Every month when I paid rent, something twisted inside me. Not just frustration—something deeper. Anxiety. Urgency. Like time was charging me interest. Like every dollar I handed over was proof I was stuck while everyone else moved forward.
So I pushed harder.
More work. More hours. More meetings. More coffee. More nights answering emails at 2 a.m. with my laptop lighting up my face.
Sleep became a luxury. Eating, an afterthought.
Four hours a night. Reheated coffee. Half-eaten sandwiches. Forgotten yogurt cups.
My body had been screaming at me to stop for months.
I kept telling it: later.
“Later” caught up with me on a random Tuesday.
At 10 a.m., I was reviewing numbers when it hit.
Not the kind of chest pain you see in awareness ads.
It felt like a fist shoved between my ribs, crushing my heart from the inside. The pain shot down my left arm. The air vanished.
Everything around me kept moving—normal, absurdly normal—while I froze.
I saw my reflection in a glass conference room wall.
Pale. Lips drained of color. Eyes too wide.
I’ve always been the type to minimize. Push through. Say “it’ll pass.”
This wasn’t that.
I looked at one of my coworkers and managed to say:
“Call 911.”