Member-only story
Still Standing
Walking away from what was breaking me
I found myself walking into my office one morning and sitting at my desk, a routine I had done over and over for the last five years. Open my laptop, check my emails, put my to-do list together, sip my coffee. Except that morning, I sat down, stared out the window, and didn’t even realize I had tears streaming down my face. I couldn’t make them stop. I felt numb.
My entire body seized. I couldn’t shut off the loudest of the small ladies in my mind (Elif Shafak calls them thumbelinas in her book Black Milk). She kept screaming, What are you doing? and her voice grew louder and louder that morning. Subconsciously, I kept answering, I don’t know… I don’t know… I don’t know. Until the subconscious voice turned into my real voice, saying it out loud, I don’t know, with tears running down my face.
I turned 45 this year in March. My best friend and I were planning a birthday trip to Greece. She and I are a few months apart, so we planned the trip for May as a middle ground, since her birthday is in September. Greece was a place we talked about when we were young and broke and never thought we would make it to. But here we were, getting ready to go.
She was so excited. She kept sending me photos of the places we were going to stay, the excursions we were going to go on, the hiking trip…
