Not How have you been?
Not Was it hard?
Not Are you happy?
Just numbers.
“Enough,” I answered.
Her jaw tightened.
The Climb They Didn’t See
They hadn’t seen the nights I coded until 2 a.m. because the laundromat dryers thudded through the ceiling and I couldn’t sleep anyway.
They hadn’t seen me teaching myself algorithms from free online lectures because I couldn’t afford another semester yet.
They hadn’t seen me bomb my first technical interview and cry in the stairwell afterward — not because I doubted my intelligence, but because I was so tired of proving I deserved space.
They hadn’t seen the contract job that paid barely enough but gave me real-world experience.
Or the startup that folded after six months.
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