I don't know if this even counts as a confession, really. It’s more… a thought, something that just sort of crystallized in my head. I was at the supermarket yesterday, a big chain one, very busy. I’d dropped a small tin of sardines – they were on sale, a little treat – and they rolled quite a ways under a display. I knelt down, which isn’t as easy as it used to be, and I was trying to reach it. And people just… walked around me. Stepped over my purse, even. It wasn't malicious, I don't think. Just… efficient. Like I was a fixture, a temporary obstacle to be bypassed. I kept trying to say, "Excuse me, could someone just kick this over?" but my voice, it just didn't seem to carry. It was like I was speaking underwater. And when I finally got it, scraped my knuckles a bit on the shelf, I stood up, feeling a little… disoriented. And I looked around at all these people, so focused, so determined, with their carts and their lists. And I thought, isn’t this exactly what it felt like after Michael left? After the divorce, I mean. He just… moved on. And so did all our mutual friends, or at least the ones who didn't explicitly choose a side. I remember feeling like I was still standing there, in the middle of a room, trying to make sense of the sudden silence, while everyone else was already out the door, moving on to the next thing. Rebuilding your life at 50, let me tell you, it's a very different kind of social calculus. You realize how much of your identity, your very existence, was contingent on another person. It was… a kind of social death, I suppose. Not clinical, obviously, but the sensation of being utterly unseen, unheard, while the world just churns on. And I stood there in the produce aisle, clutching my slightly dented sardine tin, and I realized it was the same feeling. That same quiet, profound invisibility. It wasn't anger, not really. More like a deep, aching comprehension. This is it, isn’t it? This is the final stage of… being. Becoming just another part of the background, something to be navigated around. And I don’t know if that’s sad, or just… an observation. It’s certainly not what I pictured. Not when I was younger, anyway. I had imagined something… more. Something with a bit more resonance, perhaps. A final movement that wasn't quite so… muted.