A Bear almost kissed me and I couldn’t believe what I did next.
The bear’s breath brushed my cheek with the scent of raw grass. Its massive presence pumped extra blood into my heart. My stomach twisted. My gut trembled. I wanted to look away, run, and vanish into the air but it was too late.
But this time, I didn’t.
I met its cold and indifferent eyes. It stared at me like my life was one gulp away from nothingness. It came closer, sniffing with its pitch-black nose as though searching for a particular flavor. Was it testing my fear?
At that moment, I knew that if this was the end, I wanted the final scene to be mine. “Show it your grit,” I whispered to myself. I stood still, unblinking, ready to face whatever came.
The silent war lasted a few more seconds. Its mouth opened wide slowly and deliberately, close enough to kiss my face.
I didn’t move. I didn’t flinch. I decided to surrender, but only on my terms.
It could have me, yes. But only the unafraid version of me.
It paused to inhale and smelled my courage. Then, losing interest, it turned and walked away, leaving me standing there, untouched.
I didn’t feel relief. I felt powerful. The kind of power that rushes in when you finally learn how to sit inside your fear without folding, the one that quietly reminds you: You decide what you give to the world.
I woke up gasping.
Still half-drenched in the adrenaline of the dream, I got up, walked straight to my laptop, logged in, and typed:
Subject: Resignation.
It felt impulsive. But also inevitable.
I’d been fantasizing about quitting my job for years. But there was always a rational, well-packaged excuse not to take action. I just kept telling myself: Be grateful. Don’t burn bridges. Just wait a little longer. But today wasn’t one of those days.
Today was the day I outran the bear — my fear. The day I finally mustered the courage to be my most authentic self. And guess what?
Nothing happened — except everything.
That’s when I understood something deeper. That bear wasn’t just a beast in my dream. It symbolized every fear I had buried inside me, every ounce of shame and anxiety I had carried over the past several years while working for people who mistook leadership for control and believed power gave them permission to prey.
Not today. Not anymore.
This time, I stood my ground. I faced my fears head-on and reclaimed what was always mine: my power. I made a promise to myself: No matter what happens, fear will never decide my destiny.
Because I just witnessed:
The predator can never devour the fearless version of me.
Seven Years Earlier
I returned to work from maternity leave. I felt energized, excited, and ready to lead a challenging new project. And then they introduced my boss.
He had very little experience. While I respected his technical skills, his leadership skills were non-existent. He couldn’t manage people. As for empathy, he couldn’t even spell it.
He ran the team like a machine, measuring productivity with spreadsheets, rewarding output over insight, and pitting people against each other in a race to exhaustion. He prided himself on “leading by example,” which really meant competing with his own team around the clock.
In our one-on-ones, he’d quote Simon Sinek about what great leadership looked like but acted like a knockoff version with none of the inspiration.
His management philosophy was simple: hire a group of people, train them, and expect identical results from everyone, like they were factory parts. He believed “stress motivates people.”
I often tried explaining that it didn’t work that way, but he turned a deaf ear. It was evident from his actions that he felt threatened by me. I led a happy team and had real leadership experience. He had control issues and a need to prove something. Because I questioned the system, I became the problem.
But I wasn’t the only one. A few others, like me, left after suffering anxiety and blackouts from the constant pressure.
He started targeting me, asking for performance metrics that didn’t apply to my role, making allegations, micromanaging and undermining me, and ignoring my insights.
It was borderline bullying. After six months, I stopped trying to explain. I just wanted to survive.
When your confidence is crushed, just making it through the day can feel heroic.
Then, one day, I told him the truth that I dreaded meeting with him.
He feigned concern and pushed me to step down from management, so he could promote someone else and make me report to them. I dubbed it Code: Shameless.
Quitting wasn’t an option. We lived abroad. My family’s insurance depended on the job. So I had no option but to agree to everything he said.
That day, I remember walking out of the office with shame draped around my neck like a heavy, wet towel while my dignity lay crumpled on the carpet, right next to my unused voice.
Then my dad called. He’d been quietly listening for months as I updated him about the toxic mess I was dealing with at work. This time, after hearing about Code: Shameless, he said something that shocked me. “Quit!”
“Excuse me? But what about the insurance?” I asked.
He repeated, “Quit your useless job.”
