The hot doctor’s prescription has taken the edge off the pain. My back still throbs, but the sharp pain is now buried under something thicker. For the first time since yoga tried to kill me, I can take a full breath without bracing.
The problem is that my brain has decided to celebrate this by becoming feral.
I stare at the dust on the ceiling fan.
I notice more.
Then more.
Now I’m mad.
Why is it that the moment your body forces you to stay still, your apartment suddenly becomes a catalog of all your failings?
There’s a sock on the floor that didn’t end up in the laundry basket.
The coffee table in the living room looked crooked earlier, and the throw blanket was halfway off the couch.
I want to fix everything. I want to get up, clean the apartment, rearrange my furniture, maybe even paint a wall. My body feels confident enough to try. Right now, I feel like I could lift a fridge.
But I’m not an idiot.
This is the medication talking. The meds are masking the pain, not curing it. If I start haulingfurniture around, I’ll wake up tomorrow with my leg numb, explaining to an emergency doctor why I moved my couch at midnight.
No, thank you.
I need to work tomorrow.
I made it through today by dragging my laptop to the couch and balancing it on a pillow. I couldn’t sit in my office because my chair requires bending, and bending is currently beyond my skill set.
So I worked horizontally. I answered emails and took calls while managing a situation I didn’t cause but will absolutely be blamed for if I don’t fix it.
That’s the job.
I didn’t mean to do this for a living. I studied business. Thought I’d be in a glass office wearing a blazer, giving presentations, and pretending to care.
Then I realized businesses aren’t numbers; they’re people, and people are disasters.
Now I manage reputations. I take self-important men in expensive suits and stop them from making things worse. Sometimes I reframe the narrative. Sometimes I bury it. Sometimes I stand two feet behind a client as they give a public apology they don’t mean, and hope no one zooms in on my expression.
Tomorrow’s client: a politician who went viral after flipping off a reporter.
His team wants me to make it go away, or better yet, turn it into a redemption arc. Something that makes people say,he’s just under a lot of pressure.
Which means I’ll spend my morning digging for a sob story, a character-building childhood trauma to explain why a fifty-year-old man has the emotional maturity of a child.
Sometimes my job feels soulless. Like I’m standingat the edge of a moral cliff, toeing the line, wondering whether I’m helping people or just making sure consequences don’t land where they should.
But it’s not always the case.
There are good clients as well.
I worked with a women’s shelter last year when they were dragged online after someone twisted a fundraiser story into a scandal. I helped them issue a statement that didn’t pander, and watched donations triple in forty-eight hours.
I still keep the thank-you email printed in a drawer in my office, like a reminder that I’m not completely dead inside.
I don’t work with criminals.
I don’t work with men who hurt women.
