I don't know if this even counts as a confession, really. It’s not a big secret, more of a quiet, persistent ache, like a weather-worn joint that always acts up. You know that feeling when you're just... waiting for something to crack? For the façade to finally give way? I think maybe I’ve been feeling like that for a while now. My hands, they’re really giving me trouble these days. The carpals, I suppose, or maybe a touch of arthritis – though the doctors are always so vague, aren't they? They tell you to rest, to modify, to just… *cope*. But when your hands are everything, when they've been your life's work, your language, for forty, fifty years… how do you just stop? Sometimes you just look at them, these hands that have filleted thousands of fish, diced mountains of vegetables, arranged delicate little microgreens just so on a plate, and you barely recognize them. They ache, almost constantly now, a dull thrumming that makes precision work, the intricate plating I used to be so proud of, feel like trying to thread a needle with a rope. It's not a dramatic injury, not a broken bone or anything you can point to and say, "THERE. That's it." It's just a slow, insidious decline. And you know, you can’t tell anyone. Not really. Because what would they say? "Get over it, you're old"? My ex-husband would have just scoffed, probably. After the divorce, when I was fifty-two and starting over from scratch, picking up extra shifts just to keep my apartment, my hands were still strong. They were my salvation then. Now… now I just feel this profound, bittersweet sorrow. It’s just… you get to a certain age, and you look back at all the decisions, the turns you took, and sometimes you wonder if you were just… postponing the inevitable. This feeling, this exhaustion that goes beyond tired, it’s like a quiet reckoning. I don't know what you do with it. You just keep going, I suppose. Until you can’t. And then what? I really don't know.