Pyramid of Small Regrets

The multivitamin sat on Maya's kitchen counter—orange bottle with white lettering, a daily ritual she'd maintained since David left. Three months of swallowing nutrients she couldn't taste, hoping they would patch the hollow space in her chest where friendship used to be.

The corporate pyramid had done its work efficiently. David had been promoted to director; Maya had remained senior analyst. The geometry of power reshaped everything between them—the Tuesday morning coffees grew shorter, then sporadic, then nonexistent. The text messages reduced from paragraphs to sentences to single words.

"It's just how it is," David had said, the last time they spoke, his eyes avoiding hers across the conference table. "You understand how this works."

She did understand. She'd watched it happen before—friends ascending the hierarchy while others remained on the same level, the gravitational pull of ambition tearing through relationships like tissue paper. But knowing the mechanics didn't make the experience less brutal.

The vitamin bottle rattled as she shook two capsules into her palm. Vitamin D for mood, B-complex for energy, omega-3 for brain fog. A pharmacopeia of optimism she purchased from CVS, hoping chemistry might accomplish what human connection couldn't.

The storm broke as she walked to work—sudden, violent, the sky splitting open. Lightning struck somewhere nearby, illuminating the glass facade of her office building in stark white brilliance. In that flash, she saw her own reflection in the glass: thirty-seven years old, successful by most metrics, suddenly aware that she'd been climbing a pyramid whose apex she hadn't chosen.

David waved from the lobby, heading out, perhaps to lunch with the executives. Maya kept walking, capsules dissolving in her stomach, the rain beginning to fall. She didn't wave back. Some structures, she understood now, were designed to be climbed alone.