She still forgets her keys on the counter, and she still tends to rush out the door to work without having made lunch. But she loves her job, and she loves her friends, and though she wishes she had more time for the things she loves to do, she still thinks her life is pretty all right.
She says she’s going to change her morning routine. She’s been saying this for about two years, and each day she gets a little more discouraged when the little things distract her and prevent her from fulfilling this goal. She talks about starting her own business, but she fears failure. She has this unending feeling that it could all be stripped away from her — not just the job, not just the comfort, but her pleasures, her relief, her dreams. She grasps at these things with white knuckles, in hopes that it will somehow buy her time.
She isn’t too far from the truth. It could all disappear at any moment. This is a rare thing, but even an infinitesimal possibility is still labelled as a possibility. At night, her heart ambushes her head, makes it worry and revisit bad memories and impossible scenarios that play over and over in her mind, never to be fully resolved. These moments of over-analysis creep into the daylight hours.
This is a daily struggle, and this fact looms over her like an impending wave. But then she gets a text from a friend, or runs into someone she knows at the store, or she gets home after a particularly good night, and a wave of relief washes over her, the warm calm that one feels when things are all right. These pleasant experiences are what she lives for, and what keeps her pressing forward. These small kindnesses, bestowed upon her by those she esteems, are the eye of her storm, and she takes pride in the fact that she’s found those from whom they come.
She’s a little like you and me. Maybe in some ways more than others; but her name has a ring to it that, at the right frequency, sounds a lot like “everyman”. She will correct you: “It’s ‘everywoman’.” She holds her head up high, if only to show her companions in life that they are doing a good job, and so, in return, shall she.
Sammi Leigh Melville 