She stood on the Metrorail platform waiting for the next Yellow Line train, floating in space like a ghost sucked dry of emotion, stymied by fear, silently recriminating herself for her inability to censor her thoughts that morning -- thoughts which she had poured out into a tirade of meaningless gripes on this dismally gray-skied morning because it was the easiest way for her to communicate. Thoughts that did nothing but rekindle the same old fears, the same doubts she'd whirled around in her mind over and over, many times past.

Then, knowing she could do nothing more to resolve her mistakes already made, she waited. The doors to her transit opened, and she stepped aboard, then briefly emerging to see the sunlight glinting off of the Potomac not far from a gauzy, office building-muddled skyline nestled in the background -- the world of work calling her forth to swallow her up for the next six hours.

If only she could just learn to BE, without trying to BE, without analyzing her existence every step of the way for flaws and accept whatever Fate saw fit that she be dealt. If she could learn to let go of the need to save face, to appear unbreakable and to keep from losing control; then, and only then, she might know happiness.