My mind was made up. I was going back to school. For the moment, I had had enough.  So, school would once again become my escape.  It would also be my way into the next chapter of my life as a working girl.  I was going to work hard and return a changed person; unwilling to put up with any of the things I was now tolerating.

I wasn’t getting any younger and there were things that I wanted as well as things I didn’t want happening to me ever again as long as I breathed and lived as a working girl. School. It was my one hope for the network and training needed to ensure that all of this didn't become just me making empty promises to myself.

It was now almost five months since that fateful July day when I found myself severed and no longer an employee of the R. Allen Stanford owned newspaper in Antigua. But, I was feeling as if more time had passed since then.  Whenever friends or relatives mentioned my former work place, I was responding with “yeah, back in the day” or “I remember when…” as if I was relating something from my very early youth.  Indeed, it felt as if ten years had passed and I was at least thirty years older (however, that mathematics works out).

I was tired and old. Ready to resign.  I’d long grown tired of hearing the whines of my former co-workers and my present co-workers.  Despite what my diplomatic brain would force my mouth to say, I really didn’t care about the “new pressures” they were facing.  I really didn’t care about who said what; after all, old people say- “those who bring news to you also carry news back to others”. And I most certainly didn’t care to listen to how betrayed they all now felt; old people also say “what sweet you now, will sour you later.”

My line of vision was narrowing. I had grown even more tired (if that can be imagined) of the ongoing power plays at the online news company to which I was now contributing articles.  I didn’t need to understand the insecurity plaguing at least two other writers attached to the company. It was not my place to make them understand that I was no threat to their livelihood.

I also didn’t need to fret about why the new editor/writer/CEO/etc felt the need to do any of the things he was doing. I didn’t care that he was attempting to steal from me- for he asking me for story ideas or suggesting I record sessions of parliament for him was just that- an attempt to knock bread from a young female freelance journalist’s mouth.

Some people are just what they are. To be sure, at the end of it all they may want to pretend their hands are clean- blame others for making them something they are not. But that is their matter to battle with- not mine.

Everyone was being reduced to specks of dust to which I could no longer give much of my attention.  I was beyond feeling the need to spend another minute pondering how incredibly stupid people must think I am or how stupid they were for thinking me so incredibly stupid.  I was beyond noticing that the company had now moved to taking less than half my usual monthly quota of stories. My eyes were now fixed elsewhere, my gaze was a frightening sort of steady and there was simply not anything nor anyone which/who could break it.

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