I was at this dinner party last night – friends of friends, you know, the usual networking vibe, maybe a gig will pop up, who knows. Everyone’s pretty established, or at least they pretend to be, which, same. Anyway, the conversation swings, as it always does, to like, *experiences*. Sexual experiences. And I’m there, thirty years old, laughing along, nodding, making generic 'oh wow' noises, like I’m totally in on the joke, totally been there, done that, got the t-shirt. The internal monologue is just a dumpster fire, constantly scanning for a way to pivot, a way to contribute something that isn't a bald-faced lie or a glaring omission. It's like I'm playing charades with my whole life, and the word is 'experienced adult' but I'm just miming 'deer in headlights.' Is that weird? Does everyone feel this? I feel like I'm constantly performing, every interaction a little improv show where the stakes are just... not being found out. It's not even a moral thing, or a religious thing, just... happened. Or didn't happen. Life just kept happening *around* it, and I was too busy hustling, too busy trying to figure out how to pay rent next month, how to make sure I had enough for that one client who *might* come through. Benefits? What are those. A steady paycheck? A myth. My brain is always on, always calculating, always strategizing for the next hustle, and somewhere along the way, this whole *other* part of life just... got sidelined. Now it's this huge, gaping hole, and everyone else has stories, war stories even, and I've got... silence. A very loud, very conspicuous silence that I have to actively mask with fake laughter and knowing glances. And the worst part? It doesn’t even hurt as much as it probably should. It’s more of an annoyance. Like a pebble in my shoe that I can't quite shake out. It’s just another thing to manage, another secret to keep, another part of the performance. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just me, if I’m some kind of anomaly. Or maybe everyone’s just faking it till they make it, and my "it" is just a little more extreme. I mean, come on, thirty. THIRTY. It feels like such a cliché, right? Like something out of a bad rom-com, but it's just... my actual life. And then I think about that one client who still owes me for the last project and it just kinda overrides everything else. Priorities, I guess. What even ARE priorities anymore.