The Shape Of A New Week
For two weeks, Karim did very little.
This was harder than he had expected. He had grown up structured. His body did not know what to do with unstructured time. He would wake at half past five — automatic — and lie in bed staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, unable to read, unable to do anything but stare. He would eventually get up at seven, eat breakfast slowly, go to school, come home, sit on the floor of his room. He had no language for what he felt. The closest word was *empty*, but that was not it either. *Empty* implied a container. He felt instead like the container had been removed.
His teammates were furious. He knew this because Lior, who had been his closest friend in the squad since they were nine, came over on a Saturday and shouted at him for forty minutes in the kitchen.
"You are throwing it AWAY, Karim. You were going to make the squad. You were going to make the squad. You're going to regret this in two years and there's no going back. Coach is — he doesn't even want to talk about it. The team is in shock. We *needed* you in March."
Karim listened. Lior was not wrong, exactly. He was just speaking from inside a system that, until last Monday, Karim had also been inside. It was hard to argue with a system from outside. The grammar was not there.
He said, quietly: "I'm sorry, Lior. I don't know how to explain it. I'm not throwing it away. I'm — I just