The Void
The first few weeks after depositing that check were nothing like I’d imagined. I’d fantasized about the sweet taste of victory, about sleeping in and feeling free.
Instead, I found myself waking up at 6:15 AM out of habit, reaching for a work badge that wasn’t there anymore. My kitchen table became my new desk, except there were no files to organize, no clients to call, no purpose to fulfill.
The silence in my apartment was deafening.
I’d start making coffee for an office that didn’t exist, catching myself measuring out enough for the break room. One Tuesday, I actually got dressed in my work clothes and sat in my car for twenty minutes before remembering I had nowhere to go.
The settlement money sat in my account, growing interest but not happiness. I’d check my phone constantly, half-expecting work emails that would never come. Even Martha noticed the change in me.
“Cathy, you won,” she reminded me during our weekly lunch. “Why do you look like someone died?” I couldn’t explain that something had died – the version of myself I’d been for fifteen years.
Without Midwest Mutual defining my days, who was I? The irony wasn’t lost on me: I’d fought so hard for justice, only to find myself mourning the very job that had betrayed me.
Freedom, it turned out, could feel an awful lot like falling with no bottom in sight. What I didn’t know then was that rock bottom would become the foundation for something I couldn’t yet imagine.