I started walking every day because my doctor said it would do me good. Apparently, in cases like mine, the mental health walk is just as much part of the treatment as anti-depressants. So, I started, walking, at first between 5 and 6 pm, because that’s when the crowds of workers, employees and commuters flood the street, and I enjoyed pretending to be part of that crowd. Like I had somewhere to go. My walks initially lasted thirty minutes, then forty-five. Autumn was enveloping us, early dark hours blanketing the city, so it started making no difference to walk at five or a ten pm.

On one of my first walks later at night, I decided to circle the park near my home. It became my usual path to follow. It’s then that I noticed it, the red window. It was like a ruby cast into the building facing the south-west side of the park. That night I noticed it but reembarked on my destination-less journey quite soon. The following evening, it was there again, and this time I stood there looking a little longer. I counted the floors – one, two, three, five… seven. Then I started counting the number of windows for each floor, each flat. Every apartment on each floor had three windows and one slightly detached that marked the emergency staircase, but on the seventh floor the red window seemed to mark the only room of the flat, and moreover it was where the second window was placed for each other apartment. Like a middle room, isolated. That spurred my curiosity and it kept me thinking for the rest of the walk and at night.

The following evening, the red window was still there waiting for me. So I decided to walk towards the massive entrance of the building and started checking each label of the doorbells outside. Then someone called out, Miss, I jumped and the concierge of the building was there, asking me who I was and what I was doing there. I stuttered, explaining that I lived nearby and noticed the red window on the 7th floor, I didn’t have bad intentions, it was just pure curiosity. He stared at me, frowning, and said that there was no 7th floor. I replied to his scepticism by inviting him to look for himself. He stepped onto the walk-side and the red window was not there. I gasped. He said I’d better go or he would call the police.

My steps echoed on the way back home, my arms crossed holding the opposite elbow, my head shaking unuttered denial.

The following evening, I went later, not wanting to draw the concierge’s attention. It was past midnight and the red window was there. This time, it was glimmering, as if some source of light was flashing in the remote part of the room. I looked at the entrance of the building and the doors were opened. I crossed the threshold telling myself I would just look for the seventh floor and leave.

I started climbing the steps, counting each landing, the number of floors. On the sixth floor, I expected the stairs to finish, but there they were, thirty-two more steps. My breath was short, I don’t know if from the effort or the subtle, uncomfortable feeling that was spreading in my stomach. The stairs ended opening directly on a dark corridor. I decided to turn back but then something caught the corner of my eye: a red, dimmed light. I turned and started to follow it.

You see, every horror movie and story has a stupid character that goes where the danger lies. We all think it is almost blasphemous to be that senseless. But no movie or story can convey the magnetic force that pulls you there. My brain was trying to scream at me leave, do not go, leave now, but it was like a background, buzzing noise that was muffled by that force that was pulling me closer to the red light.

There it was, the room. In the middle of the corridor, the glimmering red light showed me the way. I stood in front of the room, darkness fading the space into one single wall of darkness. I stood there, and the force pulled me in. There was complete silence.

Until I saw two eyes in the darkness and heard a scream.

The door shut behind me and I found myself in the darkness, panting, crying, sobbing in the solitude of this non-space.  I don’t know how long I have been here and I don’t know how big this room is because it took me some undefined time to find a window that faces the park. I don’t understand, it seems to appear only at night because it is always dark outside. I try to bang on the window but nobody can hear me or see me.

____

I don’t know how long I have been here. But I noticed someone across the street staring in this direction. I cry, I scream, but I cannot see if they notice me and realise I am stuck here.

____

They are back – and this time they seem to have walked towards the entrance. A glimmer of hope is born inside of me, countering the wrapping and suffocating darkness. I can almost touch it, it is gluey and sticky.

____

I can hear footsteps! I can hear them! I call out and then I see, the door opening, it is across this sea of darkness, I start running towards it and see a shadow outside, just for a second before the full figure of the person appears.

It is me.

I scream. And the door closes. 

Someone is calling someone else, a male voice calling Miss, Miss?

I wish they responded so that my ears can at least relax since my eyes cannot. I squeeze them tight and the first tears form.

- MISS

I tentatively open my eyes and there is a head floating above me. Where is the body? Everything is so blurred.

- Miss, can you hear me?

- The lights

- What?

- The lights – they’re too strong

- Oh.

The head bobs away, maybe looking for its body, and finally the lights are switched off.

