I caught myself deleting the photos again, for the third time this week. Not from my phone, of course. Those are hidden deep in a cloud folder no one knows about, not even me most days. I’m talking about the ones I’d uploaded to an old Facebook album, the one I haven’t really used since college but keep for some bizarre reason. Every few days, I forget, or maybe I’m just feeling too… something… and I’ll put up a few shots from the trip. Then the anxiety hits, cold and sharp, and I take them down. Always before dawn. This time, it was a shot of the sunrise over the water, just after we’d had breakfast on the patio. The colors were incredible – like something someone painted, not real. We were staying in one of those bungalows over the water, the kind I used to see in travel magazines and think, "who actually does that?" Well, apparently, I do. Or I did. The whole week was like that. Pure, unadulterated luxury. The kind of thing I never imagined for myself, not really. Not even with the scholarship. And now I’m back in my student apartment, looking at the faded linoleum and trying to justify the thousand-dollar textbooks to myself. Trying to justify it to them, actually. My parents. They’re working double shifts again. Both of them. The phone calls are always the same now – "how are the studies, honey?" and then, "your father’s back pain is flaring up, the new medication is expensive," or "the co-pay for my physical therapy appointment was higher this month." Always with the quiet sigh at the end. The sigh that says, *we’re doing this for you, don’t you forget it.* I look at their faces on my phone screen, tired and etched with worry, and then I think about that sunrise. The one I deleted. The one where I’m smiling, holding a ridiculously expensive fruity drink, not a care in the world. The kind of smile I haven’t seen on either of their faces in years. The shame is a physical thing, like a punch to the gut. It makes my teeth clench. I wanted to tell them about the trip, about how beautiful it was, about how, for a few days, I forgot everything, even the ache in my own bones from years of pushing myself. But how could I? I was taught discipline, taught duty. Taught that you don’t indulge when there are battles to be fought, even if those battles are just against medical debt and the quiet erosion of hope. This feels like a dereliction. Like I broke rank. And I keep staring at the empty Facebook album, then at the clock. It’s almost 3 AM. Tomorrow, I’ll act like it never happened. Again.