The moment the elevator doors slid open, I felt the crack in my life before I heard it. It was a sharp, invisible shift in the air—like the second before a storm touches down on a quiet American morning, when birds go silent and the world pauses as if bracing for truth. I stepped with my husband, Ethan Collins, onto the twelfth floor of a glass-and-steel high-rise in downtown Chicago, my heels clicking softly against the polished floor. The hallway smelled faintly of citrus and wealth. It was the kind of place where people lived lives with choices—real choices—the kind I didn’t realize I was missing until that very moment.
For fifteen years, I had been the calm, quiet wife in our suburban Illinois home—the one who kept the laundry folded, the fridge stocked, the utilities paid, and the peace intact. Ethan liked it that way. He liked a predictable life, a predictable wife, and a predictable echo of his own opinions reflected back at him. I had a modest accounting job at a small firm; he had a louder, shinier corporate title that he never let me forget was “the backbone of our household.”
As the years moved on, I slowly dissolved into the background of our marriage. I learned to lower my voice, shorten my sentences, and tuck away my thoughts as smoothly as I tucked dish towels back into drawers. Silence was easier. Silence was safer. Silence was how I survived.
But something had been shifting inside me—quietly, stubbornly—long before that day. A simple advertisement for a free online German course had popped up on my phone one night while Ethan watched sports with the volume high enough to rattle the doorframe. I clicked on it. I don’t know what made me do it—boredom, maybe. Or maybe something deeper. Something older. Something tired of holding its breath.
Whatever it was, that click cracked open a door I didn’t even know existed.
Within weeks, I was studying an hour every night, the bedroom door nearly closed while Ethan watched TV. It felt like a secret rebellion, but also like oxygen. I whispered new words to myself—soft vowels, sharp consonants—letting them stretch muscles I hadn’t used in years. I kept notebooks full of vocabulary buried under blankets. I didn’t tell Ethan, not because I intended to hide it forever, but because I already knew what he would say. Waste of time. You won’t stick with it. Useless. Silly.
He had said those things about every hobby I’d ever tried. After a while, I stopped trying.
But German? German was mine.
And I didn’t realize then that one day it would be the very thing that exposed the truth.
When we reached the condo that morning, a tall, calm man opened the door with an accent thick enough that Ethan immediately switched to German—showing off, puffing up, relishing the subtle superiority of knowing something I supposedly did not. Hans Ritter, the owner, invited us inside with a warm smile. Ethan stepped confidently onto the sleek wooden floors like he had already claimed the place. I lingered near the entryway, hands clasped, pretending not to understand a single word.
It was easy. I had years of practice pretending.
But then the conversations unfolded—smooth, casual, revealing. And while Ethan translated only fragments for me, I understood everything. When Hans said the neighbors were quiet professionals, Ethan told me, “Just regular folks.” When Hans praised the building management, Ethan shrugged, “He says they’re fine.” He even added details Hans never said at all.
He was shaping the narrative—as he always did—bending truth until it fit his agenda.
Still, the condo was stunning. Sunlight spilled through floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Chicago River. The kitchen gleamed with crisp white cabinets and stainless steel appliances—everything so clean, so modern, so impossibly full of potential. I whispered that I liked it. Ethan brushed off my comment like I had said something irrelevant.
And then came the sentence—the one that broke the dam of my entire life.
Hans mentioned that some couples start the paperwork with just one spouse’s name on the deed for convenience. A simple administrative option. Harmless.
He asked Ethan if that was something he wanted to consider.
Ethan leaned back slightly, lowered his voice, and replied in German, “She doesn’t need to know. She doesn’t understand anything anyway. I’m the one paying. I’m the one deciding. It’s none of her concern.”
None.
Of.
Her.
Concern.
I felt the words land like ice in my bloodstream. My breath caught. My fingers trembled. I kept my face neutral—years of practice—but something inside me fractured like thin glass under pressure.
I had been small for so long I’d forgotten I had a shape at all. But every syllable he uttered carved me back into focus.
The drive home was painfully quiet. Ethan hummed along to a pop song, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as if nothing had happened. I stared out the window at the blur of the Chicago skyline, the American flag fluttering above the highway overpass, the world outside wide and enormous compared to the boxed-in life I’d been living.