My eyes relax and a stream of tears roll down my face.

- Is it better?

- Yes, yes. Thanks.

Slowly my surroundings come into focus and I discover that the floating head has its body. It is wearing a white coat open on the front, a stethoscope is hanging from the neck and it keeps hitting a badge.

- Where am I?

- At the hospital, the Brugmann Hospital. Do you remember how you got here?

I am too confused to panic. I stare at the doctor, squeezing my eyes, trying to visualize whatever scene I should remember that has led me here.

- No. I – I don’t

- That’s OK, it can happen in cases like yours. Let’s start from scratch, OK? I will ask you for some questions and I would like you to take your time to answer.

I nod and realise that my whole body is in pain. The thought that I may be paralised is killed by the pain that expands through my limbs, chest, everything.

The doctor starts asking me my name, where I live, where I am (“I mean, country, not hospital” he clarifies when I look at him confused. Isn’t it cheating if I answer? You told me we are at Brugmann Hospital). When he asks me the name of the president I hesitate and ask if he means Brussels region, Wallonia, Flandres or the federal level because it really depends, and should I answer in French or English is OK? He is the one staring at me now and grins. If you remember the government structure of Belgium, we can assume your intellect is intact. I would like to say that most probably it is just as fragmented as the government here, but I have passed the exam and I have always liked to pass exams so I shut up.

He pulls a chair by my bed and sits down.

- Listen, this is what happened: you fainted, or after further investigation, you had a seizure. An epileptic one. You fell badly in the bar you were at and your friends called an ambulance. We couldn’t find an emergency contact but your friends gave us your partner’s number, even if they have informed him of course. He is out here but I need to ask if you consent to his visit. Or is there anyone else you’d like us to call? Parents? Family?

I freeze – should I tell him that I haven’t talked with my family in months?

Read more

I gaze around Piola for the umpteenth time. I don’t know if my desperation exudes so heavily that the staff has taken pity on me, but they let me stay here during the temporal no-man’s-land that is 3 and 5 pm: after lunch, before aperitif.

I stare down at the dregs of coffee on the bottom of my cup. It is easier to focus on them rather than on one single sentence.

Books have always been my safe place. I fell in love with reading because I watched Matilda and I concluded that I could also get powers if I read. So I started reading. First in my bedroom, then on the couch during family movie nights, afterwards at birthday parties, during recess, ultimately I was living when I was not reading.

But I cannot read anymore. And if unemployment was scary before, the wrongness of not being able to read, the one thing that I always did for myself and that always recharged me, saved me, transported me to safe places inaccessible to others, is scaring the shit out of me more then anything. My neurons are the same as the dregs of my coffee.

I put the book down and stare at it.

Please, reveal yourself to me. Nothing happens.

The hustling around me alerts me that it is almost 5 pm. Chairs do a somersault and flip, guided by the confident hands of the staff, that place them back on the floor, some tables are separated while others are lined up together, extras of bottles materialise. The room is dancing around me but I am immobile, beyond this room and this moment, nothing moves.

I decide a glass of wine at past 5 is socially acceptable and I order one. I cannot read anymore but I can still watch people so I delight myself with that. I live in the institutional neighbourhood of Brussels, meaning that EU Institutions are the first thing I see in the morning when I open my window.

I am part of Monopoly, gentrification pushing investors and developers to turn every single building surrounding me into the next high-end property, hotel, office building. The cannon, top hat and other pawns are replaced by people in suits that stride along the streets all day every day, week ends included, rushing towards the next meeting that will save society, Europe and The World.

In this neighbourhood, we avoid disasters multiple times a day, with a break between 12 and 2 pm.

The Suits walk into Piola and I discover I do indeed have a power: I am invisible. I don’t wear a suit, that is enough for me to go unnoticed. The room colours with languages and dialects from all over the board.

It is difficult to be unemployed when you live in the neighbourhood that celebrates ambition and career the most. I wish I were in Prison, that would justify my inability to move further on the board, hoping I would never get an escape card.

Something grabs my attention. Something is being said that rings a bell. It is my name.

I turn and I see a pawn: she was my colleague at my first job. She basically owns Park Avenue in Monopoly now. I have not met her in years, especially since she distanced herself when I started lagging behind in the game – it didn’t make me interesting enough.

She is shrieking with pleasure at seeing me, asking me how I am, did I come here often?

