By Friday morning, Claire wasn’t finishing the week strong.
She was finishing it the way a shopping cart with one bad wheel finishes a trip across a parking lot – loudly, sideways, and with several strangers wondering what the hell was happening.
Monday had started innocently enough.
Her alarm went off at 6:00am.
Claire turned it off, closed her eyes for what she believed was approximately fourteen seconds, and reopened them at 7:38.
Excellent.
She had apparently discovered time travel.
She launched herself out of bed, put her shirt on backwards, couldn’t find her phone, and spent four increasingly frantic minutes searching for it while using the flashlight on her phone to look under the bed.
She eventually realized what she was doing.
That was the exact moment she should have gone back to bed.
She did not.
This was her first mistake.
Tuesday arrived with the confidence of a day that had absolutely no business being confident.
Claire decided she was going to “get organized.”
She made a list.
It was beautiful.
Color-coded.
Categorized.
Prioritized.
She even drew little checkboxes beside everything.
Then she misplaced the list.
While searching for it, she found a package she’d been meaning to mail for three weeks, an unpaid bill, one sock, seventeen pens and a granola bar she didn’t remember buying.
She never found the list.
By Wednesday, the week had developed a personality.
And that personality was asshole.
Claire spilled coffee down the front of her shirt at 8:12.
At 9:30, she walked into a doorframe.
At 10:45, she sent an email without the attachment.
Then sent another email saying, “Sorry! Attachment included.”
There was still no attachment.
The third email contained the attachment and absolutely no remaining dignity.
At lunch, she dropped her fork.
She picked it up.
Dropped her napkin.
Picked that up.
Hit her head on the table.
Stood up.
Caught her sweater on the chair.
Nearly dragged the chair across the room.
A coworker stared at her.
Claire stared back.
“I’m doing amazing.”
Nobody asked.
Thursday was when things became unnecessarily theatrical.
Her car made a noise.
Not a normal car noise.
It made the kind of noise that causes a person to immediately turn down the radio, as though reducing the volume of Fleetwood Mac will somehow improve their mechanical knowledge.
Claire listened carefully.
Clunk.
“What was that?”
Rattle.
“Don’t.”
CLUNK.
“Listen, you little bastard. I have neither the money nor the emotional stability for this.”
The car apparently respected the boundary because the noise stopped.
Claire drove the rest of the way in complete silence, gripping the steering wheel like she was negotiating a hostage situation.
By Thursday evening, she had abandoned all ambitions.
Dinner was whatever required the fewest decisions.
Laundry remained in a basket where it had apparently established permanent residency.
There was something sticky on the kitchen counter.
Claire didn’t know what it was.
She didn’t investigate.
Some mysteries are better left unsolved.
Then Friday arrived.
Beautiful, glorious Friday.
Claire woke up and whispered, “We made it.”
The universe heard her.
The universe apparently took that personally.
Her coffee maker overflowed.
She couldn’t find her keys.
She stepped in something wet while wearing socks.
There is no betrayal quite like stepping in unexplained wetness while wearing socks.
Claire froze.
Slowly looked down.
The dog looked at her.
Claire looked at the dog.
Neither accepted responsibility.
At 8:03am, she finally found her keys.
They were in her hand.
At that point, Claire stopped asking questions.
She simply continued.
By noon, she had answered approximately nine hundred emails, dealt with three problems she did not create, fixed something someone else had “already fixed,” and listened to a twenty-minute story that absolutely could have been three sentences.
At 3:47, somebody approached her and said the most dangerous words in the English language:
“Quick question.”
Claire slowly turned around.
There was nothing quick about the question.
There had never been anything quick about a “quick question.”
Civilizations had risen and fallen in less time than some people’s quick questions.
By 4:56, Claire was staring at the clock.
Four minutes.
She could do four minutes.
She had survived five days.
Four minutes was nothing.
At 4:58, an email arrived.
Claire looked at it.
The email looked at Claire.
Claire moved it into Monday’s problem pile.
This wasn’t procrastination.
This was delegation.
To Future Claire.
Who, admittedly, was going to be furious.
But that sounded like Future Claire’s problem.
At exactly 5:00, Claire shut down her computer.
She gathered her belongings.
She walked toward the door.
Her bag caught on the handle.
Everything fell onto the floor.
Keys.
Wallet.
Lip balm.
Receipts.
Three pens.
A rogue granola bar.
Something rolled underneath a desk.
Claire stood completely still.
Everyone nearby waited to see what she would do.
She looked at the ceiling.
“Of course.”
She gathered her belongings with the serene acceptance of a woman who had officially run out of fucks sometime around Wednesday afternoon.
Then she walked outside.
The sun was shining.
Birds were singing.
The weekend stretched beautifully before her.
Claire took one deep breath.
She had made it.
Not gracefully.
Not productively.
Not inspirationally.
She had crossed the Friday finish line on two flat tires, a smoking engine, one functioning brain cell and a prayer held together with caffeine and spite.
But she had crossed it.
And sometimes that counts as finishing strong.
Or at least finishing.
Which, after a week like that, was close enough.
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