It was silly on the surface — a twenty-something working retail in a toy store.

It was silly on the surface — a twenty-something working retail in a toy store. But that job saved me in small ways.

It let me be surrounded by color and imagination at a time when my life felt gray. It reconnected me to the joy I’d lost after high school. It gave me permission to play again, even in small doses.

Yes, I was consuming too much. Yes, I was escaping. But I was also healing.

I didn’t understand it at the time, but the toy store wasn’t regression. It was recovery.