I stare blankly at her. She is bombarding me with questions.

I only have one answer: I am unemployed.

I go back to scrolling.

A video of a woman in her early thirties that tells me, if I am thinking of changing careers then I MUST try this, because she is a millennial too and she still doesn’t know what to be when she grows up. I like her: she is clearly speaking from a place of care. I sit up on the couch to watch. She warns me that if I missed her third episode, it would be better if I go and watch that first because then I will understand better. I overestimate myself, with my law degree and six years of working experience and make a mental note to watch that later. This episode is about discovering my strengths because, apparently, if I discover them I can build on them and feel more aligned with what I do. She reassures me that she is not making this up and that evidence shows (though she does not disclose what evidence) that who does this will be six times more engaged at work, and using my strengths in new ways for just one week will produce a measurable increase in my happiness for at least six months. I frown. This is slightly mathematical but I can do this. I wonder how I can discover my strengths and, more importantly, does it still work if I don’t have a job to apply this framework to? Or do I have to first find a job, work for one week and then be happy for six months, and then work another week to extend this happiness? I make a quick mental timeline: if it takes me a month to find a job, let’s say another month of administrative stuff, in two months I will start the onboarding which usually lasts, what, two weeks, so in two months and two weeks I can apply those strengths for a week and in (give or take) three months basically I will be happy!

I smile to the pile of clothes on the floor in front of me because this is great. The first step is to take a survey on a certain website that I shouldn’t question the legitimacy of because her degree program recommended it (though she does not mention which university or school is given by). If I fill it in, I will know my strengths and she is so open that she shares hers. Wait. I frown again. She says ‘My top five values’. Wait wait wait. Weren’t we talking about the strengths? Why have we switched to values? My five years law degree feels useless and I blame myself for not having watched the other video first. I watch this video again and confirm that this was about strengths. I feel betrayed and I want to contact her because her mixing terms is costing me my timeline of two months and three weeks to happiness.

I decide that it’s better to disconnect from this for a bit and go back to scrolling.

A man tells me that I should do this movement with my leg to see if I have tight hips. I stand up to try and I don’t even get close to mimicking the movement that I feel a stabbing pain in what he calls my flexors and this frustrates me very much, so I stop.

I am standing when I hear the keys in the door and I panic. My boyfriend walks in and I rush to the pile of clothes on the floor, pretending I was going to do some laundry. Fortunately, I haven’t eaten all day so the kitchen is clean.

- Hey!

- Hey, welcome home.

I take the pile of clothes with me, kiss him and head towards the bathroom to stuff them somewhere.

- How was your day?, he asks from the entrance hall where he is taking his shoes off.

- Great! Great.

Why would I ever say that?

- Oh, what have you been up to?

I walk back from the bathroom and desperately look for something to say.

- I… I-

I see the phone from where I am standing and the words come out before I can even process them.

- I had a session with a job counsellor.

- Really?!

His surprise tone feels like an ambush.

- Yes, yes I did.

- Oh sweetie, that’s great! What did you guys talk about?

- Well, we… we talked about the- the steps to take to identify my values and strengths so that I can find a job that aligns with what I can actually build on. You know, this psychology concept of “Be your values and your strengths will follow”.

Where the fuck did all of this come from?

- Wow, it sounds like your counsellor is really competent and that they can give you a very solid process to follow?

- Yes!, I squeak, - It was so interesting! And we made a timeline and ideally in three months I will land my dream job!

- I am so proud of you!

My boyfriend kisses me on my forehead. I feel great.

- I must confess, he leans away, - I was… well, I was starting to get worried. You know, that… that you didn’t have a plan.

My stomach twists and I feel an acidic sensation in my throat. I swallow.

- No, no. Don’t worry. I do have a plan.

I walk towards the kitchen counter and he flops on the couch. He doesn’t notice my body print on it.

- By the way, shouldn’t you update your LinkedIn to do that?

- What?

- Today, I was on your LinkedIn. It has been, what, two months now? You still haven’t updated it?

