Gayle Peck is no stranger to pressure. The pressure to be perfect. The pressure to outperform her coworkers. The pressure to be good enough for Chris. Hell, even the pressure from the unrelenting stress headache that she's had since she was 16. The constant weight of pressure is always with her.

In a twisted way, she's glad for it. It forces her to move forward. It forces her to strive to become better. She may be running toward something that's impossible, but without the motivation, she worries that there would be nothing to keep her going, and she'll just wilt away into nothingness. Another bright star that fizzled out, with nothing left it it's stay.

Still, in the quietness of the night, when she's wrapped up in sheets and Chris' arms listening to the steady beating of his heart and his slow, even breathing, she can't feel any of the pressure that she's felt her whole life. And, she wonders in the safety of the quiet room if maybe, just maybe she could live without the pressure and still be happy. She wonders if she could be the kind of girl who stays in the blue shirt, working the street if it meant coming home to this, to him, every night. She vows to herself that she'll learn to be the kind of girl who can stop striving and just learn to be content.

She's never been a religious person. Besides the mandatory Peck family trip to mass on Easter and Christmas eve, she avoids churches or thoughts of god. The way Gayle sees it, if there is some all powerful being that created everything in our universe (and potentially things outside it as well), chances are it's a little too busy keeping the sun in the sky and making sure the earth keeps rotating to care whether inconsequential human beings are paying their dues to it and thanking it every week. Still, she finds herself repeating one thought in her head every night until she falls asleep. Her own silent prayer in an attempt to convince herself or whatever powerful force might be listening. "This is enough. This is enough. This is enough."

The moonlight is deceptive. It shades everything into black and white. Light and dark. It makes you see shadows and believe in things that aren't really there. Still, in the safety of the room and the sweet lies of the moonlight, she knows that as much as she wants to believe that she can change, there's a bigger part of her that knows she won't.

She wishes that she could blame it on her parents. But their ambitions for her are also her own ambitions. Relationships are unstable. People are unstable. But power, your job? They can be controlled. Managed.

The pressure may be talking years off of her life. It may make her unhappy. But it's a pressure that she knows. And, if she were to let go of the pressure, who's to say what would fill it's place?

Im the morning light, when everything is shaded in grays and blues and reds, she makes one last ditch effort as she feels the pressure begin to fill her chest. "This is enough. This is enough. This is enough."