When we stepped inside our apartment, he headed straight for the sofa. The TV flicked on immediately—his evening ritual. Noise filled the room. But for once, I couldn’t swallow my voice.
I stood in the doorway, hands trembling, heart beating too loudly.
“We need to talk,” I said.
He sighed dramatically. “Can it wait, Lydia? I just sat down.”
“No. Not this time.”
He turned, irritation flickering across his face. He wasn’t used to me sounding certain. He wasn’t used to me sounding like anything at all.
I asked him whose name he planned to put on the deed.
He blinked, then smiled thinly, and lied without hesitation. “Both of ours, of course.”
I told him I understood German. I told him exactly what he had said. Every word.
The color drained from his face. His mouth opened slightly, then closed. He steadied himself, tried to regain control. “Since when?” he muttered.
“The question doesn’t matter,” I said. “The truth does.”
He tried to defend himself—money, responsibility, efficiency, excuses. He repeated the same tired lines: I’m the provider. I know what I’m doing. You misunderstood. You’re overreacting.
But something inside me had shifted. His words hit a wall—because I finally had one.
He grew louder. I grew clearer. He blamed me. I named the truth. When I told him I no longer trusted him, something in his expression cracked. He looked at me like I was the one betraying him.
Finally, he grabbed his keys. “I need space,” he said sharply. “I’ll stay with Jamal for a few days. Maybe you’ll calm down.”
He left. The door slammed behind him, and the silence that followed didn’t feel dangerous or suffocating. It felt honest.
I sank down onto the bedroom floor and cried—for the years I’d lost, for the woman I’d abandoned, for the quiet heartbreak of realizing the person you built a life with never once saw you as equal.
But beneath the grief was something else, something new.
Relief.
And the first trembling spark of courage.
The next morning, coffee in hand, sunlight slipping through the blinds, I made the call that would change everything.
Hans answered with a calm, steady hello. I told him who I was. Told him I understood everything. Told him we wouldn’t be buying the condo.
He surprised me with his warmth.
“I suspected you understood,” he said gently. “You were too quiet.”
I apologized for wasting his time, but he stopped me.
“Don’t apologize. You remind me of my daughter when she was married to a man who decided everything for her. She left that marriage and built a stronger life. You can do the same.”
Then he said something I’ll never forget. “If you want the condo later, I will help you. I’m not in a rush.”
I was stunned. “Why would you do that?”
“Because everyone deserves a fair chance to start over. And because no woman should feel small in her own home.”
Hope flickered inside me—small, trembling, real.
In the days that followed, Ethan returned but kept his distance. He slept on the sofa, left early, came home late. The silence between us grew, but unlike before, it didn’t crush me. It strengthened me.
I researched divorce, property rights, financial independence. I read late into the night, the glow from my laptop illuminating a version of myself I was meeting again for the first time—capable, determined, awake.
I learned that I was entitled to half the equity in our condo. That I could qualify for a mortgage. That I didn’t need Ethan’s approval to build a life.
Around then, an international company posted a job opening for an accounting specialist to collaborate with their European branches.
German required.
It felt like fate knocking.
I applied. I interviewed—in German. The hiring manager smiled and said, “Impressive. We’d love to have you.”
A week later, I got the job.
Higher salary. Better benefits. A future that felt like mine.
The divorce moved quickly after that. Ethan offered to buy out my share of our condo. For once, we didn’t argue. When I held the check from the settlement, I felt something solid inside me—security, independence, the beginning of my own footing.
Hans kept his promise. When the bank approved my mortgage, he sold me the condo for a slightly reduced price. “A fresh start,” he said.
The day he handed me the keys, I cried again—but this time from pride.
Life didn’t magically rearrange itself overnight, but slowly, steadily, beautifully, it rebuilt.
In an evening certification class—because I’d decided to keep advancing—I met Julian Brooks. Tall, kind, divorced, starting over in his own way. He listened when I spoke, really listened, as if every word mattered. We studied together, laughed together, walked to our cars together.
His presence didn’t fill the room the way Ethan’s once did. Instead, it created space for both of us to breathe.
A year passed, and one evening, I stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows of my condo—my condo—watching the Chicago lights shimmer on the river. Every piece of furniture in the room was something I had chosen. Every decision reflected a woman who finally recognized her own voice.
