I was at this dinner party last night, right? One of those ones where everyone knows each other from somewhere fancy, and I’m just… there. My friend dragged me along, said it would be ‘good for me.’ (Good for what, my social anxiety?) Anyway, the wine was flowing, and so were the stories. The usual round of conquests and close calls, you know? Like, “Remember that one time in Prague?” or “My ex was such a psycho, but the sex was INSANE.” And I’m just… smiling. Nodding. Like a bobblehead doll. Swirling the cheap red wine (because the good stuff was for *them* to appreciate) and trying to look engaged. Trying to look like I belonged. It’s like being a tourist in a country where everyone else speaks the language fluently and you’ve only got the phrasebook. You can nod and smile and pretend you get the joke, but inside, the words are just a garble. I heard someone say something about a threesome, and another guy chimed in about a particularly awkward morning-after. They were all roaring with laughter, and I laughed too. A little too loud, probably. A little too long. My throat felt… fuzzy. Like I’d swallowed cotton wool. My own life, compared to theirs, feels like a dry riverbed. Not even a trickle. Sometimes I wonder if they can smell it on me. The lack of… everything. Like a dog can smell fear, maybe people can smell the absence of experience. The way a fresh coat of paint stands out in a room full of chipped plaster. I’m thirty. Thirty goddamn years old. My mum keeps asking when I’m going to ‘settle down,’ like it’s a bus that just hasn’t shown up yet. Like I haven’t actively avoided the bus stop for a decade. It’s not even a choice anymore, really. It’s just… how things are. Paycheques come in, bills go out. Rinse. Repeat. No room for grand romances when the boiler needs fixing. It’s not even sad, not really. Not in the way it should be. It’s more like… a dull ache. A phantom limb feeling. Like something *should* be there, but isn’t. And it just… isn’t. The conversation moved on to holidays, then house prices (which, *oof*). And I kept my smile plastered on, listening to them talk about their lives, their pasts, their… *adventures*. And I just kept thinking about my empty fridge and the stack of papers on my kitchen counter. And how much I wanted to just go home and watch some trash TV. The kind where everyone’s lives are even messier than yours, in a way that actually makes sense.