It’s 2 AM and I’m just staring at the glow of my phone feeling like a complete fraud and like my life is just one long endless conveyor belt of missed chances and domesticity and I just keep thinking about how we, as humans, we just… settle, don’t we? And we tell ourselves it’s for a good reason, a noble reason, for the kids for the stability for the love even but is it really love if you’re just a ghost in your own kitchen making perfect little birthday cakes for people who will never ever know that you could have made them something SO much more beautiful? I mean I’ve been at this grocery store chain for TWENTY YEARS and yeah the benefits are good and the pay is steady and the hours are consistent enough that I can still do all the school drop-offs and pick-ups and be home when everyone gets back and make dinner and clean up and do the laundry and all of it but my hands… they ache for something else. And it’s not even just about the baking, it’s about the risk, you know? Like I had this whole vision, this little artisanal shop with mismatched antique furniture and loaves of sourdough cooling on the counter and special occasion cakes that were works of actual art and not just the same five designs from the corporate manual and I had a little bit of savings, not much but enough to at least get started on a lease and some equipment but I just… I froze. And then the second kid came and then the third and then my partner changed jobs and money got tighter and tighter for a bit and it just felt so STUPID to even think about it, to even whisper it out loud when there were mouths to feed and bills to pay and now it’s just this… ghost limb feeling. Like part of me is missing and I don’t even know how to get it back because every time I try to talk about it, it just sounds like I’m complaining, like I’m ungrateful for the life I have, for my beautiful kids and my good partner and a roof over our heads. But am I the only one who feels this crushing weight of the “what if” every single day? Like you love your life and you love your family but there’s this whole other person inside you, this whole other life you could have lived, just sitting there quietly screaming and demanding to be seen? And you keep squashing it down because what kind of parent, what kind of partner, risks everything for a dream that might not even pan out when you already HAVE something good? Anyone else just completely lost their own self somewhere between the grocery store aisles and the laundry room and the bedtime stories? Because I just don’t know how to find my way back and it feels like the longer I wait, the more of me just… disappears.