Breaking Points

I didn't think enough about the way things broke.

Most days, I didn't think at all about that sort of thing. I just tapped my card against the little black box at the checkout, ignored the donation button, and went on my way. I just hopped on the train. Walked into my office. Did several dozen tasks. And that was that.

But she was crying yesterday, Nina.

Full on, hinged-at-the-waist, sobbing. I was so floored by it, I tried to ask around but no one else was as confused as I was. There was coffee on the floor, sure. But that wasn't worth sobbing like this was it? I asked. That was a mistake.

Well, no, Jack, her dog died six months ago. She's got a headache. Her boyfriend's sick. And you don't pay her enough, so her rent check bounced.

I wanted to be mad at the tone, but something shifted inside of me, something uncomfortable, and I was suddenly back in my childhood home listening to my father berate me for making my mother cry. I never meant to. And I certainly didn't mean to make things worse now. So I just stood there, watching Nina weep.

When she looked up at me, blue eyes glassy with tears and cheeks red from the force of her grief, everything fractured.

It hit me like a train.

Things break a little at a time. Chipping, chipping, chipping away. A piece here and there lost. A structural point of the soul ruined by a spidering crack. It wasn't hard then to see all the breaking points inside of me. A missed alarm. A train being late. Tripping over a step and falling in front of a crowd.

Spilling my coffee and breaking a mug.

And I couldn't stop it. I couldn't stop the panic filling my chest or the inevitable breaking point that would send me to my knees in agony. I couldn't save myself.

I just...had to wait for the breaking point.