Chapter #4Angie on vacation by: DougTF   Angeletta (nobody calls her that: it's Angie) had been working right out of college in a brokerage, and been very successful at that. Working that is. Personal life, eh, not so much. Having no father growing up, and then her mom dying while she was in college left her way more alone than she ever really appreciated. And since her mother had battled illnesses for pretty much all of Angie's life, she was always either scrapping by, or working her tail off to pay the bills. She essentially had been the head of house since she was about 15, in terms of working, cleaning, paying bills, arranging things, all of it. And she managed to stay a happy and pleasant girl in spite of that hardship. But, she hadn't exactly learned who she was in terms of free time, hobbies, and passions but she certainly had developed a strong work ethic. And that work ethic helped her progress up the ladder in her financial career, where here she was just turned 40 and while she is one of the most junior senior VPs in any firm on Wall Street, and now has a high six figure salary along with stock options that are worth just shy of 8 figures. But, Angie had realized something when the office had a party for her 40th: her mom had gotten sick by this point in her life, and here Angie was, successful beyond her mother's dreams, but without any dreams of her own. The realization hit her hard, and while he demeanor demanded she not show any of her inner strife, Angie started to pay more attention to her coworkers, who had loving families, or engaged in lavish pastimes they could afford being part of such a successful company. Angie struggled to remember the last time she did anything besides read that wasn't related to her work, and enough of that was financial times and current events. No, Angie was a complete success in the world of finance, and a complete zero outside of it. She had been so long caught up in doing work, in making money, that she pretty much forgot what to do with it, with herself, outside of that.
She could call it a midlife crisis except for the added realization that 40 was way more than half of her mom's life, but a crisis it was. Angie started to doubt everything about her life, because she realized there was almost nothing to her life. Outside of work, but Angie Hadden, VP for market analysis isn't the same thing as Angie, the girl who used to play with dolls, before she had to take care of her mommy.
And so, the company and her coworkers thought nothing too much of it when she took a vacation, and with the simple fact she never had meant she accrued literal months of it, she blocked out an entire summer for herself, and demurred when any of her coworkers asked her plans. How do you tell the people you work with, the people who are closest to being your actual friends, that you are going to take a few months and figure out just who in the heck YOU are, since not even you know. But, that was yesterday, and today you have a car taking you to the airport where you will fly off to:   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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