I’m 76 now, and some nights, like tonight, I lie here staring at the ceiling, thinking about things. About how it all just… slips away. You spend your whole life building something, right? A business, a family. And then one day, you look up, and the kids are grown. Gone. And the business? It’s not yours anymore, not really. I sold it, smart move, financially speaking. But it leaves this fucking void. Came here at 23, with nothing but a suitcase and a head full of ambition. Worked every single goddamn day. Weekends, holidays. My husband, bless his heart, he tried. He’d say, “Marta, slow down. What’s the rush?” But I couldn't. Not then. There was always another loan to pay, another permit to get, another inventory shipment stuck in customs. My parents, they sacrificed everything for me to even get this chance. Failure wasn’t an option. The kids, they grew up in the back of the shop, practically. My daughter, Elara, she’d sit on flour sacks doing her homework. My son, Leo, he’d "help" sweep, mostly just pushing dirt around. They understood, I think. Or they learned to. I wasn’t a PTA mom. Never baked cookies for school fundraisers. My contribution was paying for the damn school trips, paying for the tutors, making sure they had everything I didn’t. EVERYTHING. Then the divorce. Mid-fifties. He just… couldn’t take it anymore. Said I was married to the business, not him. And he wasn’t wrong, not entirely. It was a mutual split, as they say. Amicable. But the friends we had? Mostly his work buddies, or people from the community who knew us as a unit. They vanished. Some picked sides, obviously. Others just… faded. It was like suddenly I was starting over, again. At an age when most people are thinking about retirement. Building a whole new life, from scratch. So I focused on work even harder. The business was my anchor, my identity. It was all I knew how to do, really. And it worked. I diversified, bought another building, streamlined operations. Made a lot of money. More than I ever thought possible. My children went to good universities, got good jobs. They’re happy, I think. Successful. That’s what matters. That’s the point, isn’t it? But now… the quiet. After I sold the last piece of it three years ago. Elara lives three states away. Leo, he’s an hour drive, but he’s got his own family, his own life. Grandkids, they’re lovely, but they’re busy. And I’m just… here. In this big house. Too big now. The doorbell doesn’t ring unless it’s Amazon. The phone only for telemarketers or my kids checking in. A quick five-minute call. “How are you, Mom?” “Fine, dear. And you?” “Good. Gotta run, call you next week.” I tried, you know. To make friends. After the divorce, after the kids left. Tried joining a book club. Terrible. All these women, they’d known each other for thirty years, since their kids were in kindergarten. I felt like an alien. Like an imposter. They talked about recipes and their bridge games. My life was balance sheets and vendor negotiations. It just didn’t… fit. The social schema was all wrong. My attachment style, probably, too avoidant. Decades of transactional relationships. You can’t just switch that off. Sometimes I think about those early days, the other immigrants, the ones I knew. They found each other, clustered together, built their own little villages. I was always too busy. Too driven. Too focused on becoming… something else. American, I guess. Erasing the traces of where I came from, so I could build my own thing. And now I’m here. With all this… space. This silence. It’s not regret, not exactly. It’s just… observation. A diagnosis, maybe. Of a life lived, but maybe not entirely *felt*. The consequences of a singular focus. The cost. And it’s a heavy one, sometimes. Especially at 2am.