The air here always feels like a wet blanket. Not in a bad way, not really, but sometimes it just… clings. You know? Especially at night, when everything else is still. Right now, it’s pressing in, heavy, like it wants to settle in my lungs and just stay there. I’m sitting on my balcony, watching the moon turn the ocean into a sheet of crumpled tin foil, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t really breathed a proper breath in weeks. I came here for the freedom, they said. The adventure. The kind of life you only read about in glossy magazines. And yeah, it’s beautiful. The sunsets bleed across the sky in colors no human could ever mix, and the fruit tastes like sunshine concentrated into a single bite. My work is… it’s good. I get to paint with pixels, build worlds out of nothing, and technically I can do it from anywhere with Wi-Fi. It’s the dream, right? The ultimate escape from the grey, the grind, the scraping by. But sometimes, when I’m staring at a blank screen, waiting for inspiration to strike, all I can see is the peeling paint in my childhood kitchen. The way the light hit the chipped Formica on the counter just so, every morning. My mom, humming off-key while she made coffee, her hair still in a messy bun. It's like a phantom limb ache, that memory. It doesn't hurt exactly, but it’s always *there*, a ghost of a feeling that this... this isn't quite right. I remember my dad’s face when I told them I was leaving. He tried to be proud, I could see it, but his eyes were so… tired. Like he knew, somehow, what it would cost. He just patted my shoulder, said, "Go on, then. Make something of yourself." As if this *isn't* something. As if the lack of a boss breathing down my neck and the constant hum of crickets instead of traffic isn’t, somehow, a victory. But god, sometimes I think I'd trade every single one of these iridescent sunsets for five minutes of the familiar drone of the number 7 bus. The other day, I was on a video call with my sister. Her baby, my niece, started babbling in the background, making these ridiculous gurgling noises. My sister laughed, the sound bright and uncomplicated, and then she said, "Oh, she’s trying to say your name, I swear! She loves Auntie [my name]!" And I just sat there, smiling, nodding, making all the right noises, while this huge, hot wave of… something… crashed over me. Because how could she love me? She doesn't even know me. I’m a flat image on a screen, a voice that crackles sometimes. I ended the call and just… stood in the shower, letting the cold water run over my head until my scalp was numb. And I was so ANGRY. Not at her, not at the baby. At myself, mostly. For being here. For thinking this was what I wanted. For throwing everything up in the air and watching it land scattered across an ocean. For not having anyone close enough to tell, "Hey, my niece is growing up and she has no idea who I am, and it feels like a punch to the gut." I see the other expats, the ones who seem to have it all together. They go to these beach parties, laughing, dancing, already part of a new tribe. And I just… don’t. I make small talk, I nod, I smile. But it feels like I’m wearing a suit made of glass, and everyone else is just… skin. Raw and real. I come back to my apartment, which is always too big, too quiet, and the echoes of my own footsteps sound like a judgment. Am I the only one who feels like they've traded one cage for another, just with better views? Like I'm marooned on this postcard, but the colors are starting to bleed into something muddy and indistinguishable? Because right now, the silence here is so loud it's deafening, and all I can hear is the sound of myself, laughing, to keep from screaming. It’s a real dark kind of funny, isn’t it? The kind that makes your throat ache.