My mother was very good athearingboundaries. She was less enthusiastic about respecting them.
“I just don’t understand why you’d want to be so far away,” she said.
I wanted to be so far because if I stayed close, every small crisis would become my responsibility again. Because I had spent years solving problems that were never actually mine to solve. Because sometimes loving someone meant not letting them lean on you for everything.
None of those explanations would get me anywhere with her.
“I’m doing well here,” I said instead.
Another pause.
“Well,” she said finally. “If you say so.”
She’d perfected that particular sentence over decades. It meantI disagree and will revisit this later.It also meant I was being filed temporarily under difficult, ungrateful, or confused.
“Text me when you’re done with work,” she added.
“Okay, Mom.”
“All right,” she said. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Slowly, I put my phone down.
Markie tilted his head at me. “SUCCESS.”
“That felt suspiciously like setting a boundary,” I said.
“BOUNDARY.”
I rubbed my face with both hands.
The conversation hadn’t been dramatic. Still, I could already feel the familiar aftertaste of guilt settling somewhere in the back of my brain. It was amazing how a five-minute phone call could make me feel like I had just failed a test I didn’t remember signing up for.
My laptop chimed again, and only then did I realize I had been pacing.
Right. Slack, work.
Normal life.
I exhaled slowly and picked up my coffee.
Chapter 16
Zoey
By eleven thirty,I had developed a deep and sincere hatred for the entire internet.
Not the fun kind of hatred either. The quiet, simmering kind where you stare at a Slack thread and wonder if the person on the other end understands how computers work, or if they had simply wandered into the profession by accident.
Ticket one had been a login issue caused by someone typing their password wrong six times and then accusing the system of “discrimination.”
Ticket two involved a client who had deleted their own database and then asked if we could “roll the vibes back to Tuesday.”
Ticket three contained the phrase “urgent emergency” followed by a request to change a font color.
By noon, my shoulders were tight, and my patience had evaporated.
