I have had so many unhappy days, I don’t seem to know anything anymore. Today, I sat at my desk, sniffling quietly. At that message. At the Excel spreadsheet on the other half of the screen. At the page full of numbers on my notebook. I refused to let the tears fall. So I sniffled. I didn’t have time to cry.

Yesterday, I counted. I counted the days and the speed in which everything fell apart. Divided.

A few weeks ago, an employee I knew by name but until that day, not by face, shared the lift into work that morning. We said hello, but I was lost in my waking nightmare. In the afternoon, when I ran into him again, Mark asked, no, he begged me to smile. He hated seeing me so sad. It was Friday, I should be smiling, he said. I forced a polite grin, saying I was tired.

What could he have done had I told him the truth? That I couldn’t understand what was happening right before my eyes. That I regretted saying those unnecessarily cruel words not long ago. That I wish things did not turn out this way. That everything was seeming to crumble in such a short span of time.

How bloody awkward would that be to spill your guts to a passing fellow employee?

Today, in the midst of the chaos, Mark called with a HR query. I answered his question, then he said he hoped I was smiling today. He couldn’t see me, but I still forced that grin, saying I’m taking each day as it comes.

Except I’m not taking each day very well. For every positive step I make on one, I end up making three giant steps back the next. I’m working so hard to get past this – when I’m not dancing I spend my evenings writing into a notebook – a notebook now scribbled with the same rhetoric on every page. I’m still struggling to understand why this happened, hell, I’m still struggling to gather any semblance of order to my thoughts. Half a notebook later and I’m still no closer to any sort of resolution.

I guess I want to go back to the days when I felt like I was walking on air. These days it feels like I’m walking barefoot on broken glass.