413. Getting Ahead

It’s just a phase she’s going through. That’s what they say about her. They need an explanation for her behaviour. They want to know why she has abandoned her former pursuits. They can’t seem to accept that she has actually changed.

But she knows she has changed. There’s no doubt in her mind. She sees her life in a totally different light than she used to. Before she worried endlessly about success. She wanted it all: the dream career, the dream family, the dream life. She had it all planned out and she was following her plan obsessively. It almost scares her now to think about how obsessed she was.

Everything had been going well. She was successful and on her way to even greater success. But there was a feeling she couldn’t shake, a feeling that something was terribly wrong. She’d felt this way for a long time. Something was wrong but she couldn’t figure out what. She only knew it was true.

Usually she could ignore the feeling and carry on with life. She had mastered the art of being competent and functional, and she could turn it on with the flick of a switch. When she went into that mode, she became a machine. She could do anything she had to do. And she did. She did incredible, outrageous things to get ahead.

But she was also getting ahead of herself. She would wake up in the middle of the night confused and sweaty, struck by the overwhelming concern that she had no idea what she was doing. Her efforts made sense in the context of her plan, but was the plan her? In those moments, she felt it wasn’t. It was something else entirely.

Regardless, she kept going. She stuck with her plan right up until the day everything changed. She woke that day feeling tired and muddled. She had things to do, so she tried to flick the switch. But it didn’t work. This was strange, but she told herself not to panic. She quietly put on her coat and went outside.

It was spring and it had just rained. The air was thick and fragrant with life. She walked and walked, hours floating away. She began to forget about work, about her plan, about everything. Then she realized something. She was here. She was alive. She was a real human being. These obvious facts had somehow escaped her. She knew then what she had to do. She had to change her whole life.