Gemotions

The first week in the Communications department was an exercise in enforced cheerfulness. Emily plastered on a smile, listened intently to everyone's introductions, and tried to absorb the flood of new information. But underneath, a profound sense of wrongness gnawed at her. She felt like an imposter.

She kept picturing the familiar, comforting chaos of the engineering lab, the smell of soldering iron and burnt plastic. She missed the focused intensity, the shared passion for problem-solving. Every email, every meeting, every conversation felt like a performance. She was playing a part, and the role felt terribly, miserably ill-fitting. The silence of her evenings was even more deafening now.