I found myself awake again at 0217 hours, exactly, the digital clock a stark blue against the dark of the room. It’s always around this time now. My mind cycles through the day’s trivialities, then drifts, as it always does, to the years. To the patterns. And tonight, it’s the apartment. The rent. A particular stain on the beige carpet near the balcony door, the one I put there with a spilled glass of iced tea during a frantic late-night design session, trying to meet a deadline for that dreadful corporate rebrand project – the one that paid well, oh, so very well. It’s been, what, seven years now? Since I first started sending those invoices, quietly, through the online portals. My parents, bless their hearts, they still send me that check every first of the month. Exactly $1,150. For the apartment. My monthly rent, they call it. The truth is, my income from those design commissions, the ones I do after my "day job" at the smaller agency – it far surpasses what I need. It did after the first two years, certainly. I could pay the entire $2,300 myself, easily. More than easily. I have a rather substantial savings account now, actually. It’s almost laughable. Almost. I remember the conversation, clear as day. It was over a lukewarm cup of coffee at their kitchen table, probably a Tuesday, because Dad was in his gardening clothes and Tuesdays were always his designated yard work days. He’d just finished explaining, in that clipped, precise tone he uses when he's trying to convey importance without showing emotion, about the “economic realities” for young people. “This will help you get established,” he’d said, pushing the first check across the laminate countertop. “Until you’re on your feet.” Mother had nodded, a soft, encouraging smile. They had always been so proud of my “fledgling career,” my “artistic pursuits.” They never quite understood the commercial applications, the discipline required, the sheer volume of output. Not like the structured regimen of military life, certainly. This felt… soft to them. Needing assistance. And I let them. I let them believe I was struggling, just enough. A calculated performance, really. I’d make sure to mention a difficult client, or a late payment, just often enough to maintain the verisimilitude of financial precariousness. A carefully curated narrative. It’s a form of deception, of course. A sustained, quiet act of misrepresentation. I’ve often wondered about the psychological underpinnings of such behavior. Is it a fear of losing their support entirely? A perverted form of attachment, a clinging to the vestiges of dependence? Or perhaps something darker, a subtle act of rebellion against the constant, unspoken pressure to conform, to achieve their specific vision of success? The discipline from my time in uniform taught me to execute orders, to maintain composure under duress. But it also, I think, made me exceptionally good at compartmentalization. My public self, the slightly struggling but determined artist, and my private self, the one who spends late nights poring over balance sheets and investment portfolios, watching the numbers steadily climb. The dissonance doesn’t bother me as much as it should. It simply… is. A fact of my operational existence. Sometimes, in the quietest hours, like now, I think about what it would be like to simply tell them. To decline the check. To explain that I’m more than "on my feet." That I’m thriving, by any measure. The thought brings a peculiar sort of unease. Not fear, exactly. More like a profound sense of disruption. It would shatter a delicate ecosystem, a carefully maintained illusion. And for what? To remove a burden they don't even perceive? To introduce a truth that might, in its very bluntness, create a different kind of distance? I ran a rather successful campaign for a new beverage company last month. Millions in ad spend. My portion was… considerable. I transferred a significant sum to my investment account just yesterday morning. At 0945, to be precise. And then, at 1015, I received an email from my mother, a scanned copy of the latest rent check attached. "For your apartment, darling," the subject line read. "Don't forget to pay on time!" I replied with a simple, "Thank you, Mother. Always." A simple declarative statement, yet so deeply steeped in artifice. The irony is not lost on me. It rarely is. And the clock just clicked to 0233. Still no sleep.