I don't know if this even counts as a confession, but I was thinking about it and I guess I just need to get it out because it's been buzzing around in my head for a while now, and I just… I don’t know. I was at my parents' house this past weekend, you know, for Sunday breakfast, and my mom was telling this story about a former colleague, someone she used to work with for ages at the library, and my dad just sort of sat there, buttering his toast, and he didn't really say anything, and then my mom asked him, "Don't you remember Brenda from accounting, honey?" and he just kind of grunted and said, "Sure, love," but he clearly didn't, and it just made me feel… I don't know, a bit cold, a bit angry actually. And it got me thinking about my own life and how I'm just starting out, really, I'm only twenty-four, but I feel like I'm already seeing the cracks in everything, and I guess I don't want to end up like that. I want to build something real, something that lasts, and I try so hard to make art, you know, to really pour myself into it, but it just feels like I'm always fighting against something, always pushing a boulder uphill, and I see my parents, who are supposed to be like the finish line, the goal, and they just seem so… quiet. Is that weird? Does everyone feel this? They've been married for forty years, and you'd think they'd have all these stories and inside jokes, but there was this silence, this just… empty space between them, and it felt so loud, and I just wanted to scream, or maybe just shake them and ask, "What happened? What did you DO?" And I just feel this tightness in my chest when I think about it because I'm trying to make a life for myself, trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing with my hands and my heart, but it feels like there's no path, no guide, and then I see that, and I just think, what's the point? If even after forty years, you can just sit there, across the breakfast table, and have nothing meaningful to say, nothing that connects you beyond shared bills and a house… it just makes me really, REALLY upset, and I don't know who I'm even angry at, really, maybe myself for even noticing, but it just felt like a warning, a really loud, unpleasant warning, and I don't know what to do with that information.