The Walk of Shame

I used to call it the walk of shame but not the one you all know about—it was the two-minute walk from the bus drop-off to my desk at the office where I used to work.

Each morning, I’d feel the familiar burst of shame as I was walking. Shame from waking up tired again because I stayed up too late the night before promising myself that tomorrow will be different, and I’ll be able to get up feeling more energized. But the truth was, those late nights were just consistent desperate attempts to convince myself that I had some kind of life outside of work. Only to realize the next morning after waking up with that emptiness inside, that sitting mindlessly on the couch scrolling on my phone or playing candy crush while whatever movie or series is playing on Netflix in the background isn’t a life outside of work that I appreciated having or never dreamed of.

The shame was layered with a hint of self-loathing as I couldn’t have any decent me-time between the moment I woke up and having to catch the bus. Sometimes I deliberately missed the bus, only so I could be able to drive my car to work instead. Although it was a 90-min commute, I felt that this was the only time I had to myself. Sitting behind the wheel with a decent cup of coffee to drink in the morning, I had to listen to some music or a podcast while driving. This was the only way for me to stop the racing thoughts. In those 90 minutes in my car, I could almost pretend I had control. But without the background noise that filled the silence, every thought I was trying to avoid came to the surface screaming like it wanted to be heard so badly. Then came another thought and another, all bubbling up until they overlapped inside my head. It felt like a very old cassette tape that had gone bad and kept looping until all you can ever hear is mumbling with no actual words. All I could ever hear was my own scattered thoughts reminding me of how lost I felt.

And as the heaviness of my thoughts settle down, a hint of guilt rises because I didn’t take action to change any of that. Only to remember that it’s the first day of the week and I still need to power through for four more days till I can even have the opportunity to rethink all of that again. It felt like an endless loop.

One day while I dragged myself on this walk with one eye closed and the other half open just to avoid falling over, something unusual caught my attention. A soft touch of colors where everything around was gray and rigid—a small patch of colorful roses and a beautiful butterfly hovering above them. I stopped, thinking how they must be feeling very out of place here. What are these roses and a butterfly doing in a place like this? And how are they surviving while they’re the only ones here? I caught myself smiling over this silly idea.

Every day after that, I found myself looking for that butterfly again during my walk. I used to stop for a couple of seconds when I found it dancing over the same roses. Some mornings, I liked to think that it was heading towards me as if we silently agreed to greet each other every morning before we went about our days navigating a place that felt foreign to both of us. In those few moments, it always reminded me that life can exist in the most unexpected places only if we’re keen enough to observe it.

The roses faded out as the fall started and I noticed that the butterfly had disappeared too. I silently said goodbye, hoping that we would meet again somewhere that felt like home to both of us.