I don’t know if this counts, really, as a confession. It’s more… a memory that keeps surfacing, like a stone in a shallow stream. I suppose it’s about a kind of betrayal, though I don’t know if it was truly mine, or theirs, or just… the way things are. I think maybe it was when I was much younger, maybe in my late twenties, early thirties. I was a marketing associate, just starting out, trying to make my mark in what felt like a very sharp-edged world. I remember the office. All glass and chrome, very modern. Nothing like the places my parents ever knew. My parents… they worked. That’s the simplest way to put it. My father was in a factory, pressing out parts. My mother cleaned offices, houses. They came here with nothing, you see. And they worked, every single day, for decades. Their hands… I remember their hands. Always rough, always tired. They never complained, not once. Never said a word about wanting more, not to their bosses, not to anyone. It wasn't in their vocabulary. Their concept of work was simply to *do* it. To provide. To survive. And they did. So there I was, sitting across from my supervisor – a man who wore very expensive suits and always smelled faintly of something chemical, like a dry cleaner. I had prepared, of course. Spreadsheets, projections, a whole presentation on my contributions, my value. I remember the words I used, the way I framed it. "I believe my compensation no longer reflects my demonstrable impact on departmental revenue targets." It felt so… foreign, coming out of my mouth. Like I was speaking a language my own blood wouldn't understand. I had rehearsed it. I had to. And he just looked at me, with that slightly bored, slightly superior expression, and said something about "market adjustments" and "budgetary constraints." And then, I asked for more. For a raise. And in that moment, the words felt like grit in my mouth. A sharp, ugly taste. Because all I could think of were my parents. My father, with the metal dust ingrained in his fingernails. My mother, scrubbing toilets, meticulously, because that was her work. They would never have asked. They would have seen it as… audacious. As ungrateful. And I, their daughter, was sitting there, DEMANDING more for sitting at a desk, tapping on a computer. It felt like I was spitting on everything they had ever endured. A deep, profound sense of… disloyalty. I got the raise, eventually. A small one. But the feeling stayed. I don’t know if it’s why I eventually left that world. The marketing, the numbers, the calculated value. I think maybe it contributed. I found myself drawn to other things, things that felt… less transactional. More about meaning, perhaps. Though meaning, as I’ve learned, doesn't always pay the bills. I often wonder what my parents would have thought of my choices, my later struggles as an artist. They never really understood, I think. But then, they never understood why I felt I *needed* to ask for more, either. Just like I don't truly understand how they never felt they had a right to. It’s a chasm, I suppose. A quiet, uncrossable space.