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That decision was made

June 2025 was when I left.

It was, without question, the hardest decision I've ever made. It wasn't just a job. It was a great job I’d fought hard for, and it was the job my visa and immigration status in the US depended on. Leaving it meant giving up everything I’d built there over the past decade, and for an immigrant, that is a lot. The path to staying for good had looked so close. The moment I quit, I’d lose my H-1B work visa and have to leave the country as soon as I could. My family told me to stay. My friends told me to think again. Back then, no one really supported the decision.

A few days before I handed in my notice, I went to see someone whose judgment I trusted more than my own. I told him I was going to quit and, after that, leave the States.

I knew why I was there. Even after thinking about it very carefully for months, and coming to the best decision I could make back then, which was to leave, I still wasn't sure I was sane. I had no confidence in myself, especially with everyone else telling me no. I really wanted to get some permission. Or maybe I just wanted him to tell me I was indeed sane. If he'd said what everyone else said, wait, let's go through the pros and cons again, are you sure you want to leave such a good job?, I know I’d have changed my plan.

He didn't. He went straight to the practical questions, like how I planned to settle into Toronto. Then without me asking, he seemed to know what I wanted, and he gave me permission. Actually, a ton of it. I remember listening to him so carefully and trying to hold on to every word.

I didn't see him again for more than a year. Without a visa, I couldn't go back to the US. In July 2026, I went to Montreal and got a B1/B2 visitor visa, and a month later, I found myself in the States again. I went to see him in person.

It felt different now. The heaviness life had put on me had dissolved, replaced by the lightness of catching up on what's new. Life has been treating me well, I told him. And I simply let myself be there, enjoying the time itself.

Near the end of our conversation, a question came to mind. That day, I told him so much about the past year and the changes I saw in myself, some of which I never put into words until I said them to him. And yet I grew confused about how quitting that job, a decision that made me look like I completely lost my mind, led to the person I am now. The more I looked back, the more insane it seemed that I had made that decision in the first place. Maybe everyone was right. I asked him, "What do you think? Why did it somehow work out?"

In that way, I hadn't changed. Even after everything had worked out, I was still looking to him for an answer.

He paused for a second, then said, "It was because you made the decision, and you walked through it."

I thought about that sentence for a long time after I came back. He could’ve agreed that luck had a lot to do with it. He could’ve said that taking time for my health paid off. Instead, he said:

It was because you made the decision, and you walked through it.