I really don’t know what I’m doing here. Like, not just on this forum, but in general. I’m 20, almost 21, and I’m folding other people’s underwear for ten hours a day. Six days a week. At this one laundry place. And it’s… fine, I guess. The money gets sent home, and my parents can pay for my little brother’s school, and I don’t have to worry about them going hungry. Which is great, obviously. That’s why I came here. But sometimes, when I’m staring at a mountain of towels that all smell vaguely of bleach and something else I can’t quite place, I just wonder… what the fuck happened? It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was supposed to go to university. I had offers, you know? Like, real ones. For graphic design. I loved drawing, I still do. I used to spend hours just sketching on my tablet, imagining all these cool projects, designing album covers for bands no one had heard of. My mom would always say, “Oh, you’re so talented, my little artist.” And I believed her. We all did. Then my dad got sick, and the medical bills piled up, and suddenly those university acceptances felt like a really expensive joke. There wasn't really a conversation, just a quiet understanding that I had to do something. So I did. I came here. It’s been almost two years. Two years of the same routine. Wake up at 5:30 AM, take the bus, clock in at 7:00 AM, fold, press, sort, repeat until 5:00 PM. Sometimes longer if a big hotel order comes in. My hands are always pruney, and the smell of detergent is basically my perfume now. My roommate, she’s cool. She’s from back home too. But we don’t really talk about… this. About what we left behind. We just talk about the price of rice, or if the landlord is going to fix the leaky faucet. It's like we’ve all just accepted it. Humans are so good at just… adapting to whatever shit gets thrown at them, aren’t we? Like we just become whatever situation we’re in. Sometimes I see the customers, usually tourists, picking up their dry cleaning, and they just look so carefree. Like their biggest worry is which historical site to visit next. And I just… I look at my hands, which are red and raw from the chemicals, and I think about my sketchbooks back home, probably gathering dust in a box somewhere. I wonder if I’ll ever pick up a pencil again. Or if I’ve just… lost it. Like, if my "talent" was just a privilege I couldn't afford. It’s a really shit feeling to realize that your dreams might just be a luxury that only some people get to have. It’s not fair, is it? But then again, who said life was fair? I don't regret it. I can't. My family is okay, that's the main thing. But there's this quiet hum, always there in the background, like the hum of the washing machines, that asks "Is this it? Is this all you are now?" And I don't have an answer. I just have more uniforms to fold. And tomorrow, I’ll wake up at 5:30 AM again. And I’ll probably feel the exact same way. It’s exhausting, carrying this around. This unspoken thing. But who would even understand?