Date: April 1, 2025

"You don’t need to fix everything. Sometimes you just need someone who sees you during the crash dump."

💞 Context

Lately I’ve been juggling work, code, anxiety, and the pressure to always feel productive. But in the middle of all that chaos, Melissa has been the one constant — like a steady process running in the background, keeping the system alive.

She doesn’t always know the ins and outs of the .NET runtime, but she knows when my brain is about to throw an unhandled exception.

This post is a love letter to support systems — both human and architectural.

🧩 The Symptom

I was building out a feature where users can comment on posts. Simple enough. But my brain started spiraling into “what if I forgot something?” or “what if this code sucks and I'm just faking it?”

Classic imposter syndrome. Classic NullReferenceException... in my confidence.

Melissa noticed I was off. She walked over and said, “Hey, wanna show me what you’re building?”

It wasn’t a solution.
It was better — it was presence.

🔁 The Parallel

Just like in code, sometimes a good system needs more than structure — it needs support.

🛠️ The Fix

Melissa isn’t my debugger — she’s my IServiceProvider.

She doesn’t fix the issue. She helps me find the tools to fix it myself.

When my thoughts start racing like runaway threads, she helps me slow the execution.

When my self-esteem hits a stack overflow, she doesn't panic — she helps me garbage-collect the crap I shouldn’t be carrying anymore.

💬 Final Thoughts

You can be a solo developer and still not go it alone.

Whether it's a partner, a friend, or a trusted rubber duck, having someone to listen, not fix is one of the most powerful tools you can add to your mental stack.

Melissa reminds me that I’m not broken. I’m just a system that sometimes needs maintenance.