The Broken Strong

She doesn’t fall apart in public. That’s the first thing you need to know. She keeps going. She makes the lunches and drives the kids and shows up to the meeting and does the thankless work no one else will touch. She is competent and capable and quietly, privately, coming undone. She is valued for what she produces, not for who she is. At work, she is the one who gets things done. At home, she is the one who holds it together. And somewhere in the middle of all that doing, she stops being a person and becomes a function. The question she carries — and never says out loud — is this: If I disappeared tomorrow, would anyone miss me? Or would they just miss what I did? She already knows the answer the darkness gives her. And some days, she believes it. What it looks like at work: She is not overlooked because she is invisible. She is overlooked because she is reliable. And there is a particular cruelty in that distinction. The good roles go to others. The interesting work, the visibility,...