Julian knocked on my door, as he did often. We sat on the balcony with two glasses of wine. The sunset over the city painted the sky in golds and violets. He reached for my hand—not to lead, not to control, but simply to connect.
“I’m glad our paths crossed,” he said softly.
“Me too,” I answered. And for once, I didn’t second-guess my own words.
After he left, I walked through my home slowly, letting the quiet wrap around me. For years, I believed silence protected me. I thought shrinking myself was easier than being dismissed. I thought speaking up was dangerous.
But the truth was simple.
Silence doesn’t save you. It only teaches others not to listen.
The moment I chose myself, everything changed. I found a job that valued my abilities, a home that reflected my choices, people who treated me with respect, and a future shaped entirely by my own decisions.
And most importantly, I found the version of myself I had almost lost forever.
If my story finds you in a moment where you feel small, unheard, or stuck, I hope you remember this:
You are not powerless.
You are not late.
You are not trapped.
Sometimes the life you deserve is waiting just outside the door you’re afraid to open.
And when you finally turn that handle, the whole world shifts.
The first time I saw my ex-husband again, he was reflected in the glass of my office window—just a faint shape behind me, like a ghost still trying to live in a life that no longer belonged to him.
It was almost a year and a half after the divorce had been finalized. Chicago was doing that late-winter thing it does so well—gray sky, dirty snow clinging to sidewalks, the wind knifing off the river with a kind of relentless, chilly optimism. I was at my desk on the twenty-first floor of a downtown office tower, finishing a report for our European division, half my brain in numbers, the other half thinking about what to make for dinner in my condo that now felt more like a sanctuary than a place to sleep.
Behind me, my office door clicked shut. I glanced at the reflection on the window and froze.
Ethan.
Same squared shoulders, same jawline, same expensive-looking coat. But there was something different in the way he stood. He looked… smaller. Or maybe I had just grown.
I turned slowly. “You can’t just walk into my office,” I said. My voice came out steady, to my own surprise.
He gave that familiar half-smile that used to soften my anger and now only irritated me. “Your assistant said you had a minute. I told her I was your ex-husband. Guess that still counts for something.”
“It doesn’t,” I replied. “What do you need?”
He looked around, taking in the framed team photo on my wall, the tidy stacks of files, the small potted plant my coworker had given me. His gaze lingered on the European map pinned beside my computer screen, with colored pins marking our partner branches in Berlin, Munich, Hamburg.
“Nice place,” he said. “You’ve moved up.”
“Yes,” I said simply. “I have.”
He shoved his hands into his coat pockets, clearing his throat. “I heard you bought that condo. The one Hans sold. Must be… nice.”
“It is,” I answered. “Why are you here, Ethan?”
He flinched slightly at my tone. He was still expecting the old version of me—the one who softened everything with apologies and nervous laughter.
“I was downtown,” he said. “Figured it was time we talked like adults.”
“We did that in court,” I reminded him.
He sighed. “Lydia, come on. I know things ended… badly.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Badly? You tried to put our future home under your name only and told a stranger my life was none of my business.”
He pressed his lips together, then exhaled sharply. “You’re still holding onto that?”
The question landed like a reminder of every fight we’d ever had. The way he could do something hurtful, then act surprised I wasn’t over it yet.
“I’m not holding onto it,” I said. “I learned from it. There’s a difference.”
He walked closer, stopping on the opposite side of my desk. “Look, I’m not here to fight. I just… I wanted to say I’m sorry.”
The words hung in the air like something breakable.
I studied him. He looked older, I realized. More tired. There were faint lines at the corners of his eyes I didn’t remember being there before. The certainty that used to radiate off him had dimmed.
“What are you sorry for?” I asked. I wasn’t going to help him by filling in the blanks. Not anymore.
He shifted his weight. “I shouldn’t have tried to control everything. The condo. The finances. The decisions. I thought I was… protecting us.”
“You were protecting yourself,” I corrected.
He didn’t argue. That alone told me how much had changed.
“Maybe,” he admitted. “I just knew how to do things my way. I was good at it. You never argued, so…”
I let the silence answer for me.
He glanced at the window behind me, at the skyscrapers lined up against the sky. “I moved out of our old place,” he said. “Couldn’t stand how empty it felt. I thought I’d feel relief without all the tension. But it turns out, the tension was mostly me.”
