What?
sampaguita72:
For telling you not to give up so easily?
What what what what what?
The ache in my chest is spreading, like a spill on the floor I can’t blot fast enough with paper towels.
sampaguita72:
You kids are so sensitive these days. I thought I raised you better than that.
Don’t engage with it emotionally. Don’t think.
I take a dozen screenshots. And then for good measure, I take a bunch of photos too, before fumbling and dropping my phone on the desk. I flinch at the sound—I usually baby my phone because I didn’t buy the AppleCare. I know what Mom would have said:You could save that money by being more careful.
Chapter
4
I must be losing it. When I search for the screenshots on my work computer the next day, they’ve vanished. And when I pull up the photos on my phone, they’re so shaky and blurry, they don’t look like anything at all.
Did I imagine it? I’m thinking about Mom so much, hearing her voice in my head, now it’s manifesting inSlack-based hallucinations? Maybe this is a sign of a psychotic break. I do some frantic Google searches for symptoms before I catch myself and close the tab.
It’s fine. I’m sure it will pass on its own. I’ll handle it the way I deal with most unsettling things in life: I’ll ignore it.
But I’m nervous about using Slack, so I avoid it as much as possible. I answer DMs only by punting to some other form of communication.
Oh can you email that to me?
Sure let’s hop on a quick call!
Oh yes I’ll text you that real quick.
Do you have a fax machine by any chance? hahaha kidding (unless you do though)
At one point, Erica shoots me a pointed DM reprimanding me for being unresponsive in the public channels.
“Well?” Erica says, suddenly beside my cubicle even though she just messaged me.
Jesus!Extremely unnerving, when she does that.
She starts to walk away but glances back like I’m supposed to follow her. “Come on, you’ll be late for our eleven o’clock.”
What is this meeting, again? I pull up the email on my phone and nearly eat shit after I stumble into an errant wastebasket someone left in the aisle.
Oh, hello! It’s a meeting with the new Associate VP of Sales, Marketing, and Customer Experience. He’s getting together a bunch of teams that roll up to him so he can get to know ourworkflows and processes.
I take a seat at the conference table, and Sarah settles next to me. She’s wearing a perfectly fitted navy blazer, tastefully cropped white top, and swishy gray midi skirt.
“Are you excited to talk about ourworkflows and processesfor forty-five minutes?” she asks.
I desperately want her to like me, and normally that means I would avoid speaking to her at all costs unless it’s directly work related. But she’s talking to me like we’re both in on a joke already, so…
“Oh yeah, I live for this,” I deadpan. “Gets me up in the morning, talking about workflows.”
Sarah’s phone chimes repeatedly, and she gets absorbed in writing back. It seems like her group chats are blowing up. She has a sparkly clear pink phone case with Polaroids of her friends slotted underneath it, and whatever she’s reading makes her scoff.
