Split [ONC 2024]

1. Garbage

Fuck my life!

The running trail behind my house leads deep into the woods, but the path is very familiar to me. It's also a constant challenge and the only reason I'm out tonight. I hope... I pray that running will calm me down. Something should after the absolute garbage of a day I've had.

I try, I really do, to see the good in life. To believe in the healing powers of prayer.

But the more I go through the day to day, the more I'm convinced that there is no true joy in the little things. It's something we continue to tell ourselves so that we don't go insane. Because if there was anything to this saying, a day like the one I had would be impossible.

The soles of my sneakers pound over the dry leaves on the forest path, leaving behind a crunch that reminds me of stepping on cockroaches. I'd rather have some crawling up my legs then continue to think about today, but my mind won't let me be distracted.

I woke up an hour before my alarm this morning, feeling sick . My period was early and violent, making me nauseous. I spent over half an hour throwing up my guts. Steve slept through it all, like a baby, unaware that three feet away from his snoring form, I felt like dying. When I could finally move without barfing, all I wanted was to take a hot shower and wash the pain away. Joke was on me, the water heater broke down, so I had to suffer through ice-cold water. When I came out, my husband was still asleep.

I tried to wake him up over five times as I got dressed before he finally groaned and opened his eyes. By that time, we were running late. He had the nerve to grumble at me for having to drive me to work even if we'd discussed it the previous night and he knew my car was in the shop.

Even so, despite my pleas, he moved with all the speed of a distressed tortoise, so I was twenty minutes late for work. And as my miserable luck would have it, it was one of those days in which my insufferable boss Anika decided to be on time.

Of course she tore me a new one, and there was nothing I could say in my defense. We had an important ongoing project with a deadline by close of business , and I was expected to be on time.

I grit my teeth and shut my eyes for a moment. I don't want to think about this horrible day, but no matter how loudly Disturbed yells in my ears, I can't drown out the noise inside my brain. The horrific play-by-play of all the details I didn't think I could still remember.

Like the satisfied look on Anika's face as I fucked up and the project we've been working on for the past six months fell through. It wasn't my fuck up entirely, not by a long shot. Somehow, a group of six lawyers specialized in mergers and acquisitions managed to overlook an ongoing restructuring procedure involving our target company. It wasn't my business to search for litigation risks, but, as Anika so deftly pointed out, I am the senior on the team, so I should've double checked everything before sending the red flag report.

To say our client was pissed would be an understatement. And just like that morning, I couldn't say anything to Anika, not even as she shouted at me and called me an incompetent ass with the door opened so that the entire open space office could hear. She wasn't one hundred percent right, but she had a point.

I could've been more careful. I could have double checked everything, and then, maybe, our client wouldn't have left the firm. A client I brought in, after all. But I was so tired, so burned out. Because of this project and all the other projects I've been involved in over the past six months. Anika didn't care. She is always the busiest, always the most important person in the office. We are nothing but stepping stones for her and we've fucked up her chance to become an equity partner this year.

By the time I could finally leave the office, I was so angry and near tears, just to find that I didn't have my car and I had to go pick it up from the shop.