Gemotions

The preparations had taken weeks. He’d helped organize everything, his smile a mask over the increasing drag. Now, the retirement party was in full swing, the culmination of all that effort. But he felt no joy, only an empty hollowness.

He moved through the crowd, offering a polite word here and there. But his mind was elsewhere, lost in the abyss of his own fatigue. He felt a profound disconnection from everything around him, as though he were observing it through a thick pane of glass.

He looked at the cake, at the decorations. They were lovely, perfect. But they also felt like a monument to a sacrifice.