These words are a cold shower that freezes me to the spot. Update. I haven’t updated my LinkedIn. My boyfriend speaks the word update but what I hear is vulnerable. Disclosing to the world that I don’t have a job anymore means making myself vulnerable. It means exposing my failure, drawing questions from acquaintances and friends that I haven’t met in months, who will ask me to meet them at 15.45 on a Tuesday at the café on the corner round their office because that’s when they a have a fifteen minute-gap, but they absolutely want to hear from me what has been going on. It means receiving messages from recruiters for jobs similar to my previous one, that I am not even sure I want anymore, but that I will feel responsible to take; it means turning my back to what I have been feeling for months: inadequacy, and ironically enough, misalignment between what I have been doing and my values and strengths, which I don’t even know but somehow I know they are not using corporate lingo as if I had to hit another Duolingo streak.

By the time I have had all these thoughts, the scary awareness that it is too late overwhelms me, because now I know: I don’t want to do that anymore, but by a sadistic twist of reality, admitting to the world that I am not doing it anymore means being snapped back into the hamster wheel that will take me back to such a job.

- Yes, that’s a good idea, I say.

Entangled limbs that you don’t know anymore who they belong to. Closing your eyes and letting go. Focusing on your breathing and feeling more.

Things that feel bad in sex:

Drifting away with your mind. Losing sync with the other person. Whispering someone else’s name which makes your partner stop.

- Who’s Franc?

I open my eyes and find myself staring at my partner’s sweaty face, furrowed brows and a questioning look that I definitely don’t want this close to me.

Damn it.

- Franc? Who said Franc?

- You said Franc.

- No, I didn’t.

- Yes, you did!

We look at each other for seconds that drift into a standstill. I can tell that thoughts are cluttering his head. His eyes dart across my face, like bullets searching for somewhere to land.

- WHO IS FRANC?

I shift and he immediately moves away, as if realising we were still locked together, as if being inside of me suddenly feels wrong if he cannot be inside of my head too.

I sit up and tuck my hair behind my ears.

- I… I really don’t think I said “Franc”?

- You don’t think? So, what is it, me imagining things or you actually not being sure?

- I… I didn’t say it.

- Yes, you did! And this is getting frustrating and I damn well would like to understand what the heck is going on!

This is the thing I got to know about him. He never gets mad. Never. He will get upset. He will show it, but not once has he cursed or raised his voice or shown any sort of anger. So that damn and heck convey a disappointment ready to climax into anger that I don’t like. Rocks should carry that kind of physical weight, not words. Not words during sex. Or just after it.

I know I said Franc. What I don’t know is how to explain that Franc is an old man in his sixties working at the unemployment agency. Franc is someone with a nervous sniff, constantly rubbing his nose with the back of his left hand, with thin grey hair flattened against each side of his head. Franc has an aggressive tone of voice that made me feel like I was being questioned rather than interviewed. How many years of experience did I have? How many languages did I speak? What skills did I have and did not have? Would I be open to working part-time or signing a temporary contract? What about weekend and night shifts? Was I applying to jobs? How many on a weekly basis? Why did my previous employment end?

Oh, Franc.

That is where the name comes from. A scene that does not belong to this moment, a box in my head that I tripped into while roaming around looking for that safe corner where I could stop thinking and start connecting with my body.

But now Franc is out here, he has a physical presence that does not belong here and a power over us that he does not deserve. He is a jack-in-the-box thrusting out and I don’t know how to push it back in.

- Ok, listen…

Why is it so difficult? Why does it feel so wrong to say “Franc is the job counsellor I have been assigned. He is an old guy, no one really, I just drifted away. And that is not because sex is not good with you, but because my head is not good with me right now, because I feel like I constantly end up in places that I don’t want to visit. I do not want to drift away. I do not want to be that person that is so lost in her head that she misses the good moments she should be having. I do not want to discover that so many thoughts have been piling up that mental boxes have started bursting open with their content flying all over the place. Mental explosions that scatter debris everywhere and mix the now with the before with the if. The only explosion I should be having now is an orgasm, for fuck’s sake.

I have become the chaotic content of those boxes, and I am no longer the person who owns them.

- Listen what?

I look up at my partner and a knot in my stomach tells me that I should just say it, just unclog the tongue, let it loose, speak, say it, say anything really, sorry it is this unemployment, sorry it is stress. But my mind keeps drifting until he stands up and walks away.

I finally reach the end of the orangery and, to my greatest surprise and pleasure, find a wooden chair dropped there. I sit on it and I finally take a sip of the wine that I have been protecting from my own clumsiness while walking in high heels in a dark garden. You also lost your path, little chair? I find myself whispering to my wooden throne.

