I am now in the process of leaving a job that I loved. I loved this job deeply and with passion. I was very good at it. This job brought me joy and meaning, but it also hurt me and traumatized me in many ways. It was one of those relationships that blurs the line between love and addiction. Where your friends keep asking you to leave your job and you get angry because they don’t understand. Where your mum asks you to take it easy and you promise you will, instead you loose sleep and work deep into the night and check your outlook compulsively. Still, you love it until one day you don’t.

I was lucky because I could leave when I couldn’t go on anymore. I could leave holding my head high and without much sacrifice. The way out was there, the door opened when I needed it most. Now I am leaving my job, feeling sad and hopeful and frustrated and nostalgic and exhausted by this tsunami of emotions.

I feel a pinch in the heart, from time to time, an anticipation of loss and a surprise at how I feel the saddest about leaving behind small and random things.

I will miss Rose de mai – a small coffee shop in the Petite-Patrie neighbourhood of Montréal, where I was just once, by accident. It has an abundance of plants and the best home-made tiramisu I ever tasted.

I will miss coffee dates with Tina, my partner at the City of Montreal.

I will miss filling my Thursdays with neighbourhood visits, especially waking from the whatever metro to whatever meeting place, noticing local architecture, shops and people. Montreal is a great place for a middle-class nomad.

I will miss the feeling of emptiness and expectation close to the end of the day, when it’s too late to start a new task, but too early to go home and one can have a last cup of coffee and reflect on one’s day.

So, in the end, what I will miss the most is not money or connections or the feeling of power, it’s freedom of movement, feeling connected to a place and coffee.