My throat tightened despite myself. Old habits die slowly, and part of me still wanted to patch things, smooth them out, make everything less uncomfortable.
But the rest of me remembered the woman who sat on a bedroom floor with swollen eyes and a quiet kind of relief after he left.
“I hope you’re doing better,” I said finally.
He nodded, laughing once without humor. “Trying. Therapy’s a fun mirror. You’d like it. They actually listen when you talk.”
There was a time when that sentence might have sounded like a small, stupid joke. Now it sounded like an admission.
“I’m glad you’re getting help,” I said.
He looked at me again, eyes softer. “You look different, Lydia. Lighter. Stronger.” He hesitated. “Is there someone… new?”
“Yes,” I answered, without flinching. “There is.”
His jaw flexed almost imperceptibly. “Serious?”
“I don’t introduce anyone to my life casually anymore,” I said. “So yes. He’s serious.”
Ethan looked down at my desk, tracing the edge with his fingers. “I didn’t come to win you back,” he said. “I know that’s not happening. I just… wanted to see with my own eyes that you’re okay.”
“I’m more than okay,” I replied quietly. “I’m myself.”
When he lifted his gaze, I saw something in it I had never seen before: acceptance.
He took a small step back. “Then I’ll get out of your way.” He hesitated, then added, “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you didn’t let me decide everything.”
I nodded. “Me too.”
He turned, hand on the doorknob, then glanced over his shoulder. “German, huh?” he said. “That one really blindsided me.”
I almost smiled. “You should know by now,” I said, “I can finish things.”
After he left, I sat in my chair, staring at the door. My heart pounded, but it wasn’t the old panicked rhythm I knew so well. It was something else. A steady, powerful drumbeat that said: You did that. You handled that.
I turned back to my screen, to my spreadsheets, to an email from Berlin waiting in my inbox. Without meaning to, I smiled.
For the first time in my life, seeing my past and my present in the same room didn’t tear me apart. It stitched me stronger.
That night, when I got home, the lobby security guard nodded at me like he always did. “Evening, Ms. Collins,” he said, then caught himself. “Sorry, Ms. Collins still okay?”
“Collins is fine,” I said. “Just Lydia is fine too.”
He grinned. “Have a good night, Lydia.”
I rode the elevator up, the familiar hum of cables and motors sounding almost like a heartbeat. When I opened my front door, warm light spilled out around me, wrapping me in color and quiet.
My condo.
My sofa. My pictures on the walls. My books, my plants, my messy little stack of mail.
And in the kitchen, back turned to me, sleeves rolled up, was Julian.
He was stirring something on the stove, humming softly off-key. A bottle of wine sat open on the counter, two glasses half-filled, breathing.
“Smells good,” I said, closing the door behind me.
He turned, his whole face lighting up the way it always did when he saw me. “Hey, you,” he said. “I may or may not have tried a new recipe. Results pending.”
“I trust you,” I said.
“Dangerous choice,” he joked, then narrowed his eyes at me. “You okay? You look like you just ran a marathon.”
“In a way,” I replied. I slipped off my coat, hanging it by the door, then walked over and told him about Ethan’s visit.
He listened from start to finish without interrupting. Not once. No advice, no correction, no minimizing. Just listening.
When I finished, he leaned against the counter. “How do you feel about it?” he asked.
I considered the question. A few years ago, I would have answered with what I thought the other person wanted to hear. Now, I asked myself first.
“Strange,” I admitted. “Not angry. Not really. Just… done. Like I finally closed a door that had been stuck half-open.”
He nodded slowly. “That sounds like progress.”
“Weird kind of progress,” I said. “Part of me expected to feel satisfaction. But it wasn’t that. It was more like… relief. For both of us.”
“That makes sense,” he said. “You both got to see that the world didn’t end. You built something new. He’s starting to rebuild. Closure doesn’t always come with fireworks. Sometimes it’s just… quiet.”
I let that sink in.
Then he reached out, sliding an arm around my waist. “For the record,” he added, “I’m very glad you didn’t let him put that condo in just his name, or we wouldn’t be standing in this kitchen eating whatever this is.”
I laughed for real, the sound catching me off guard. “What is it?”
