The Validation Detox Series Chapter 2

The morning sun was entirely too bright.

It cut through the windshield of my sedan like a laser, bouncing off the mirrored glass of the Miller & Croft tower.

Sitting in the parking garage, my hand pulled up my emergency brake and then turned the key in my ignition. Engine off. That was step one.

Step two was checking my phone. 

My thumb twitched, hovering over the screen. It had been exactly fourteen hours since I walked out of the office last night without sending Marcus a follow-up text. 

Fourteen hours of radio silence.

Don't do it, the quiet voice from last night whispered.

Just a quick peek, my mind countered. What if he texted at 2:00 AM? What if he’s hurt? What if he thinks I hate him?

I rolled my eyes at my own brain, swallowed hard, and forced myself to shove the phone into the deepest, darkest zippered pocket of my tote bag.

 Out of sight, out of mind. Or, more accurately, out of sight, agonizingly at the forefront of my mind.

The elevator ride up to the fourth floor felt like ascending into a gladiator arena armed with nothing but a ballpoint pen. 

When the doors chimed open, the familiar scent of burnt breakroom coffee and stale carpet hit me.

"Morning, Sabrina," David from risk assessment muttered as he passed, clutching a massive mug.

"Morning," I said, forcing the standard, pleasant, non-threatening smile onto my face. My jaw actually ached from it. 

Performative, I thought, remembering the journal entry. I'm being performative.

I reached my cubicle, dropped my bag, and hesitated. 

On a normal Wednesday, my routine was pretty basic : boot up the computer, open Outlook, open Teams, check the shared drive to see if Karen had left comments on my files, and then panic-correct whatever she flagged before the 9:00 AM huddle.

Today, I reached into my bag and pulled out my new bestie, the Validation Detox Journal.

I laid it right next to my keyboard. A boundary and physical reminder that I wasn’t a ghost today.

"Sabrina."

The voice was clipped, sharp, and entirely devoid of morning warmth.

I turned.

 Karen was standing at the entrance of my cubicle, a stack of printed manila folders pressed against her chest like armor. 

Her sharp eyes immediately darted down to my desk, landing right on the journal, before snapping back up to my face.

"I saw you uploaded the Q4 spreadsheet at 7:50 last night," Karen said, her tone suggesting I had uploaded a virus instead of a thoroughly audited financial report. "I took a look at it this morning."

My chest tightened.

The old urge to instantly apologize—to say I’m so sorry if anything was confusing, I can rework it right now—rushed to the back of my throat like bile. 

I literally had to press my tongue against the roof of my mouth to stop the words from escaping.

"And?" I asked, basically forcing the word through my teeth.

Just and. Two syllables. No apology. No frantic smile.

Karen blinked. She wasn’t used to and. She was used to me melting into a puddle of compliant anxiety.

She adjusted her glasses, looking slightly derailed.

"Well, the formulas are correct," she admitted grudgingly, as if extracting a tooth. "But your formatting on the summary tab is different from what we used last quarter. It’s going to take me a few minutes to adjust to it. I need you to completely reformat it to match the legacy templates by noon."

The legacy templates were a disorganized nightmare from 2018. The new layout I built actually made sense.

I took a deep breath, amazed and terrified at the words churning from my gut and demanding release from my tongue.

"The new layout allows the executives to see the net margins without scrolling," I said as politely as possible. 

My voice was a little shaky, but it was steady enough. "Reverting it will make the data harder to read for the afternoon presentation."

Karen’s expression hardened. 

The passive-aggressive mask slipped, just a fraction. "I prefer the legacy template, Sabrina. And since I’m the one presenting it to the board, my preference is what matters. Unless, of course, you’re too busy to accommodate your team?"

There it was. The trap. You’re not being a team player. You’re being difficult.

The old Sabrina would have buckled, taken the blame, and skipped lunch to fix it. My hand drifted to the edge of the desk, my fingers brushing against the cover of the journal.

I am the only one who decides my real value.

