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one will hear me. I listen as high
heels click-clack on the tile floor, making their way to the stall on the far side of the television station’s public bathroom. Whoever she is, she’s fast. Just barely a minute, and she’s already done her business, flushed, and is now washing her hands. I imagine her fixing her hair in the mirror as I hear the clang of bangles coming together. One of the anchors, no doubt. I pray that her primping will be brief, and mercifully, it is. The nameless, faceless woman click-clacks her way out the door, and once again I am alone, huddled down in a stall.
    I’m ready for the tears to come—am willing them out of me—but curiously, nothing. I know the cry is there; the sorrow building in my chest threatens to cut off my very breath. I just want it out, I just want to release it, be free of it, make it finally happen so I can begin to let it go. But … nothing. Can’t make myself cry. Can’t feel the pain anymore. I’m numb.
    I start to go over the events of the last hour, hoping the recollection will make the dam burst. I arrived at work a little before 5:00 p.m., ready for my evening shift as a reporter for WPDE-TV in Florence, South Carolina. It was only a part-time job, but I was just twenty-one years old, a junior in college. I wasn’t evenout of school yet, and I’d already landed an on-air television gig. Everyone told me that was unheard of, that my future was as bright as they come. Funny … there’s nothing bright as I sit alone in a dingy bathroom trying to make myself sob.

    My assignment this evening is to cover a PTA meeting at a local high school. It makes me chuckle when I think of how people think the life of a TV reporter is glamorous; I was going to spend my night in a school cafeteria, trying to get parents to talk to me about the rising rate of student violence. I was going to drive myself to the story (and I was horrible with directions), lug about forty pounds of camera equipment all alone, and shoot and edit the story myself, all on a 10:00 p.m. deadline. Glamorous? Hardly. Stressful? Unbelievably so, especially when you consider the current state of my affairs: I had just hit two hundred pounds. I was constantly paranoid that my bosses would fire me at any minute; after all, how many fat people do you see on TV? I felt their eyes on me as I walked around the newsroom, and I tried to brush it off, tried to feel better by reminding myself I had been good all week. I was limiting my calories, sticking to diet sodas, and watching my portion sizes. I had managed to walk a couple of miles at the campus track three times that week and had plans to do it again the next day. I hadn’t yet stepped on the scale, but I was starting to feel somewhat confident in my efforts. Surely this would work! In no time I would lose the twenty pounds I’d gained since I started working there, and I would keep right on losing. My career would be set, and I wouldbe so happy, finally so fulfilled. I keep telling myself that as I work, trying to avoid the prying eyes of the newsroom.
    Because my meeting doesn’t start until 7:00 p.m., my job is to help everyone prepare for the 6:00 p.m. newscast. Again, say good-bye to all the glamorous television news life theories—that prep work includes ripping apart scripts and sorting them into piles for the news and sports anchors, as well as for the director and producer of the show. I am also asked to run the teleprompter for the newscast—meaning I have to sit off to the side of the set and operate the conveyor belt that carries the words the anchors read on-screen. It is mind-numbing work, but I just chalk it up to paying my dues. I settle into the cold studio for what I expect will be an uneventful newscast.
    Five minutes in the scurrying begins. Our weather anchor originated out of another studio hundreds of miles away in Myrtle Beach, but the feed for his shot is down. Everyone scrambles, trying to find a replacement, someone who can do