His words shattered my cage. It felt like he’d lifted a herd of elephants off my chest. I could finally breathe. And I started smelling freedom.
This time, my husband didn’t hesitate. After hearing the story, he said, “Just do it.” And I did. I stood up for myself and walked out of that toxic project for good.
Workplace depression is real
We often underestimate the damage done by a toxic workplace. It isn’t just motivation that gets lost; it’s much more personal. We begin questioning our values and our talents. Our creativity dies a slow, quiet death. Eventually, we start to believe we’re worthless.
When I reported to that boss, I often visualized myself drowning while everyone else around me stayed afloat. It felt like I was the only one suffering in the entire universe.
My dreams became surreal and disturbing. Sometimes, I was toothless, unable to speak. Other times, I was half-naked, scrambling to cover myself. Giant dinosaurs chased me. Or I was riding a bullet up a skyscraper, only to fall from the top in slow motion. I could feel every jolt and drop in my body.
Eventually, I began tweaking my dreams, waking up to drink water, and then returning to sleep to change the ending. It was like my subconscious was desperately trying to rewrite the story.
The stress followed me everywhere, even to sleep.
I’m not an animal person, but once, I dreamed of a huge dog hugging me. For the first time in months, I felt comfort. I didn’t try to change anything. I just let it hold me gently, dearly, for a little longer.
Sometimes, kindness comes from the strangest places.
I knew my mental health was in danger the day I read a news story about a man who jumped from the seventh floor of his office building.
My first reaction: At least he escaped having to show up at work.
That scared me more than anything because I understood his despair and recognized myself in him.
One day, I recorded an 8-minute voice note listing everything I felt thankful for in my life: family, health, home. It sounded beautiful. But gratitude couldn’t fully erase the voice in my head telling me I wasn’t enough.
Toxic leaders don’t just ruin work; they rewrite our sense of self.
“When you get on the wrong train, get off at the nearest station. The longer it takes you to get off, the more expensive the return trip will be.” A Japanese quote.
It took me a long time to heal.
Thankfully, I also had people at work who believed in my strength and refused to let me quit on myself. One of them was my former boss. She reluctantly brought me onto her project within the same organization.
I still remember asking her, “Why won’t you just let me go?”
She looked at me and said, “Because you’re valuable not just to this team but to this organization.”
In that moment, she reminded me of something I had long forgotten: I can still make a difference. She felt like a drop of elixir in an ocean of poison: a rare kind of leader who didn’t just see my potential but protected it.
She reminded me that healing was still possible in a world that had tried to shrink me. She made me feel safe to begin again.
Sometimes, all it takes is one person to hand you back your mirror.
Slowly, I returned to my happy place: Myself.
History repeats itself
A few months ago, after a departmental reorganization, I reported to another new boss. Everything seemed fine until he brought in someone with zero people management experience and made her my manager.
Although I was skeptical at first, I gave it an honest shot. I worked with an open mind. But soon enough, history repeated itself.
For five months, I juggled multiple tasks, working around the clock. She neither understood nor showed interest in my work. Her only repetitive feedback was, “You need to be more proactive.”
I’d seen this movie before, and I knew how it always ended.
This time, I recognized the signs. I was on the wrong train and pulled the chain before it could go any further. But the lesson in this chapter was different.
Life has a way of making you repeat the same patterns until you choose to break the cycle.
When I paused and looked inward, I realized this was no longer about difficult bosses. I stopped blaming the outside and started listening to the inside.
It was time to finally answer my long-standing inner call, the quiet, persistent urge to do what felt true to who I am — work that lit my soul and rippled outward to make a difference.
We don’t drown by falling in the water; We drown by staying there.
I was done shrinking to fit into roles I’d long outgrown. I stopped waiting for the “right” leader to validate me. I didn’t need permission anymore; I needed power.
Power to become the change I wanted to see.
So I claimed it. I bet on myself, became my own boss, and committed to doing work that matters. I had to let go of anything that no longer aligned with my vision, and the first step was walking away from the job that kept me small.
Quitting wasn’t the end. It was the beginning of becoming unstoppable.
Disney says the princess kissed a frog and found her prince.
My version:
The bear came close.
She didn’t run. She chose herself.
And she remembered who she was.
© Tamil, 2025.
Image Credit: Photo by Suraj Venkataraman on Unsplash
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