"I can revert the formatting," I said clearly. "But because that will take time away from the client onboarding files you asked me to prioritize, those won't be ready until Thursday afternoon instead of today. Which would you prefer I focus on?"

Karen stared at me. 

I held my breath, my eyes widening just abit at my own audacity.

The silence stretched between us, thick and uncomfortable, punctuated only by the low hum of the fluorescent lights. A coworker in the next cubicle stopped typing.

Karen’s jaw tightened. She hated being forced to make a logical choice when she just wanted to enforce compliance.

"Just... do the reformat," she snapped, tossing a manila folder onto my desk. "And make sure it's done right."

She turned on her heel and marched away, her heels clicking aggressively against the thin carpet.

I let out a breath I felt like I’d been holding since Monday. My hands were trembling, but as I looked down at the folder she had thrown, a strange, electric thrill ran through my veins.

I hadn’t made a scene. I hadn’t been rude. I had just laid out reality, and for the first time in my career, Karen had been forced to deal with it instead of throwing her emotional weight around.

By 12:30 PM, the adrenaline had faded, replaced by the crushing, hollow ache of withdrawal.

It turns out, stopping your addiction to external approval feels a lot like actual detoxing. My brain was screaming for a hit. I needed a sign—any sign—that I was still liked, still valued, still a "good girl."

I broke. I pulled my phone out of my bag and opened my DMs.

Still nothing from Marcus. The little Read 6h ago from last night had now turned into Read 20h ago.

A wave of nausea hit my stomach. It felt like a physical rejection, a cold wall of indifference. 

See? my inner critic hissed, returning with a vengeance. You tried to be strong, you didn't text him, and now he’s completely forgotten you exist. You blew it.

Right on cue, a text bubbled up from my sister, Chloe: Mom’s losing her mind. She called me crying because you didn't reply to her text yesterday. Sabrina, seriously, just call her and apologize. You know how she gets when she thinks we're ignoring her.

The pressure was suffocating. 

Karen was mad at me, Marcus was ignoring me, and my mother was playing the martyr. 

All at once, the walls of the office felt like they were closing in. The cost of trying to own my life felt too high. It was too lonely. It was too exhausting.

I grabbed my phone, walked out of my cubicle, and practically fled down the hallway toward the single-occupancy restroom at the end of the hall.

 I needed a hiding spot.

I locked the heavy door behind me, leaned my back against it, and slid down until I was sitting on the cold tile floor, pulling my knees to my chest.

A single, hot tear escaped my eye, tracking down my cheek. I pulled up Marcus’ contact card. 

My thumb hovered over the message box.

Hey, just checking in! Hope you’re having a good week :)

It was so easy. Just eleven words. If I sent it, he might reply. Even a dry, one-word answer would break the agonizing silence. 

It would give my brain the tiny drop of dopamine it was starving for.

 I could apologize to my mom, tell her I was sorry for being a bad daughter, and let the familiar, comfortable numbness of being a people-pleaser wash over me again.

I stared at the screen, my breathing shallow.

Then, I remembered my answer to the prompt from last night: Because I have handed the remote control of my life to people who aren't even watching the show.

If I sent this text, I was giving Marcus the remote control again. If I apologized to my mother for having a demanding job, I was letting her write the script of me doing something wrong to her. Again.

I closed my eyes, gripped the phone tightly in my hand, and didn't type.

 I just sat on the bathroom floor and let the discomfort wash over me.

It felt like acid. It felt miserable. But underneath the misery, there was a tiny, stubborn patch of solid ground.

I was still alive.

The world hadn't ended because Marcus hadn't texted, or because Karen had to manage her own timeline, or because my mother was upset.

I stayed there for five full minutes, letting the withdrawal peak, and then slowly, miraculously, begin to subside.

When I finally stood up and washed my face in the sink, the young woman looking back at me in the mirror looked exhausted, but her eyes were clear.

I walked back to my desk, sat down, and opened the journal to Day Two. I didn't write a full entry yet—there wasn't time—but on a blank page, I pressed the pen into the paper and wrote a single line for the afternoon ahead:

The withdrawal hurts because the illusion is dying. Let it die.



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