The Life You Don't Recognize

The dead bear had been mounted in the corner of Mark's office for three years, its glass eyes following everyone who entered. Mark had shot it himself, or so he claimed during the merger negotiations that dragged on for months. I'd stopped listening to his hunting stories somewhere around the second whiskey, same way I'd stopped asking about his family or his sudden wealth or why his wife left him.

"You need to get out of this city," he told me, gesturing with his tumbler toward the window where palm trees swayed in the Santa Monica wind. "Take a sabbatical. Find yourself again. You're walking around like a zombie, Sarah."

I wanted to be offended. I wanted to tell him about my volunteer work, my novel-in-progress, the yoga retreat I'd booked for April. But instead I stared at the bear and thought about how I'd spent the last decade curating a life I didn't recognize.

"I'm fine," I said. "The promotion came through."

"The pyramid scheme you call a career," he laughed, pouring another drink. "You know what they say about people at the top."

I did know. I'd seen what happened to the partners before me — the divorces, the heart attacks, the subtle hollowing out until they became shells in expensive suits. Yet I'd climbed anyway, rung by rung, telling myself each step was necessary, logical, inevitable.

"What would I even do?" I asked, and it came out more honest than I intended. "This is all I know."

Mark studied me over his glass. "That's the saddest thing I've heard in years."

He was right. The sad part wasn't that my life had become smaller — it was that I'd stopped noticing. I'd become a zombie not because someone had eaten my brain, but because I'd given it away piece by piece, convinced it was a fair trade for security, for the corner office, for the view of palm trees I never had time to walk beneath.

The bear stared at me, mouth frozen in a roar it had never actually made. Mark's attempt at dominance, at conquering something wild. We were both of us trying to escape the same thing, just using different weapons.

"I'll think about it," I said, knowing I wouldn't.

He nodded, like he'd expected that answer. "You do that. But remember — you can't bear the weight of a life you don't actually want. Sooner or later, something's got to give."