It is not that I wasn’t enjoying the conversations or the people. Throughout the apero and the buffet section of the dinner I have been walking around and making small talk with people I have never met before, which is always fun. I didn’t even use the most common ice-breaker bride’s or groom’s side? but slowly built the conversation with different questions each time. I like meeting people and I especially like meeting people outside of Brussels because it has become a revealing pattern to discover that the further you are away from the European capital, the less you will talk about politics and jobs. Tonight, however, this pattern has been broken by some strangers that seemed to have a common interest in people’s careers. It felt like a flash mob I wasn’t aware would take place. I have met five different groups of people and all of them, at one point or another, brought up the question so, what do you guys do? And there we were, all of a sudden the circle we were politely standing in turning into what felt like an anonymous alcoholic meeting, each sharing our professions. I have been preceded by doctors, head-hunters, engineers, administrative assistants. Of course, I knew this could happen, and that is why I had been rehearsing the sentence I am in-between careers on the airplane, in the taxi, in the hotel while doing my makeup. By the time the ceremony was over and we were making our way to the reception, I even felt confident about it. I genuinely thought nobody would ask such a cliché question at a wedding that had become a gathering of internationals from all corners of the world. This was not my first wedding and at each previous one I had the most beautiful, original conversations that would stretch from light pleasant chitchat to tipsy engaged deep talks.

But here I am tonight, after five rounds of I am in-between careers, dosing my wine intake so that I do not have to go back there too soon.

I stretch my mouth, opening it and then pushing the lower jaw to one side and then the other, so that my mouth is shaped like a weird, dislocated s. I take another sip.

What if this happened at the other weddings too, and only now I am noticing and paying attention? I mentally map the weddings I have been to and virtually retrace the conversations I had then. I cannot remember all the people I had talked with, but I remember fragments of conversations: whether it was our first time in that city, or even country, if we had extended the stay and turned it into a holiday, where we had travelled from. The longer the drinks had flowed, the louder and more boisterous our conversations had become, joking around and, like an orchestra coordinated by an invisible director, joining in the silence when someone had made an emotional toast to the newly wedded couple.

I stir the wine in my glass. It is almost over. I raise my eyes to the sky that I can glance through the leaves and oranges of the tree I am sitting under. How can I have had all those conversations and never discussed jobs? What if I was the one who would ask the question? Is it really this wedding different or is it me?

I thought that chewing that sentence all evening felt uncomfortable but, suddenly, the possibility that I was romanticising conversations from previous social events, setting them apart as being this pure, intellectual gathering where all weeds of jobs and career talks had been pulled out, planted the seed in my head that I was the one different. I have never spent a day without working that wasn’t a holiday. I have never found myself in this situation where my previous path had come to an abrupt end and left me with so much unknown that even my own personal questions to myself could not take shape. Undefined, unspoken questions that have twisted and encircled each other like the roots of these orange trees. The question what do you do feels like a magnifying glass that can set fire to all this unknown.

I am in-between careers. I sip my last drop of wine and I bid goodbye to my wooden throne to rejoin the path I left behind.

_{*Using the lovely sketch by Liz Steel. Find her at https://www.lizsteel.com}

Things that I have done in the past weeks that I couldn’t do before, not consistently.

I couldn’t meet random people and actually get to talk with them. I met a man in his senior years at the local swimming pool. He thought I was a professional swimmer just because that day I had finally had the time to go to the local public swimming pool, in the middle of the morning, the lane just for the two of us, and I could swim back and forth without stopping. I was racing against myself but not against time, for the first time in a long time. It is funny to see how many times I am using the word time to simply convey how much time I have. I went roller skating by the Canal, and met a man who complimented me for trying so hard that I could already skate back and forth a few times without falling. He said I had given him hope. I was left with the question: did I need to be unemployed to get back some hope in my life, and inspire random strangers on my pink decathlon skates? I met a man with his daughter at a café. The little girl was so social, enthusiast, I and other people sitting at the nearby tables charmed by her running around, saying hi to everyone. Suddenly, she started walking a little further, saying “I am looking for solutions!”. The dad laughed and explained to us audience that this was her latest thing: walk around and look for solutions. Solutions to what? We all asked, laughing. “I don’t know” he answered, smiling and almost humbled. The truth is, we all were humbled. Because the little girl was looking for solutions, and weren’t we all?, sitting their in the middle of the day at a random café. She was looking for solutions, and maybe she would find them, even if she didn’t even know what the problem was. A little bit of a “42 is the answer” kind of question, for the Hitchiker’s fans out there.

