Life’s failures come at you when it’s quiet.

She wakes at 6:30 a.m. to leave for work by 7:30. Forty-five minutes later she’s parking in the basement garage then taking the elevator up to the 24th floor. Ten steps through the glass doors then make a right. Go down past the first door and make another right into the kitchen to put her brown bag lunch in the fridge and grab a coffee. She walks to her office, turns on the lights, and closes the door. Six months at a new job in a new city. It felt like 60 years.

Sit on a vinyl chair made to look like leather at a fake desk made to look like wood. She wishes her desk were wood. There is a warmth to wood. The desk - laminate covering particle board - feels cold and unnatural. Her skin wasn’t formed to touch these things. The fluorescent lights cast shadows over her face, magnifying every crease and aging her 10 years compared to the glow of daylight. The tiny lines in her forehead look like canyons at sunset. Her eyes look defeated. Bags that could carry the world. She appears pale despite the mid-summer tan. //

For her, the unsaid is quite simple: kill your ambition before it kills you. We hope she realizes this before it’s too late. There are so many like her.