The Discipline of Leaving

On belonging, quitting, and refusing to cheer for nonsensical things

The first time I quit something, it was because I was insulted.

I had wanted to be a cheerleader despite having no interest in football or football players. I was ten years old at the beginning of seventh grade; I was a year and a half younger than my classmates and desperate to do something to make myself more normal in their eyes. I attended cheerleader training one Sunday in a cavernous gym full of overexcited girls. We were told we would have to perform one standard routine at the tryouts that we all learned together; then we were given instructions for building our own cheerleading routine for a certain John Doe. We had to start the routine by calling out his name loud, no, louder, no, as loud as you can: John Doe, you ready? But the way they taught us to elongate our vowels, it sounded like Jondo Yaradi, a name that might have been Middle Eastern rather than Midwestern.

I practiced my routine on the front lawn for a few weeks, cartwheeling, doing half splits, reaching my fists into the air with imaginary pompoms. Parallel to this, I practiced the cello and the piano every day for three hours, as I had for years already. I went to the Juilliard Pre-College division for my lessons every Saturday. I knew that if I got into the “A” squad of cheerleaders, practice would be on Saturdays. One day, I broke down crying in the shower over the heartbreak of having to decide between cheerleading and my elite musical education. Why did I have to choose between being a musician and being normal?

I worked relatively hard to perfect that routine, even disturbing the suburban peace by shouting my Middle Eastern football player’s name at the top of my lungs. When I say relatively hard, it was relative to music, as everything else was. Music was the one constant, the one non-negotiable in my life, and the fact that I had auditioned for and gotten into Juilliard as a Pre-College student at the age of eight seemed to my young mind to seal my fate of becoming a professional musician. I never questioned this fact; I loved it, after all—I had actual Middle Eastern friends there, and Asian and European friends—and I enjoyed making music with all of them and getting to hang out in Manhattan every weekend.

I knew I was good at music. I knew I was not good at sports.

The way I remember it, no one was rejected from the cheerleading squad; we were simply divided into the A squad and the B squad, the difference being that the A squad got the cute uniforms and pompoms and cheered at real football games, while the B squad got to practice cheerleading moves in the gym on Sunday afternoons, shielded from the public eye.

I ‘got into’ the B squad.

One of the other girls told me it looked like I had fallen during my individual routine. “No I didn’t,” I argued tearfully, “That was a cartwheel into a half split!” She shrugged. She had done a full split in her routine, to the delight of the judges. The girls who could do a full split got into the A squad.

I did not want to be in the B squad. What was the point? Suddenly the whole thing was extremely dumb. I did not want to execute faux-dance moves and cheer for Jondo Yaradi or any other football players, real or imaginary. How demeaning was that anyway? Even more so to be sorted into the group of girls deemed unworthy of egging on real, live male children, relegated to the realm of fantasy, which was where all seventh-grade girls had their interactions with boys anyway.

I declined in a huff and went back to being a library and music nerd. My Saturdays were spared, and so were my Sundays, which I continued to spend daydreaming about someday becoming ‘normal.’

The next time I quit, I had no idea what I was doing. I was in the final semester of my bachelor’s degree at The Juilliard School proper and I had plans to do a master’s degree in music in San Francisco. In April, when I was supposed to confirm my scholarship, I found that I could not. I could not check the box on the form and send it off. There was no good explanation for it. It was simply a no. My parents were perplexed and disappointed. They wanted to know what I was planning to do instead. I had no answer. I only knew that I could not continue in the same system any longer; I had struggled mightily to survive for four years in the atmosphere of stark competition and I was done with higher education, maybe even with classical music altogether. I wanted to read and write poetry and novels, but that was not an acceptable career path.

Three months later, I attended a music festival in Germany, the last event I had planned before the cliff drop at the end of my academic life. I found myself in the company of young people from around the world, but unlike the pressure cooker that had been my college experience of Juilliard, they were always busy having fun. Whereas the practice rooms of the Juilliard dorms had been occupied from 6 in the morning until midnight, we went swimming in a nearby lake and in the Baltic Sea between rehearsals and drank beer on the beach at night. We played cards on the tour bus and held no-hands pudding-eating contests. We made music and we were ‘normal.’ It felt like I had finally arrived in a culture hospitable to musicians. I postponed my return by a month, then by another month, and finally I admitted that I was staying for a while. I went home for a month to pack my bags and say my goodbyes, and I moved to Berlin.