I didn’t have time to meet random people before I was unemployed. And it struck me, while I was doing my puzzle. This is another thing I got to know about myself: the mental energy, that need to produce something, to visualize something coming together. It was funny how I was so focused the first time, diligently picking all the pieces that would form the border of the picture, sure that I hadn’t missed any. Until the borders weren’t really coming together and I had to browse through the pieces a second time, and found so many I had missed.

Apparently, I needed a second time.

_{*Using the lovely sketch by Liz Steel. Find her at https://www.lizsteel.com}

I found this dentist in Anderlecht, who is really competent and absurdly fair-priced compared to other dentists in Brussels. It is located in Clemenceau, an area well-known to Brusselers for the shootings and gang-related violence that pins that area in the weekly news. Its fair-pricedness and location mean that it is also a very popular dentist among people with a lower income. I have always gone there grateful to have found a dentist that did not charge extra just because it was located in a more expensive neighbourhood, a dentist which is conventionné as we say in French, meaning that part of their fees is covered by health insurance. It allowed me, a high middle-income worker in Brussels, to have proper dental care without having to take out bank loans. But it also meant realising my own privilege of having a slightly above average salary and therefore showing up there with my electric bike, my expensive phone and checking my apple watch to make sure I would be able to attend my hot yoga class afterwards.

This was before being fired. And yesterday I had my first check since my unemployment. The uneasiness I felt became clear once I got there: I didn’t have anymore that mental, financial parachute to make me feel privileged.

That feeling made me feel guilty. How had I been positioning myself? Had I really been identifying a separation between me and the others because of my job? Yet, I cannot help but feeling that this is an unspoken reality among internationals in Brussels. Most of us “international workers who made it” think that in this city, in this job market, what makes us really feel anchored and safe from the social struggle that we witness every day by the metro stations, on the street and in the news cannot touch us. I felt untouchable from that risk of instabilityvand lack of prospect. Yesterday, I suddenly didn’t feel untouchable anymore.

That dentist cabinet is a little world in itself. You enter and, all of a sudden, the already multilingual environment we experience in the city becomes ten times more: five or six languages at a time form a choir of unknown words climbing the air that you breath. The most common question I heard was “Who was it that spoke Portuguese? Him?”, pointing to one of the technical assistants walking down the stairs, that person suddenly being in the spotlight, his medical training useless because their immigrant background and language knowledge became more important. And that technical assistant didn’t even speak Portuguese, it turned out they spoke Spanish. But they still stepped up and, five minutes later, the hall vibrated with the giggles coming from all of us, laughing at the absurd conversation that was taking place, the patient that spoke Portuguese warmly making fun of the assistant’s attempts, yet showing all their appreciation at their efforts.

I found myself relaxing, I had been squeezing my hands in my pockets, holding onto my jacket as if it were all I had, but the second this scene started, I relaxed. Why? Maybe because it made me feel safe to know that human connection could still fill the gaps left by income differences.

What was even more interesting was to see how the same assistant had to explain the upcoming process to another patient who clearly was well-off financially. This other patient’s expensive clothes, hair, make-up, all of her spoke financial stability. While the Portuguese patient had shown up in their worker uniform, slightly dirty and wrinkled, this other woman was well dressed. However, while the assistant had stepped down and humbled up in the conversation with the Portuguese worker, they stepped up and held the higher end of the exchange with the woman.

It made me think. It makes me think. How much the idea of who I am depends on what I do and earn had sunken in. It had become an invisible bubble of my own identity, a lens of perception of others and of myself. These past weeks I have been obsessively asking myself what next, what next, what next. And while I had some ideas, the first thing I checked when exploring them was the salary. Salaries lower to what I have been earning these past years made me feel uncomfortable, despite the fact that the jobs I was exploring were some that I have been feeling drawn to for a while.

I decided to run a mental experiment: what if the jobs that we associate as “lower income” were the ones earning the most? Would I really struggle then to show up to my friends saying “I have taken a new job! I am a street cleaner now!” if that job placed me on the higher scales? Most probably not.

I left the dentist quite humbled yesterday. I looked at my own reflection in the window: yoga pants, zara jacket, uniqlo beanbag.

Who am I?

_{*Using the lovely sketch by Liz Steel. Find her at https://www.lizsteel.com}