I don't know if this even counts as a confession, really. More of a… a rumination, perhaps. A rather pathetic one, if I'm being honest. I'm seventy-six now, and I find myself awake at these ungodly hours, my fingers fumbling with this infernal device, typing out words no one will ever truly understand. For sixty years, I've been covered in flour, smelling of yeast and burnt sugar, the rhythm of kneading dough a constant ache in my wrists. The family bakery. Our bakery. It was supposed to be my brother's calling, really. He loved the physicality of it, the early mornings, the camaraderie with the delivery drivers. Me? I loved the *idea* of it, I suppose. The warmth, the sense of tradition. But my heart, it was always elsewhere. I remember once, in my twenties, I applied to an art school, secretly. Got accepted, even. A scholarship, too. For painting. Can you imagine? Me, a painter. The thought still makes me chuckle, a little dry, humourless cough. My brother, bless his perpetually tired soul, was in a terrible way that year. A back injury. And then the economy went... well, it went. And the bakery, already struggling, needed every pair of hands it could get. I suppose I made the logical choice. The practical one. The one that, in retrospect, feels less like a choice and more like a diagnosis of a chronic condition. A kind of existential inertia, maybe. A failure to launch, they call it now, don't they? Though in my case, it was more a failure to *escape*. He's still there, my brother. His hands gnarled and trembling these days, his memory a sieve. He relies on me, absolutely. For the heavy lifting, yes, but more so for the books, for dealing with the suppliers who try to take advantage of an old man. If I left... I don't know what would happen. The bakery would certainly fold. His spirit would, too, I think. And sometimes, in the quieter moments, I can still smell the turpentine in my imagination, see the vibrant colours on a canvas that never was. It's a phantom limb, that artistic life. A dull ache that never quite goes away. And I wonder, sometimes, if I was an enabler, in a way. If my presence, my quiet competence, just allowed him to avoid facing the inevitable for too long. A co-dependent trajectory, perhaps. I don’t know if I’m sadder for him, or for the woman who never got to be.