Pam’s eyes snapped open, as they did every morning, five seconds before her alarm clock went off. Dully, she let herself move on autopilot, turning the alarm off and moving through her morning ablutions. She dressed in the same drab familiar clothing as every day: not just every day in this ridiculous cycle of repetition but, it occurred to her, every day of her life. What was the point? Roy wouldn’t give her up without a fight, and yet she was equally sure that without breaking up with him she could no more move forward beyond today than she could fly to the moon. That would, ordinarily, mean that she’d just have to have that fight, but every time they clashed it seemed to interfere with whatever else she had planned to try to break herself out of this artificially imposed rut she was in.

Only the biggest rut wasn’t artificially imposed at all. The biggest rut was simply the fact that she was Pam Beesly, world’s boringest woman, she thought to herself. She did the same things every day, went the same places, ate the same food, wore the same clothes. The lone bright spots in her days were the unpredictable moments when Jim Halpert did something fun—but with the cyclical nature of her existence now, even that would probably begin to pall. What was the point of all of this? Why was she trying to become some kind of fancy new Beesly when she and everyone else around her knew she was just plain old Pam? She could do whatever she liked today—go get on a plane, jump into the lake, get a tattoo—and she’d just wake up tomorrow the same as ever. Sure, that was literally true now because of this stupid curse or whatever, but it was no less true on any other day of her life, she realized. She’d been trapped in a repetitive cycle for years now, and just like this magical one only more depressingly there was no way out.

She felt the fight drift out of her. Why bother doing all the things she’d been trying? Why visit Karen in Stamford (and have to reintroduce herself) or Melanie at the YMCA (and…ditto) or even try to break up with Roy? None of it mattered. None of it did anything, except for cause pain and heartbreak and…well, some not too terrible art if she did say so herself, but still. None of it changed anything.

She waited for Roy to rush through his morning routine—again—and sat in near-silence as the truck pulled into the office. She accepted his tossed off “love ya, Pammy” and crept upstairs, punched in the buttons to buy Dwight’s pencil cup, and went through the motions of the day. The same banter fell from the same lips—even Jim’s and hers—as she let her instincts take over and her mind wander. Stanley found out again about the booze cruise and she feigned surprise. Brenda was horrified by Michael and she barely cared. Everything was always the same. Why had she never noticed before? Why had it taken a million repeats of the same day to make her realize how much of her life was already that way? And why should she try to do something about it, when nothing she did got any purchase on the problem?

The rest of the workday passed in a haze, but then again they usually did, didn’t they? What was one more seemingly endless cycle in a string of actually endless repetitions of the same dull life? At least she wasn’t aging, or she had to assume so, given her impressions of Bill Murray’s life. Though he did appear to be a near-immortal who always looked the same, so maybe she would. Maybe after an actual million times through this same damn day she’d wake up to discover her bones had crumbled into dust—or was that, not wake up to discover it? Either way, it was sad that the best outcome she could think of right now was that her purely physical body would wear away and let her rest. Though who was to say she’d be able to even then? Maybe some vital essence of her would continue to float through these endless office meetings and stupid camaraderie events until the heat death of the universe.

At five she met up with Roy and they drove towards the dock again in silence. She let him lead her aboard the boat and couldn’t even muster disgust at Michael’s inane Gilligan’s Island references. Didn’t he know those people got stranded? She supposed this was at least better than his earlier Titanic references. At least if they got somehow stuck in the world of Gilligan’s Island they could eat Michael to survive. Though if his spirit infected them when they did, they’d be worse off than before.

Oh look, Katy, it turned out, was a cheerleader. What a shock. And, astonishingly, she was good at taking snorkel shots too. Was there anything she couldn’t do?

The first real feeling she’d felt all day washed through her. Yes, her jealous mind recalled, there was something she couldn’t do. She couldn’t get Jim to marry her. Though, she thought, people who lived in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. It wasn’t like Roy actually wanted to marry her, either. But it was mildly amusing at least to consider that she had gotten him to propose the first time, even if he said it didn’t count, and that she knew Jim was probably going to break up with Katy on this cruise. She didn’t feel good that she found that amusing, or that she was gloating internally about an event that, she remembered, had left Katy devastated, but she clung to the fact that she was feeling anything at all beyond a dangerous lassitude that threatened to swallow up her limbs.

She pushed her way outside and, as before, as always, Jim followed her. They had the same stupid little stilted conversation about Katy and the same idiotic staring contest—why didn’t he do or say anything in all that time? She pushed aside the mirroring question “why don’t you?”—and she gave up, again. “I’m cold.”

And she did feel cold. The kind of cold you feel after hypothermia has set in and there’s nothing you can do now to help yourself; the kind that sneaks over your body like fog settling in over a bay at night, only noticeable because what seemed like darkness has been replaced by the real thing, the stars and moon winking out imperceptibly in an instant; the kind you die from. She couldn’t feel her fingers, or her heart.

She wandered back inside and, for a lack of anything else to do, sat down in the same booth. Katy joined her in a moment and they had…oh god, her mind had blocked out this conversation…but they had it nonetheless, the excruciating one about engagements and how you became engaged. You don’t, she thought. And I can’t get out of mine. Which of us is really worse off?

