Pam drummed her finger rhythmically, and blinked away the burn of staring at her computer screen for eight hours. She sat in her chair at its lowest setting, deliberately hunkered down in a prison of papers, counters, and nick-nacks, which screamed silent memories to her. They taunted and constantly reminded her of who she was, and what she wasn’t.

They told her that she was a Receptionist. And on days like this, when there was few phone calls, and even fewer faxes, she could be comfortably numb. It was all sort of a novocaine for the brain. Of course, she ignored the meaning behind the idleness, that the inevitable guillotine of downsizing had been cranked up a notch higher, so that it may more swiftly do its work.

People, children’s books, and generally naive idealists said that there was always a silver lining, a sort of ray of optimism that penetrated the darkness of despair, of depression, and of despondency. Pam surmised that those people had never truly experienced any of those three things, or definitely not all at once, because then they would know what utter bullshit that phrase was. Things don't get better, they don't magically and mysteriously improve….instead they are ignored, and left to rot without anyone caring at all. Just like with this company, their employees, and the decreasing calls and faxes.

No, Pam knew it was more like that on the fringe of every sunshiny, peaceful, idyllic day were storm clouds. You basked in the golden country of warmth, never seeing them, but they were there. And it was only a matter of time before the sun would be gone, and the tyranny of the dark clouds would span the sky, leaving you cold and wishing for the way things had been.

At least that was the way that she felt, especially lately. Every day that she watched Jim and Karen together, it reminded her of the hopelessness and futility of love. That the light of the past was trumped by the darkness of the present, and there was nothing to be done about it.

She had deluded herself into thinking she was someone new, someone different, and someone more self-assured. But that was a lie, just something that she told herself to try to escape the crushing pain that pressed down upon her heart every single day. It was just something her mother told her over the phone, and over dinner because she loved her, and supported her. She didn’t understand, and she couldn’t understand.

There had been a brilliant flash of opportunity in her life, and now it was gone. An angelic beam of light that had illuminated her completely, inside and out, but which was now blocked by the overcast gray of the sky. Lost forever.

And why should it ever have been anything more? The other day she had wandered aimlessly in a bookstore for hours, a pastime of hers that had gone from inquisitive to somnambulant, when she reached the Self-Help section. As she had scanned the covers of the various books, with the revoltingly wide and happy smiles of the people who occupied them, it seemed that happiness, success, and love were the spoils of being a go-getter. Those people who were fueled by ambition, self-confidence, and attitude.

Life was apparently a zero-sum game, and her loss had been another’s gain.

Karen was one of those people who won. Who had always won, who expected to win, and weren’t surprised when things came to them. It was easy for her probably, getting Jim to be her boyfriend, her lover, the person who held her closely in the cold of the night and heated her with his warm breath on her neck. She didn’t even realize what she had, how amazing he was, and how lucky she was to have him. But then again, why should she? She was a winner, and people like her didn’t need to realize how great things were, they just accepted that they would be that way.

So that left her a loser, certainly with Jim, and as she looked dreary-eyed around her area of the office, it seemed at life as well. She was alone, miserable, and worse then everything else, painfully self-aware of the fact.

A couple of months ago at the Steamtown Mall, she had been spending her Friday night shopping for bathmats, when she found herself in the Radio Shack. Her nights had been restless, long, and tissue-filled, and she wanted something to help her sleep. That’s when she had found white noise generators. They were supposedly therapeutic, and were guaranteed to soothe away the carnival of regret that spun in her head.

That night, as she lay in bed, eyes glued to the ceiling, and the machine on her night table, she realized something. White noise, the static, same-sounding, filler of space and sound that she was trying to fall asleep with, already existed in her life. In fact, it was her life.

Everyday was the same, painfully ordinary in its composition, and inevitable in its outcome. Her mornings, workdays, and evenings melted together into a blur of commonality, which propelled her along like a leaf in a stream.

Her meals were the same, her actions were the same, even her feelings were the same. Nothing varied, nothing challenged, and nothing was memorable. She was living in the shadow of the cloudy sky, where colors didn’t exist, and everything melted into a grayness.

And she was at its center, appropriately ordinary in every way. Pam had never lamented or really even thought about the fact that she was so very ordinary before, but she realized it now. In appearance, in wardrobe, in failed hope, and occupation, she was decidedly un-special, un-spectacular, and un-important. It wasn’t even that the epiphany had slathered the darkness of depression upon her during quiet moments of contemplation, but rather what it meant for what she could achieve.

Ordinary people, by definition and categorization, did not achieve great things. They did not have passionate works of art, they did not make a mark on society, and lastly, they did not get the one person in the world who they loved more than anything else, to love them back.

Because the kind of love that she held for Jim was extraordinary. It was wild, crazy, all-consuming, and utterly mad. It was the type of love someone so very, very ordinary could never have realized. But that a winner, someone who wasn’t so bland, and boring could have. Someone like Karen.

As she watched them leave together for the day, their smiles matching the hands that rested on each other’s backs, she sighed.

Pam thought of the night ahead of her, the one that was technically in her future, but was already so well known to her that it might as well have been in the past. And she knew that there was no escaping it, or avoiding it, that it would wash over her just like the previous hundred nights had done, without leaving a memory.

That it would be ordinary.