Forget About Me

You check your email and you notice something is kind of missing and it scratches at the back of your mind but you don't really think anything of it. You go through the motions clearing out your email same as you do every single morning and then you click away and start sorting through your to-do list, but it keeps on pecking.

So you get up and you go to the break room and you pour yourself a cup of coffee and take a long slow sip, the warmth percolating in your mind for a while, but still you don't really register what it is that you're missing. You know that you're missing something, but you don't know what it is yet.

On your walk back to your desk and you pass people and dole out nods. You know each one of them by name and by face and they are familiar because they are the people you see every day and you see nothing in their eyes and you don't know why that bothers you and you don't understand why it bothers you that you're bothered.

Because you're in your mid-thirties and you're an adult. You've spent the better of your adult life getting past this need to find your comfort and security in others. You've discovered yourself and found that you were happier when you didn't have a real connection and when you didn't care about what others did or thought. And you swear that’s true.

You settled into your loneliness, pulling it tight around yourself like a comfort blanket and forgetting what it was like to have it any other way but you'll never admit to that. No, you're long past convincing yourself that you're living your best life and now you’re onto the stage where you've just accepted that everyone else is lying about theirs and that they're all just like you, filling the empty moments with the comfort of others and the lie that company makes the innate loneliness of living so much easier.

You know the truth. You should be able to deal with it. You shouldn't need it. You shouldn't wonder why no one is looking at you right today. You don’t know what you want them to do.

By the time you're sitting back at your desk concentrating is an impossibility. You're deep in the depths of the existential dread that you've spent years trying to avoid and you'd done so well recently and you guess that maybe that's what makes it worse for you right now. Maybe now it's just snuck up on you and stabbed you in a **** spot and that's why you can't help it. Maybe that's why your chest feels tight and the room feels tall and small and broad and closing in on you all at the same time. And is it getting darker in here? Is it getting harder to breathe?

You focus on the little things, on the things you can control. You notice you're having trouble breathing and so you loosen your tie and you notice the world is getting dark and feeling large so you close your eyes and you breathe and you press the balls of your hands against your eyelids until it starts to hurt and then you release and things get...

Better is the wrong word. Manageable. They get manageable.

And then you move on with your day and the worry is there at the back of your mind. You still can't quite figure out why it's harder today to ignore things, but it is. You sit in meetings and you're quieter than usual but no one comments and you're not sure if they even notice. You go to lunch but you don't buy anything to eat. You just wander idly to a spot down by the waterfront and you watch the waves come in and stare at the line of the horizon in the distance wondering why it always looks like there is nothing out there when you know no matter how broad this body of water is there is always something on the other side.

And in the afternoon your boss drops by your desk and apologizes and you don't put the pieces together at first. They tell you that they're sorry and you blink a couple of times and then notice an email pop into your inbox with a subject line that is in all caps blaring out your name and your special day. And you realize what it was and it should be a relief that you have your answer but you don't know that it is at all.

And you smile up at them, because it's automatic. You tell them you don't mind. You tell them it really isn't a problem. You thank them for their well wishes and say that it's all really too much and they say the one thing you hate to hear more than anything else.

"I guess that makes sense. You've never liked being the center of attention."

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