The Tower

Morning light hit the windows like it was trying to get in. It spread thin across the walls, reflecting off the glass of half-empty water bottles and my laptop screen, and for a moment it looked clean. That’s what fooled me most of all — that brightness. From the outside, it must have looked like I was finally in a better place. The truth was that I had just built a different kind of cage, one with better lighting.

When 2024 started, it felt brutal all over again. I didn’t know who I was anymore. The ground had fallen away beneath me, and I was back in that shapeless place where identity disappears. I’d lost my TikTok account. I didn’t have a job anymore. I did get a decent severance, generous even, but it started fading faster than I expected. What had once felt like freedom quickly turned into panic.

The only thing that kept me upright was the thought of launching my website. I had written books, I had something to show for myself, and I wanted to believe that was enough to rebuild some version of who I was. But underneath, I still felt the echo of that cold, stark ending with Enrique. I didn’t disagree with the breakup itself — it probably was the right call — but it was the way it ended that haunted me. The chill of it. The dismissiveness. It was the first time I’d ever realized that closure can feel like abandonment wearing clean clothes.

A year before, I had been building something with him. Now, the silence felt like a mirror with nothing left to reflect. Then, almost out of nowhere, my ex from Bogotá, Christian, texted me. It was weird, but it gave me something else to think about, a small pulse of distraction. He had seen one of my Facebook posts, responded, and I hadn’t noticed. Suddenly, there he was again, as if time had rewound itself. For a few weeks, we talked like old friends, and in that space, I almost forgot Enrique existed.

But not for long.
Enrique would still text now and then — a random check-in, a photo, a small comment. At first, I answered politely. I didn’t want to feel attached again. I didn’t want to share anything real. It was easier to keep it surface-level. Over time, I realized that was fine with him. He was more interested in talking about his life — his friends, the attention he was getting, his nightlife, his frustrations with work. He had gotten a job again, selling desk packages or something similar, but he couldn’t have his phone with him during the day. He sounded bored. Restless. Like someone trying to convince himself it was all fine.

The last time we spoke, it didn’t end well. He told me a story about someone I knew — someone I was close with — and the conversation just spiraled. It felt accusatory and absurd, like he wanted me to be involved in some drama I hadn’t even known existed. I remember sitting there, blinking at my phone, wondering how I’d been pulled back into this. I didn’t care what he was talking about. I cared that I was still letting it affect me.

By then, I had launched my website, started publishing books, reopened TikTok, and tried to chase the same lightning that had hit before. But it didn’t work. The internet had changed. The algorithms had shifted. What used to take two weeks now took six months. I could barely sell anything. My advice didn’t go viral anymore. People had moved on. TikTok itself had turned into a marketplace, not a community.

By May, I could feel it again — that familiar, heavy quiet. My forty-fifth birthday came and went. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to celebrate it. My family insisted, but I felt like a stranger at my own table. I smiled when I was supposed to, made jokes that didn’t land, and counted the minutes until I could go home. I realized then that I had recreated my old life — the one in the Long Island basement — only this time I was up high. A tower instead of a tomb. But a prison is still a prison, no matter how far above the ground you build it.

In June, something unexpected happened. An old colleague reached out with a consulting opportunity — lucrative, easy, remote. It was the first good news in months. For a while, it helped. I could breathe a little. I could buy groceries without checking the total. I could pretend to be part of the world again. But when I wasn’t working, I just sank back into the stillness.

I stopped going out. I stopped answering messages. I spent entire days in bed, half-watching TV, half-staring into nothing. I rewatched Schitt’s Creek and Parks and Rec because they reminded me of warmth — of decency, of people choosing kindness. They felt like echoes of a world I used to believe in.

By then, I’d started realizing that the apartment itself was the problem. It wasn’t haunted in a supernatural way. It was haunted by repetition. By comfort that had curdled into confinement. Every corner felt like an echo chamber of my own thoughts. Every reflection in the glass reminded me how far I’d drifted.

I talked to Christian for about a month, and then, just like before, he disappeared. He’d call sometimes, try to video chat, and I couldn’t answer. I didn’t want him to see me like that. I didn’t want anyone to. Jorge checked in occasionally, told me about new projects, parties, plans. Everyone was doing well. Everyone was moving forward. I would scroll through their posts and feel like I was watching a world I’d been exiled from.

After I lost my account, people used to ask about me — what happened, where I’d gone. Some even made videos wondering aloud, “Whatever happened to Dan from HR?” But months passed, and the questions stopped. The silence became complete.

Some days I wouldn’t even look at my phone. When I finally did, there’d be nothing waiting for me anyway. No missed calls. No texts. No emails. Just the hollow confirmation that I could vanish entirely and the world would keep spinning without a ripple.

By late July, the consulting work was still steady, and from the outside, I looked fine again — stable, quiet, functioning. Inside, everything was glass. I could see life happening below me, people laughing, building, moving on. But the tower walls kept me separate. I existed above it all, suspended in my own still air, waiting for something I couldn’t name.

The sun would rise every morning, the light spilling through the same windows, touching the same surfaces, and I’d lie there, watching it climb the wall. For a moment, it would look beautiful — golden, almost holy — before it slipped away again, leaving the room dim and heavy.

And that’s how it stayed for a while.
Just me, the silence, and the tower.