Tomorrow I return to work after three weeks of stepping back for my mental health.

 Three weeks of trying to stitch myself together again — slowly, gently, honestly.

And yet here I am, packing my bag for Monday.

 Laptop. Notebook.

 And the part no one sees: my “corporate survival kit.”

A handful of pills that quiet the storm long enough for me to function.

 Not thrive.

 Just survive.

People like me — the fatherless, the ones who grew up navigating chaos instead of comfort — often enter adulthood already carrying invisible fractures. In the corporate world, these cracks become fault lines. We attract bullies, abusers, manipulators — not because we’re weak, but because we were trained from childhood to tolerate what should have broken us.

Over the years, I’ve changed careers, changed companies, changed cities. Each time hoping this place, this team, these people would be different.

Sometimes they were.

 Often they weren’t.

And so the pills became my armour.

 The quiet, unseen proof that surviving corporate life sometimes comes at a cost people don't talk about — a cost carried silently by millions.

Some say, “Work is work.”

 But for people like me, work is an emotional minefield. A reminder of every voice that told us we weren’t enough.

 A replay of every childhood moment where love was absent and fear took its place.

My psychologist once told me,

“You don’t belong in corporate.”

And maybe he’s right.

 Maybe my soul was meant for stories, for creativity, for art, for worlds where humans aren’t measured by productivity or performance metrics.

But life isn’t always a story we get to write neatly.

 Sometimes we survive chapter by chapter.

 Some days we move forward because we must.

 Some days we do what we can — pills in our pockets, hope in our hands.

This isn’t a plea for sympathy.

 It’s an acknowledgment for those who quietly swallow their medication before stepping into the office.

 For those who plaster on a smile while carrying storms inside.

 For those who keep going even when everything in them begs for rest.

You’re not weak.

 You’re not alone.

 And your story deserves to be told.