I remember the taste of bile, sharp and metallic, when Mr. Henderson’s words hung in the air: “disappointed.” Just a glance, that’s all it would have been, a momentary flicker across his face. But the thought of it… a tiny, almost imperceptible dent in his estimation of me, that felt like a chisel blow to the very foundation I stood on. So I said yes, yes to those three extra weekend projects, just a junior analyst then, because avoiding that fleeting look of censure, that microscopic social pain, felt more pressing than the long hours of a weekend gone, and the paycheck, well, it was always a matter of keeping the lights on, wasn't it. A peculiar form of self-sabotage, that… a deferral of immediate discomfort for prolonged, quiet misery.