A Place to Hide Away

I wish I had more privacy. Sometimes I just want to crawl away into a corner and sit still until the dizziness and weakness passes, but I have to keep sitting at my desk and responding cheerily when people talk to me, and acting like nothing's wrong. It's so hard. I wish I had an office where I could close the door. I would totally lie down under my desk.

At a job I had a few years ago, I felt so awful one day that I crept away to a different part of the building that was under construction. There was no one there; the work was being done at night. I found a corner and lay down among the sheetrock dust and tattered plastic, and just lay there, breathing, until the feeling passed. It was eerie, watching the breeze lift the plastic, looking at the blue sky through a gap in the rafters above me. I could hear phones ringing in the other part of the building. My big fear was that someone would wander past and see me there. Finally I felt well enough to get up and go back to my desk.

At school, there was always a nurse's office with beds where you could go and lie down if you needed to. I wish offices had those too.