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On July 27, 2022, the Gender Interactive Alliance lost its funding without warning or reason. GIA is the largest transgender-equality nonprofit in Pakistan, my former employer, and my second home. It had been funded by the Global Fund of the United Nations Development Programme for four years.

UNDP’s cessation of funding was used by some trans elders as evidence of the fickleness of corporate employment and nonprofit work that’s subject to the whims of cis employers and donors. I’d heard this skepticism before: my own departure from the corporate world has been used as evidence of the futility of even highly-qualified trans folks holding down a mainstream job.

I still haven’t resigned. It’s 11:30 on a Tuesday morning and I’m working from home. I shudder when considering opening my laptop, not just for what will be on screen but for the inner battle that awaits. I stare at the glaring red digits that say 11:41. Then 11:42. A phone conversation. And another.

11:53 am. I have a conference call at 12 and haven’t been able to summon the strength to prepare. I was supposed to resign two weeks ago. And the week before that. And the month before.

11:58 am. There’s no second hand to watch time tick away; no hands at all in fact.

11:59 am. Crows squawk and my attention is driven away by the put-put of an old rickshaw. This city is alive even during a pandemic.

12 pm. I can’t put off work any longer.  I’m supposed to be running this video call. Is what I’m wearing appropriate? I haven’t shaved either. I’ll close the blinds so people can’t see clearly. Shit, they’re already there. That’s not like them. There’s no time to ground myself. Okay, remember that you’ve done this before.

1:45 pm. I don’t know where the last forty-five minutes went. Referring to my phone as an abyss would be partly true. Calling it a void is too simple. I’ll name it… I don’t know what to name it.

2:56 pm. I don’t know where the last hour went. One day back in the office yesterday after working from home for weeks and I’m already dissociating.

8:01 pm. A car alarm wails in the distance. I caress my thigh with the spine of my notebook and listen closely as the paper unevenly brushes against my sweatpants. I have therapy at 9.

Take some paid time off instead of serving your full notice period, he commands from behind his old-fashioned wooden desk. We exchange insincere platitudes as his attention drifts to his laptop. I nod and scurry out of his office. I snicker at how he framed his decision: compassionate, not motivated by a desire to see the back of a trans employee.

He didn’t address the reasons I said I was leaving. His only question was whether my chosen name will pose an obstacle to applying for another job. He listened with half an ear as I explained best practices for trans employees that I’d already summarised in a guide he’d never read. Your performance suffered in the second half of the year. I repeated how distressing being deadnamed at work was. He called everyone else reasonable. I rushed home. At least he didn’t shout.

Bittersweet is a lazy description. Lazy is an unimaginative word. Is this money saved or time lost? I spent fifteen years in a profession that 17-year-old me thought suitable.

What does one do with an identity once it’s outlived its utility? Does one bury it? Does one mourn it? Does one cling on?

Is there a word for “retired” that doesn’t evoke leisure? Former lawyer? Ex-lawyer? Recovering lawyer? The last one’s overused. Besides, why does it matter? Is a label necessary to honor my past? To be taken seriously? To better market myself?

It’s funny: men who repeatedly misgendered me were offended at not being invited to my farewell lunch. I tell friends it was a parting fuck you but in truth, they terrified me. What autonomy do I have if excluding shitty humans feels like rebelling? When joblessness is more secure than employment? When my unpaid emotional labor is both expected and invisible? When my contributions are erased but my existence is a spectacle?

Does my humanity need to be affirmed by others for me to have agency? Is agency internal or external? Can I be resilient while lacking agency?

Are there similarities between mourning careers and relationships? Shattered assumptions of permanence perhaps. Failed attempts to repair maybe. Trauma bonds. Financial costs.

Is heartache easier if the other hurls you through the exit? Is immunity from post-decision regret worth the surrender of agency?

Fifteen years. My entire adult life.

I wonder if teething is a good metaphor for life transitions. We’re always teething, in motion, in change. ”Poetry in Motion” sounds like the tagline of a crummy car commercial. But aren’t life transitions just a series of clichés? Why is originality prized? The irony is that that very question has been answered ad nauseum.

Should I seek gratitude and compassion in a sea of mediocrity? But if queerness is non-normative, would gratitude in mediocrity be unqueering? 

Then again, queer mediocrity is also a thing.

I spent the last hour trying to find the best meme on what Brené Brown terms “foreboding joy,” that feeling of happiness paired with the sensation that the other shoe is about to drop. My perfectionism paradox: without finding the best quotes on imperfection and transience, my perfectionism will smother any attempts at stillness. It’s like living in a gingerbread house and starving because I can’t decide what to eat first.

Stillness is the enemy of performative self-care. How we talk about time as a resource feeds into our collective anxieties of creating value. But stillness has intrinsic value; it isn’t just a pit stop on the productivity highway.

So the formula isn’t

                time x productivity = value,

it is

                stillness x gratitude = joy.

Imagine if I were defined by gratitude instead of output! Sophia-Layla Afsar is an appreciation rockstar instead of Sophia-Layla Afsar is the former head of legal at Company.

Thirty-five
A monstrous number
Much undone 
Mourning masculine 
Regrets pile up
Pasts lost
Futures lost

Why reinvention?
Why rediscovery?
Must past inform?
Must pining catalyze?
Must this be home?
Meaning, my jailer

Malaise replaces relief. Or is this overwhelm masked by numbness? I’m a therapist; I should be able to figure this out. I chuckle as I realize that I’m not giving myself humanity when I rail at others for denying it to me. Then again, I’m only denying myself mistakes and rest. Others deny me dignity, livelihood, and love.

What is my unacknowledged fear? Poverty? Homelessness? Joblessness? Diminished status?

It’s early afternoon. The door is locked, blinds closed. An omelet and French toast sit a few feet away, packed and uneaten. The ceiling fan and lamp batter with gusts and glare. I debate between a nap and Ritalin. Pricks of palpitation bring me back to the page.

It’s been ten days. I try ducking out of the hallway, dodging cat shit, only to slip on cat piss. I sit between unsorted clothes and a damp black saree sprawled across my room. I finally shower, accompanied by unspeakable wafts from a newly unclogged drain and the sight of dust curdled by acid. The kitchen makes me want to hurl. Being home alone isn’t as relaxing as I’d thought. My date tonight cancels.

Too many drill holes, too many broken locks, too many unpainted walls, too much rusting plumbing, too much uninstalled lighting, too much unbought furniture. Too many decisions. Too much unsupervised.

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Coming to terms with leaving a career is hard. I hope that the twenty-two transgender employees of GIA will also have an opportunity to tell their stories.