“One step above edible,” he said. “Two steps below impressive. But I did follow the recipe. Mostly.”
We ate at my small round table by the window, the city stretched out beneath us like a map of second chances. Cars snaked along the river. Lights blinked on in opposite towers. Somewhere out there, a version of me was still married to Ethan, still apologizing for existing too loudly.
I raised my glass to the version that got away from that life.
“To doors closing,” I said.
Julian clinked his glass against mine. “And to doors opening,” he replied.
Weeks passed. Work picked up speed. I was asked to join a cross-border project connecting our Chicago office with teams in Germany. Regular video calls with Berlin and Munich became part of my schedule. We discussed tax regulations, cross-currency reports, tricky client cases. It was the most challenging work I’d ever done—and the most satisfying.
One afternoon, halfway through a Zoom call, the German project lead said, “Lydia, your pronunciation is excellent. Did you study abroad?”
I smiled. “No. Just a lot of late-night online lessons.”
“Impressive,” she said. “We’re lucky to have you.”
There was a time when praise like that would have made me deflect, shrink, apologize. Now I let it land.
“Thank you,” I said simply.
Outside of work, life settled into a rhythm that felt almost suspiciously balanced. Weekdays were full: spreadsheets, emails, the occasional happy hour with coworkers. Evenings were shared between quiet nights alone with a book and nights with Julian—takeout on the sofa, walks along the river, spontaneous detours into small coffee shops and bookstores we pretended not to memorize.
On Saturdays, I sometimes met Hans for coffee.
It started by accident. I ran into him in the lobby one morning. He was in town visiting the building manager about something. We exchanged the kind of warm, slightly surprised greeting two people share when they’ve gone through something intense together and then drifted back into their own lives.
“You like the place?” he asked.
“I love it,” I said. “Thank you again. For everything.”
He shrugged, smiling. “You did the hard part. I just handed you a key.”
After that, we met every few months at a little café around the corner. He told me about his daughter, who was thriving in a new career after leaving her own controlling marriage. I told him about my new job, my classes, the condo.
“You know,” he said once, stirring his coffee thoughtfully, “I think sometimes life sends us the same lesson in different costumes until we finally listen.”
I laughed. “What costume was mine? A real estate listing?”
“A German expat with a too-quiet visitor,” he said. “And a husband who talked too loud.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Spring arrived in fits and starts. One weekend, the temperature shot up into the seventies, and the city exploded outside—people in T-shirts, boats on the river, tourists taking pictures as if Chicago had been invented that morning.
Julian and I walked along the waterfront, ice cream cones in hand. A street musician played guitar beneath a bridge, his case open for tips.
“You know,” Julian said suddenly, “I still don’t know what your dream is.”
I licked a drip of ice cream running down my wrist. “What do you mean?”
“I know your story,” he said. “How you got here. What you escaped. What you’ve built. But if money, time, fear—none of it mattered—what would you want? For you.”
The question took me by surprise. For years, all my dreaming energy had been used up on survival. On imagining bare-minimum futures that didn’t hurt. Now, asked openly, there was a blank where an answer should be.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve spent so long reacting to other people’s decisions, I never really thought… beyond this. The job. The condo. The fact that I can buy my own groceries without asking permission.”
He nodded, unbothered. “That’s okay. Step one was getting free. Step two is figuring out what you want to do with that freedom.”
We crossed a small pedestrian bridge. A breeze tugged at my hair. Somewhere nearby, a kid laughed, the sound bright and untangled.
“I want to go to Germany,” I blurted.
Julian glanced at me. “To visit?”
“To see if the language I learned in secret belongs to a life I can live out loud,” I said, surprising myself with how clear the words felt once I said them. “Maybe just a short trip. Berlin. Munich. I don’t know. But I want to see the places I’ve been naming for years through a screen.”
He smiled. “That sounds like a real dream to me.”
“It’s ridiculous,” I said. “Thirty-eight years old and I’m just now thinking about travel like some study-abroad student.”
He bumped his shoulder gently against mine. “There’s no age limit on wanting more.”
I thought about that for days.
A week later, my manager called me into her office. I sat down, palms slightly damp, though I had no idea why.
“We’re expanding,” she said. “The European team wants someone from Chicago to spend a few weeks onsite in Berlin to help streamline processes. You were the first name they suggested.”
