I was four weeks into the new job and still eating lunch in my car because I hadn't figured out the break room yet.
Tuesday I drove to the thrift store on Elm instead, just to walk somewhere. My lunch break ran long, but nobody at the office seemed to notice or mind.
In a cardboard bin near the register, between a pincushion shaped like a tomato and a tangle of costume jewelry, I found a medal. Small, tarnished, engraved on the back: Second Place, Rifle Marksmanship, 1987 Regional Finals.
Ninety-nine cents. Someone's Saturday, someone's shaking hands on a podium, reduced to a bin by the register.
I bought it. Not because I wanted it. Because I couldn't stand the idea of it sitting there unclaimed.
I've been starting over since the divorce, since the move, since I became a person I don't fully recognize yet. Some days the only proof I have that I once amounted to anything is a pay stub and a keyring with too many wrong keys on it.
Now the medal sits on my desk at the new job. People ask about it. I tell them I won it, and they laugh, and I laugh too, and for a second the break room doesn't feel so impossible.
It belongs to someone. But for now, it's holding the space for me until I earn my own thing to put on that shelf.