The third time I quit, my body gave me no choice. By then, I was the principal cellist of the orchestra of the German Opera in Berlin. I was playing the game of upward mobility, auditioning for other positions, entering international competitions. It was winter, and we were playing the epic Richard Strauss opera Die Frau ohne Schatten, a nearly six-hour affair with a long, intense cello solo in the second act that had to sound as if I hadn’t already been sawing away for an hour. Much as I loved the music, the opera was not only long and stressful but loud, and after the first performance, I left the orchestra pit with ringing ears. After the second one it was worse, and after the third and final performance, I was dizzy and had a migraine. Tinnitus was the diagnosis.

I was on sick leave for six weeks, and during that time, I had vivid dreams that showed me my time with the orchestra had come to an end. Between my job and my hearing, the choice was obvious.

All things come to an end someday—all things, that is, except civil servant positions in Germany. To lose your job after reaching tenure, you would have to commit a crime so heinous that no one would have to bother firing you because you would be sent to prison.

Leaving the Most Secure Job in the World

Nevertheless, I am now quitting again, leaving possibly the most secure position in the world in this historically unparalleled moment of global upheaval. This decision has been the longest, most painful, most difficult process of all, even as my body gave me unequivocal signals over an extended period that it was time to go. First it was all manner of digestive issues, then chronic exhaustion, finally Lyme disease.

Unlike the first three instances of quitting, this time I had invested a significant chunk of my time, energy, and passion in this job—eleven years to be exact. I had initiated lecture series, seminars, improvisational concert series; I had offered mind-body workshops in an attempt to revolutionize the way we see music education. I had cultivated a wonderful group of students and taken pride in being their mentor. And yet the job had felt wrong for years, for so many reasons.

Everything I invented petered out, either for lack of interest or lack of resources. The coaching-type work I did with students was undone on a weekly basis by a general atmosphere that favored comparison and judgment over creativity and diversity of thought. It felt like I was continually rescuing students from the proverbial river and then letting the institution itself push them back in. Still, my students were supremely important to me; some of them had moved halfway across the world to study with me and I felt responsible for their well-being and artistic development. I couldn’t allow myself to abandon them. I knew it would leave many of them feeling devastated and lost.

There was also the little girl in me who had sacrificed social acceptance in order to be a musician—she was very much attached to the role and fancy-pants title of professor. (How’s that for showing those cheerleaders who’s in the “A” squad now?) She had fought hard to find her niche and be celebrated for her achievements; she was not willing to concede defeat so easily.

But again, my body gave me no choice. I was pouring my precious life energy into a black hole and I needed to recover it.

I wanted my students to know the real reason I was leaving, so I wrote them an email that felt like a dear John letter. I told them that forcing myself into the rigid structures of a university had made me physically ill. It was the truth.

I knew they would be angry, disappointed, and hurt by my decision. And I had to do it anyway.

I couldn’t go on cheering for a system I no longer believed in.

Every time I quit something, I thought I was putting an end to my life as I had known it, burning bridges and making myself a pariah. And every time, a new life emerged, new bridges appeared, new communities.

Loss hurts, whether it is initiated from the outside or the inside.

And then new shoots grow from the broken place.

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If any of this sounds familiar

How do I know when it's time to leave something, even if it looks fine from the outside?

The body often knows before the mind is willing to admit it. Digestive issues, chronic exhaustion, and eventually a diagnosed illness can be a years-long signal that a situation is wrong, long before a "logical" reason presents itself. Waiting for a clean, articulable justification isn't necessary; persistent physical distress is itself the answer.

Why is it so much harder to leave something I've invested years into, even when I know it's not working?

The difficulty scales with what's been built inside it—years of effort, an identity tied to the role, people who depend on you—not with how clearly wrong the situation has become. A decision can be obviously right and still be the hardest one you've faced, precisely because of everything sacrificed to get there.

Am I abandoning the people who depend on me if I leave?

Feeling responsible for others' wellbeing can make leaving feel like a betrayal, especially when you've genuinely mentored or supported them. But staying in a role that is making you ill doesn't serve them either. Honesty about your real reasons for leaving is possible and even inspirational although it may cause real pain to people you care about.

Why do I keep quitting things throughout my life? Is that a character flaw?

A pattern of leaving, across very different contexts and decades, can be less about lacking commitment and more about a consistent willingness to stop pursuing what has become wrong for you, even at real social or professional cost.

Does leaving something always mean things fall apart afterward?

Not necessarily. Each time something ends, whether by choice or circumstance, a different life tends to emerge: new connections, new communities, new paths that weren't visible beforehand. The ending and the loss are real, but they aren't the whole story.