I stared at her.
“Berlin,” I repeated.
“Yes,” she said. “All expenses paid. You’d be our bridge—literally and figuratively. Interested?”
I laughed once, disbelief bubbling up like champagne. “Absolutely.”
The universe, apparently, had a flair for timing.
When I told Julian, he grinned like I’d just announced I’d won the lottery. “See?” he said. “Told you dreams don’t care about age.”
“What if I mess it up?” I said, the old voice, the old fear, reflexively peeking through.
He shook his head. “You whispered German in a bedroom so your husband wouldn’t mock you. Now a team in Berlin is asking for you by name. You’re not going to mess it up.”
The night before my flight, I stood in my living room, suitcase packed, passport on the counter. The city glowed outside my windows like it was watching me. Part of me still couldn’t believe this was my life. That a woman who once hid notebooks under blankets was now boarding a plane with a work visa and an itinerary full of meetings.
My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number flashed on the screen.
Good luck on your trip. I heard from Hans you were going. Don’t worry—I’m not stalking you. He mentioned it to my sister, who mentioned it to my cousin, who works with my coworker. You know how it goes. Just wanted to say… I’m proud of you. – E
I stared at the message, my chest tightening. The old me would have spiraled, overanalyzed, read it fifty times. The new me took a breath and read it once.
People change. Sometimes. Slowly. Clumsily.
I typed back:
Thank you. I hope you’re doing well.
Then I put the phone down.
In the morning, I woke before dawn. The city outside was soft and blue. I touched the wall beside my bedroom door—the same way I had the night Ethan left—but this time, the gesture felt different.
I wasn’t clinging.
I was saying thank you.
For getting me through the worst version of my life. For sheltering me while I learned how to walk again. For being the place where everything fell apart so something better could form.
The flight to Berlin was long, but my fear never really showed up. Excitement did. So did a strange kind of calm. When we landed, and I stepped onto German soil for the first time, the air felt both foreign and familiar.
In the office there, colleagues greeted me with warm smiles and quick handshakes. We spoke half in English, half in German, slipping between languages like stepping stones. They asked about Chicago weather. I joked about the wind. They asked about the river. I described the way the lights hit it at night.
A few days into the trip, I found myself sitting alone in a small café on a cobblestone street, a cup of coffee in front of me, my notebook open. Not a hidden notebook. Not a secret one. Just mine.
I wrote:
I used to think the bravest thing I’d ever do was leave my marriage.
Maybe the bravest thing is actually staying with myself.
On my last night in Berlin, my team took me to dinner. The restaurant was warm and loud, with wooden tables and long benches. At some point, someone asked in German, “So, Lydia, what was the turning point for you? When did you decide to change your life?”
I thought back—to the condo, to Hans, to Ethan’s voice saying I was none of my own concern. To my shaking hands. To the bedroom floor. To the first word I ever whispered in German.
“It wasn’t one single moment,” I said. “It was a hundred small ones. But if I had to choose, it was the day I realized my life is my concern.”
They nodded, even if they didn’t know all the details.
When I flew back to the United States, the Chicago skyline rising to meet me, it didn’t feel like returning to the old life. It felt like bringing a new part of myself home.
At baggage claim, I spotted Julian immediately. He stood on his toes, scanning faces, then grinned when he saw me, lifting a small cardboard sign over his head like a joke.
Welcome home, Lydia – World Traveler.
I laughed, tears unexpectedly stinging my eyes. I walked straight into his arms, the airport noise fading around us.
“How was it?” he asked into my hair.
“Real,” I said. “It felt real.”
He pulled back just enough to look at me. “So, what’s the next dream?”
I thought about it. About travel and work and maybe one day teaching other women how to navigate money and mortgages and their own worth. About Hans’s daughter. About the therapist Ethan had mentioned. About the countless quiet women sitting in countless living rooms, swallowing words they didn’t know they were allowed to say.
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “But this time, I’m not afraid to find out.”
We drove back to my condo, the city moving around us in streaks of light. When I stepped through my front door, the familiar warmth wrapped around me.
My home.
My life.
My story, still being written.
Once, I believed new chapters were something that happened to other people—people braver, louder, luckier. Now I know the truth.
New chapters begin every day.
You just have to believe your name belongs on the first page.
