you ever get home from a day where you've been the smartest person in the room for ten hours and you just want to scream? like you're standing there in this five-thousand dollar suit and your heels are killing you and you've spent the whole afternoon talking about logistics and quarterly projections and firing people who have kids and mortgages but then you get home and you realize you aren't that person at all. you're just a kid in a fifty-eight year old's skin and you're terrified that if anyone saw the real you they'd laugh you out of the building. it's that feeling when you turn the key in the lock and the house is quiet and you don't even go to the kitchen for water you just go straight to the back room. the room nobody is allowed to enter. not even the cleaning lady because I tell her it's my home office and I keep confidential files in there but it's all a lie. everything is a lie. i open the door and there they are. hundreds of them. just rows and rows of those faces staring back with those painted eyes that never change. i have the 1959 originals and the silkstones and the ones with the hand-stitched beaded gowns that cost more than my first car did and i just... i don't even know. i stand there in the dark and the smell of old vinyl and hairspray just hits me and it’s better than any drink i could pour. you ever find yourself talking to them? i do. i tell them about the board meeting and how bill from accounting is trying to undermine me and they just listen with those tiny little smiles. i mean i don't even — whatever. it's pathetic. i'm a senior vice president and i'm worrying about whether the lace on a doll from 1964 is starting to yellow. last week my daughter came over with the grandkids and she wanted to see my "office" because she said i spend too much time working and she wanted to see where it all happens. she actually said that. magic. i had to block the door. i literally stood there with my back against the wood like some kind of crazy person in a movie and told her she couldn't go in because of a nondisclosure agreement. she looked at me like i had grown a second head. i could see her thinking it... she thinks i'm losing it or i'm hiding a drinking problem or something and maybe that would be better. at least people understand wine. they don't understand why a woman who runs a three-hundred person department spends her weekends scouring ebay for tiny plastic shoes. you start thinking about the end of things when you hit sixty. you look at your life and you wonder what's going to be left and it's just... it's a bunch of boxes. i spent forty years climbing this ladder and for what? so i could buy more things that i have to hide? i look at these dolls and i see the girls i was supposed to be. the one who stayed home. the one who went to the ball. the one who didn't have to worry about the rent in a city that eats you alive if you stop moving for five seconds. sometimes you just want to stop moving. you want to be frozen in a box where nothing can touch you and your hair is always perfect and nobody expects you to be a LEADER. i'm so tired of being a leader. it feels like a sin. i don't know why but it does. it feels like i've stolen this life from someone else and i'm using the money to build this weird little temple to a childhood i didn't even have because we were poor back then. we were so poor i had one doll with a chewed off hand and now i have five hundred of the best ones in the world and it doesn't even fix it. it just makes the room feel smaller. i spent four thousand dollars on a rare japanese market exclusive last night at 3am because i couldn't sleep and the guilt is just sitting on my chest like a lead weight. i could have given that to charity or my grandson's college fund but i bought a piece of plastic instead. i mean i don't even know why i'm like this. i just — whatever. you ever wonder if you're just a collection of secrets? like if you stripped away the job and the title and the house there wouldn't be anything left but a pile of vintage dresses and some tiny plastic jewelry. i'm sitting here on the floor of the room right now and the sun is coming up and i have to be in a meeting in two hours and i haven't slept. i'm just looking at a 1961 solo in the spotlight doll and wondering if i can pull off that shade of red lipstick or if i'm too old for everything. i'm probably too old for everything. i look at her and her little microphone and her little roses and i feel like i'm going to throw up because i love her more than i love my own life. what happens when i retire? that’s the thing that keeps me up. when i don’t have the office to go to and the performance is over and it’s just me and the dolls and the silence. i keep thinking i’ll sell them all and just be normal but then i go to list one and i can’t breathe. i feel like i’m selling a piece of my soul or something stupid like that. you spend your whole life building a legacy and then you realize your legacy is just a room full of things that no one will want when you’re gone. they’ll just throw them in a dumpster. they’ll see the prices i paid and think i was insane. maybe i am. i mean i don't even — it doesn't matter. i’m just going to sit here for five more minutes before i put on the suit and go pretend to be a real person again. i just need five more minutes.