Vitamins We Swallow Whole

The papaya sat on her kitchen counter, an alien orange globe she'd bought on impulse. Sarah, thirty-four and newly single, stood staring at it like it might offer answers she hadn't found in therapy.

Her therapist had suggested vitamins. "A routine," Dr. Chen had said. "Something to anchor you."

Sarah's cat, Mars, wound around her ankles, demanding breakfast. He was the last living creature who depended on her, and some days that felt like enormous weight and others like purpose.

At 6 AM, she swam. The community pool opened before dawn, and she moved through water that shocked her skin awake, lap after lap until her arms burned. Swimming was the only time her mind went quiet—no recriminations, no replaying conversations with Tom, no calculating how much of their furniture was actually hers.

The divorce settlement had left her with the apartment and a shared custody arrangement for their friends. Most had chosen sides. Most had chosen him.

After thirty laps, she'd drag herself home, swallow a handful of vitamin supplements she'd researched obsessively: D for the darkness that settled in her bones, B for the anxiety that kept her awake, omega-3s because the internet promised they helped with depression.

Today, she cut into the papaya. Its flesh was unexpectedly soft, sweet in a way that felt decadent, almost sinful. She ate it standing over the sink, juice dripping down her chin, and realized she couldn't remember the last time she'd tasted something simply because she wanted to.

Mars meowed from his perch on the windowsill, watching her with that particular cat-look of judgment and devotion.

"I know," she said to him. "I have to learn to bear it."

But that wasn't right. Bear the weight, bear the loss, bear the loneliness—like carrying something heavy but necessary.

She finished the papaya, licked the sweet stickiness from her fingers, and thought maybe the trick wasn't bearing it at all. Maybe it was learning to swim through it, trusting that eventually she'd find herself on the other shore, transformed, alive, and hungry for more.