There wasn't anything left, the last I checked. The jar lay opened, empty, save for an empty offer, a dusting of its previous contents. It sat there cloyingly, as if it was all still within reach, but upon trial the remnants just barely scoot by your fingers at each pass to scrape the bottom of the glass cave.
I felt exhausted immediately upon waking up. Another all-nighter came crashing to an early halt which only increased today's workload. I hated yesterday me. So weak. Couldn't have made it past 3AM, again?
That last time I was on Red Bull and adderall. I needed three melatonins to finally come down from that knife's edge of energy and tumble off to sleep. Literally tumbled, I didn't make it to the bed. The next day I vacuumed my floor for the first time in months, I think. I'd seen too much of it to ignore.
It's like work was stuck on that extra-hard difficulty in games, the one you have to beat the game through to unlock. The one that only those basement-dwellers ever hoped to master, with far too much time on their hands, complaining about how easy it all was later in the forums.
Most of them didn't live in basements, but just had menial jobs and no other hobbies, I reminded myself. Even basement-dwellers were still human, worthy of compassion. I was like that, once, I remembered.
Hell, I still was. What's the point of living in a high-rise if you don't have a window, anyway? A vertical basement.
Emails like blow darts from a poisonous well speckled my eyes when I got home. I'd deleted the app off my phone once, that traitorous Slack, before panicking and re-downloading it. About an hour later, I think.
They say it's the Great Resignation now. Really a sign of the times, I think, how far behind they all are. I'd given up on my dreams ages before now. Resigned to my subhuman lifestyle, wasting money on food instead of therapy, like always.