed what just happened on my walk up to my boss’s office on the fourth floor. In the relatively short time I had been with the company, I’d been slut-shamed, harassed and scorned. I’d been investigated by outside counsel. I’d endured slander and the cruelty and inertia of powerful office cliques. Through it all, I persevered and turned our flailing television network around with a groundbreaking strategy. My ability to perform against all odds held up. That was the story of my life.

But I was breaking. 

My lead harasser from the HR department insisted on regular check-ins with me. She presented these tedious and frustrating meetings as her attempt to mentor me and help me acclimate to the HGTV culture.

I quickly learned that they were a coordinated way to erode my confidence by presenting company gossip as well-meaning, constructive feedback. Each anguishing one-on-one session began with me holding my breath while she reviewed a punch list of my inadequacies. These inadequacies we never about topics of consequence that impacted the business. They were always about the most trivial matters:

I’ve noticed you go to lunch with so and so.

People are talking and saying you’re traveling too much.

I’ve heard you’re having a tough time with your divorce.

So and so says you were mean to him.

You’ve hurt your assistant’s feelings by giving her 'meets expectations' instead of 'exceeds expectations' on her review.

There was a curse word on your Facebook page, and people are talking.

Eventually, I got the gist of these self-esteem-sapping sessions and avoided them. I looked for any excuse to delay or cancel. But on that overcast January day, I couldn’t avoid or delay anymore.

That morning, when Judy entered my office and I greeted her with a pasted-on smile, I struggled to hide my disdain for her and the mediocrity and pettiness she represented. As she rattled off my latest transgressions, I found myself looking out the window, locked in my own reverie of what if.

What if I could be free from this?

 What if I’d suffered, at work and life, enough?