I just got off the phone with my sister, like, an hour ago, and I’m just… I don't know, man. It’s midnight here, but it’s morning back home, and she was saying how Mum’s really going downhill now, you know? Like, proper bad. And I’m sitting here, staring at my half-finished essay on semiotics — semiotics! — and all I can think about is her, my mum. It's like, I picked up and moved halfway across the world for this whole student thing, this second act, this… *intellectual pursuit*, right? And now I'm here, learning German irregular verbs, and she’s there, forgetting what she had for breakfast. Is that a pathetic trade-off? Because it feels pathetic right now. And the thing is, I knew she was getting older, obviously. Who doesn't know their mum is getting older? But it was always a slow thing, like, background noise. A bit more forgetful, a bit slower on her feet. And I’d call, and she’d sound fine, she’d ask about my studies, what I was eating, the usual mum stuff. And I convinced myself, yeah, this is okay. She’s got my sister, she’s got the neighbours, she’s fine. I’m doing this important thing, this… *research*. Like it’s somehow more important than being there when she can’t find her glasses for the fifth time in an hour. Or when she gets confused about the grandkids. She told me last week that she thought I was still in high school, and I just laughed it off, you know? Laughed. It. Off. Now my sister says she’s barely eating, gets scared at night. And I'm just here. In another country. Like, I made this choice, this big, deliberate choice to leave. And I love it here, I really do. The campus, the conversations, the sense of… possibility. But what if it was the WRONG possibility? What if I chose wrong, like, monumentally, selfishly wrong? I’m 60, for god's sake. What am I doing studying ancient history and feeling guilty about my mum? It’s just… it’s a lot, you know? And I just can’t shake this feeling that I really screwed up.