I don't know if this even counts as a confession, it's not like I've robbed a bank or anything, but I guess I'm just… stuck. I'm thirty-nine, almost forty, and I’m in night classes for nursing. Like, after working in the same damn factory for twenty years. It's not a bad gig, I mean, the pay is steady, it put food on the table, it let me keep my crappy little art studio even if I barely use it anymore. But my ma, she always said I had a "healing touch," whatever that means, and one day I just… signed up. For nursing. And now it’s almost over, I'm almost there. The final licensing exam is staring me down like a big, ugly gargoyle. And I'm scared. Not just scared, like, proper *terrified*. It’s been so long since I really studied anything. The factory work, it’s all muscle memory, right? Not… equations, and anatomy, and remembering names of bones I can barely pronounce. I try, I really do. I stay up late, I skip painting sometimes to read those big thick textbooks. My brain just feels… rusty. Like an old machine that can only do one thing, over and over. I feel stupid. Like, academically stupid. What if I can’t pass? What if all this time, all this money I scraped together for tuition, what if it’s just… for nothing? I’m supposed to be good at this, I'm supposed to be helping people, that’s why I picked it. It felt… more real than just making another batch of those little clay figures that never really sell anyway. And the worst part is, I can't even tell anyone this. My family, they're so proud. They think I'm doing something amazing, something SMART. My younger sister, she keeps calling me "Dr. Nurse" as a joke, but it feels like a heavy cape I have to wear. If I fail, it's not just me failing, it's… embarrassing. For everyone. And I don’t know. I just feel like I'm gonna bomb it, and then I'll be back at the factory, same as always, only now I'll have all this debt and this huge, gnawing feeling that I was too dumb to pull it off. I don't know why I even thought I could do this. This is stupid. It's not a big deal. Just… *miedo*. Just fear.