the 6pm walking group
With my closest work friend K's departure to pursue medical school, I felt like I have gone back to my first few weeks at the job. Everything is so awkward and uncomfortable and it's a miracle if I've gone through a day without taking a Xanax.
The little rookie circle we've kept feels shaky. They bring a sense of comfort and a break from the greater performance that I must keep up when I'm inside the office, but they too feel too good to be true. It's like I'm always bracing myself for the time we'll all eventually crash and burn. It feels like a temporary good thing, but I'm still very grateful for it.
These days, with K's absence, I've been forced to interact more with my other team members. Her leaving really left me no choice but to step out of my comfort zone.
Without which, I think, I wouldn't find myself with the 6pm walking group.
It's not an official group. We're not a 'group of friends'. It's just a term I've started to internally call it because for some reasons, I find myself walking the five minutes from our office door to the compound gate every after-work with the same four people. The weird thing is it wasn't... premeditated. A few of us just started accidentally walking by each other after clocking out. So often that nowadays we wait for each other..?
At first it's just Kuya M and I, talking about the latest episodes of House of the Dragon. And sometimes along with Ate A. Then for some reasons I became stranded with Kuya V at a mall, and the next time we lined at the same time at the biometrics, he started walking home with us. Then there's also Ate M.
There was a time when all of them were for some reasons unavailable, except for Ate M. I was walking ahead when she called me and started walking with me. She was really good at small talk. I attempted my best not to answer with one-word responses and even tried to pull up my therapist's "harmless speaking topics 101" in my mind. I cringe whenever I remember that day because of how awkward I was but still feel grateful (and slightly surprised) that Ate M did it.
I think of the 6pm walking group1 as a 5 minute desensitizing exercise for me.
I'm thankful for the 6pm walking group.
We have flexible working hours so if you're the first to arrive, you could be the first to leave as long as you've rendered enough hours. It's called the 6pm walking group because, as early-birds, we're always the first in line to clock out when the clock strikes 6.↩