And there was Roy, and that same drunken loutish grin on his face making promises she knew he had no intention of keeping, except if she was lucky by inertia—and who was to say if that luck would be good or bad? And Katy was pushing her onto her feet and she was being kissed (he tasted of beer and tequila, and how had she not noticed that the first time? Oh right, because he always tasted of that. She wondered what someone else—Jim, say—might taste like, but the brief flicker of interest morphed into something else when she saw him getting up to make a toast). Jim’s toast was…almost painful this time, because she could see what she hadn’t seen before: the pain in his eyes. He did his level best to make his voice sound like it always did, and he’d fooled her before, she realized, but there was something inside him hurting, and she wished—she hoped—she prayed she knew what.

It was almost enough to make her feel again, but then Dwight wrested away the microphone and she settled back into her daze. What was the point? Even if Jim loved her like she loved him, what could she do about it? Nothing ever changed. There was no point. She might as well just let it be.

She was wandering around the ship later, having slipped away from Roy when his drunken caresses became just too much for even her dulled soul to bear tonight, when she heard low voices coming from the railing. She wandered closer to see Michael tied to the rail—had she known that had happened before? Had it happened? She couldn’t remember—and Jim standing next to him. They hadn’t heard her yet, so she stopped to listen.

“What a night.” Jim was staring out to sea (lake?) so she couldn’t see his eyes but she could hear the same pain in his voice, less disguised this time.

“Well, it’s nice for you. Your friend got engaged.” Of course Michael couldn’t hear Jim’s pain. If she’d missed it the first time, what hope did someone as self-centered as Michael have? But then again she’d been pretty self-centered that first time around too.

“She was always engaged.” She almost snorted. Tell that to Roy. But then again, she’d always known Jim seemed to take her engagement more seriously than Roy ever did: he certainly was more thoughtful of her as an engaged woman than her own fiancé, because it came up at the oddest times. They’d be chatting about something or trading jokes and Roy’s name would come up and…it was never explicit, but there was always an awareness, she thought, that she couldn’t quite label, that never got above the surface, but that always lay in wait to snare their conversations and steer them in another direction.

“Roy said the first one didn’t count.” Oh God, he’d said that to Michael? Who the hell else had he said that to? The dry cleaner? The florist? Of course not, because he didn’t do any dry cleaning and he’d never bought her flowers except for prom, but knowing how Roy felt about Michael she could be damn sure he’d told everyone he had actually talked to that the first one didn’t count—everyone but her and Jim, that is. God, what a prick she was engaged to. Her dander was coming up, and it was a welcome feeling because it filled the emptiness that had been threatening to take over her soul.

“That's... great. You know, to tell the truth, I used to have a big thing for Pam, so...” Wait, what? Run that tape back please. Jim had a thing for her? She’d always suspected, maybe hoped, but he dated people like Katy. He could get anyone he wanted—sure, he could be a little schlubby, a little nebbishy at times, but underneath that was a smart, funny man with a great smile and a surprisingly ripped body. Thinking about him having a thing for her felt…egotistical. Even now that she’d come to realize how she felt about him, she hadn’t really fully hoped he’d reciprocate without some serious convincing. She felt something more than anger start to seep into the gaps where her ennui had been, but she kept listening.

“Really? You're kidding me. You and Pam? Wow. I would have never have put you two together. You really hid it well. God! I usually have a radar for stuff like that. You know, I made out with Jan...” Leave it to Michael to turn the conversation towards him and Jan (not an image Pam needed more of) but she felt irked that he’d never thought of them together. Sure, she hadn’t dared think of it herself until a few cycles ago, but Michael didn’t have to worry about being faithful to Roy! He could have seen it if he’d wanted to.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Yeah? Yep. Well, Pam is cute.” Given that this was Michael, at least he hadn’t said the words “big knockers.”

“Yeah. She's really funny, and she's warm. And she's just... well, anyway.” No! Keep going! She wanted to yell, but she knew that if she showed herself now he’d just start sputtering in awkwardness, and she didn’t want that. Anyway, she’d have another shot at this: it wasn’t like she wouldn’t wake up in the same day tomorrow. But unlike this morning, that finally felt like a blessing, not a curse.

“Well, if you like her so much, don't give up.” When did she start agreeing with Michael?

“She's engaged.” Why, oh why, did Jim Halpert have to be a good guy? Not that she really would have wanted him if he weren’t, but it was damn inconvenient to think that both of them were stymied by an engagement that she’d since found out to be not just a shambles but nearly a sham.

“BFD. Engaged ain't married.”

“Huh.” Was Jim actually thinking about it? And when had she become the sort of person who wanted him to think about it? Actually, she knew the answer to that: today, but not this today. The today when Penny had made her face the reality that, yes, engaged wasn’t married—and that if she wasn’t careful, she’d end up married to someone other than the man she loved, the man in front of her now.

“Never, ever, ever give up.”

Pam let Jim wander away, Michael’s advice ringing in her ears. Sure, he meant it for Jim, and she hoped Jim would take it—although he, of course, wouldn’t remember it later because “later” would be today again for him—but she felt it take root deep within her heart. She’d almost given up today because the last few times of trying to break up with Roy had taken so much out of her. But she couldn’t. She had to do what Michael told her—and when had she thought that before with anything but doomed resignation?—and never, ever, ever give up.

Tomorrow wasn’t a new day, but it was a clean slate, and she’d be damned if she let herself write the same things on it as she had today.