Quiet cracking is spreading through offices right now, and the employees hiding it best are usually the ones everyone assumes are thriving.
The moment between the fourth failure and the fifth attempt is where most people quit. Not because the pain is worst. Because the math stops making sense.
You call it being thorough. You call it caring. Your nervous system calls it threat detection, and it has been running the scan nonstop for years.
It was not a conversation. It was a look. A reaction. A silence where comfort should have been. And it rewired everything that came after.
Not the fall. Not the comeback. The unnamed middle where you are technically functioning but internally rebuilding from materials you have never used before.