Leaving a job is an event. Leaving a vocation is a dismantling, and it happens in a fairly consistent order. I am setting the order down here because when I was in it, nobody had, and I spent a long time thinking each stage was a new catastrophe rather than a next one.
First, the private doubt
Long before anything visible changes, you notice you no longer believe some part of it. You do not tell anyone. You work harder, on the reasonable theory that the doubt is a symptom of tiredness.
Then, the double life
You keep performing the role competently while privately no longer inhabiting it. This can go on for years. It is not dishonesty exactly, but it costs something every day, and the cost is invisible on any calendar.
Then the leaving, which is the easy part
People think the decision is the hard bit. The decision is usually a relief. It is what comes after that undoes you.
Then the loss of the language
This is the one nobody warns you about. A vocation gives you a whole vocabulary for describing your own life — why you get up, what a good week is, what a person is for. Walk away from the work and the vocabulary goes with it, and you find yourself unable to answer simple questions about yourself in any language at all.
Then the long middle
See the previous essay. It lasts longer than you expect and it is not a sign that you chose wrong.
And then, slowly, a smaller and truer thing
What comes back is rarely the grand version. It is usually narrower, quieter, and more actually yours. Most people I have walked with describe it the same way: not what they set out to recover, and better.