I am sitting in the dark and the blue light from my phone is the only thing proving I still exist in a physical dimension. It’s 2:14 AM and my house is so quiet it’s deafening (the kind of silence that feels like it’s pushing against your eardrums). We humans, we’re such strange, desperate creatures, aren't we? We’re built for the tribe, for the hearth, for the collective hum of a village, but here I am in a four-bedroom house in the suburbs, completely untethered. I’ve spent forty years being the anchor for everyone else—the carpools, the PTA, the endless cycle of laundry that never stays folded—and now that the kids are gone and my husband is snoring in the other room, I’ve realized that when you stop being a conduit for other people’s needs, you start to evaporate. That’s when I found her. Her name is Chloe (or at least that’s the name she gives the internet) and she’s twenty-two with skin like fresh cream and eyes that always look like she’s just about to tell you a secret. I watch her videos every single night. I don’t just watch them; I study them. I see the way her hands shake a little when she’s nervous about a new brand deal, or how she bites her lip when she mentions her parents aren't in the picture. She needs me. Not me specifically—she doesn’t know I’m alive—but she needs the IDEA of a grandmother, someone to look at her and say "you're doing a good job, darling." So I buy everything. If she says a serum made of fermented yeast and gold flakes will make my pores vanish, I click 'add to cart' before she’s even finished the sentence. I have three drawers full of glass bottles I’ll never use because my skin is seventy years old and no amount of glass-skin technology is going to reverse the entropy of time. I spent four hundred dollars last week on a moisturizer that smells like damp grass. My credit card statement is a goddamn disaster area (unmitigated chaos, really) but every time I hit that 'purchase' button, I feel like I’m sending a care package to a girl who’s trying her best. It’s a transaction of the soul. We trade our resources for the illusion of intimacy because the alternative is admitting that we are fundamentally alone in our own heads. My own daughter calls me once every two weeks and talks about her job in logistics for twenty minutes without asking a single question about my life. She doesn't need my advice or my recipes or my presence. But Chloe? Chloe looks at the camera and says "I'm so glad you guys are here" and I feel a jolt of electricity in my chest that feels like purpose. It’s pathetic, isn’t it? A grown woman—a grandmother, for god’s sake—playing house with a ghost on a screen. Yesterday, she posted a video where she looked tired. Not just 'influencer tired' where you put on a little extra concealer, but genuinely EXHAUSTED. She mentioned she was struggling to make rent this month because a contract fell through. I felt this visceral ache in my gut, a literal tightening of the viscera. I went to her links and I bought three of the same stupid silk pillowcases. I don't even like silk. It makes my hair feel weird and staticy. But I kept thinking, if I don't buy this, who will? Who is going to look out for her if the 'we' of the world just lets her slip through the cracks? I have this pile of boxes in the garage that I hide under old moving blankets so my husband won't ask questions. He thinks I’m just 'dabbling' in a hobby. He doesn't understand that this is a rescue mission. I’m trying to save a version of myself that never got to be young and free and beautiful. Or maybe I’m trying to buy my way into a family that actually wants what I have to give. I look at these bottles of acid and oil and I see little totems of hope. Ay bendito, the stupidity of it all hits me sometimes, but then I see a notification that she’s live-streaming and the logic just... dissolves. We like to pretend we’re evolved, that we’ve moved past the base instincts of the cave, but we’re still just huddling around whatever fire we can find. For me, the fire is a ring light in a studio apartment in Los Angeles. I’m pouring my retirement savings into a void because the void is the only thing that talks back to me (even if it’s a pre-recorded script). My bathroom counter looks like a laboratory for a mad scientist who’s obsessed with 'radiance.' I rub the creams into my hands until they’re slippery and I think about how many hours of my life I’ve traded for these plastic caps and glass droppers.