A New Member of the Club We Never Wanted to Join

I work in an office with about 100 other people. It’s large enough to give most folks the ability to vanish into their offices and tune out, and yet small enough that on the lower staff rungs there is a fair bit of gossip and schadenfreude going on.

My legal assistant, Sunny, is young, both in terms of her age (23 – very, very young for her position at my firm) and her outlook on life. The effect of this on others is likely compounded by the fact that she is 5’3″ and looks about 6 or 7 years younger than she actually is. She will be the woman getting legitimately carded well into her 30’s or 40’s. She is bright, fit, and simply gorgeous, with the kind of symmetrical features and sharp cheekbones that are usually purely aspirational absent the assistance of a good plastic surgeon. She had a somewhat disadvantaged upbringing, but she has her act together. She has a great job, she owns a car, and she’s in the process of buying her first house. (Did I mention she’s only 23??) She is kind and funny and is a really hard worker.

One day last week, Sunny went home early from work because she developed a severe migraine. She walked in on her live-in boyfriend (of 4+ years) in bed – their bed – with another woman.  There was the predictable “It’s nothing,” and “You mean everything to me,” and all of the other things we’ve all heard. She was utterly crushed. Gutted. I don’t exactly know how she made it through the days at the end of the week, but she showed up and did her job and went off to cry when necessary, trying to avoid the stares and comments of her coworkers. The rumor mill got cranking, but the truth of what happened to her is actually worse than what they ginned up about it.

Over the weekend this young woman who has an entire lifetime in front of her and who is wonderful and fierce and and kind and who has the world at her feet… she tried to end her own life with a bottle of pills. Why? Not because of him exactly. Even in her pain she knows he isn’t worth exiting this life and hurting her family over. No… instead it was because in that one instant her entire self-worth was stolen from her. Vanished. Gone.

I talked with her briefly yesterday. Her words were incredibly triggering, but I get where she’s coming from. “I thought I mattered to him and that the future we were building was real. If nothing else, I always felt certain that he was my friend, but even just true friends don’t destroy each other like this.” And also, “Nothing I thought was real is true.” Sunny is young, but her pain is raw and real and not very different from a lot of betrayed partners here in the blogosphere.

Sunny did not ask my advice and I didn’t give her any. I did assure her that she could always talk to me. (I’m pretty sure she has heard me weeping in my office on many an occasion, and I know she knows why.) She has ended the relationship. (“If he can’t keep from cheating before we get married what’s to stop him from cheating after we get married?”) Her family will pack and move her out of their shared apartment this weekend. She found and started seeing a good therapist. Sunny has reached out to her lender and has removed her boyfriend from her mortgage application. She’ll buy the house on her own. She’ll be fine one day. It just won’t be tomorrow or the day after that or maybe the month after that. Sunny will get there, but right now she is suffering. I am just hoping that she will see that speck of light at the end of the tunnel and keep reaching for it, however long it takes.