Breaking Free

A restless pandemic afternoon circa 2020—with therapy animals and stale office cake.

It's a restless afternoon at the office. A kitten sleeps on my desk. Presumably, the owner has something to photocopy. Something about therapy animals, my workplace has officially become a petting zoo. I've never liked animals this much. I may or may not be going through a spiritual awakening.

I look over at the book "Breaking Free from Emotional Eating" by Geneen Roth, which promises to eliminate the 4 o'clock slump. I found it at a local second-hand book store, in the New Age section, nestled between Deepak Chopra and The Power of Now. I walk to the kitchen and consider eating the dry, lacklustre chocolate cake brought in for Sheila in accounting's birthday.

I close the fridge and realize that under the compulsion to eat is a tornado. I'm hungry for more than day-old cake. I'm hungry to be loved, to love, to be seen, to create. The truth is that this job is not the best fit, and I feel an existential ache, exacerbated by a somewhat recent divorce and the global pandemic, which has fallen on the last tick of my biological clock.

Sometimes, I feel like tearing the curtains down. But I don't. I won't. Instead, I send another email.

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Therapy Animal