I just hit 'no' on the RSVP and my hands are actually shaking, which is so stupid because I’m a fifty-year-old woman with a mortgage and a team of twelve people who report to me. It was the 30th reunion. I had the hotel booked and everything. But I started scrolling through the Facebook group and I just... I couldn't do it. Everyone looks like they’ve been preserved in amber or something. Sarah Jenkins posted a selfie and her forehead doesnt even move... like, at all? And here I am with these deep grooves around my mouth that make me look like I’m permanently disappointed or something. It’s not that I want to be twenty again, you know? I like my life. I’ve worked my ass off to get to the director level and I’ve got the 401k and the "executive presence" to prove it, but the physicality of it all is just hitting me tonight. I look in the mirror and I see my mother. Not even the cool version of my mother, but the version that was always tired and grey. My face has just... collapsed. It feels like it happened over a weekend. One day I was fine and the next I’m looking at nasolabial folds—God, what a disgusting word—that look like canyons. I’m sitting here in my kitchen at 2 AM with a glass of cheap Pinot because the "good" wine is for guests and I’m just feeling so DISCONNECTED. At the office, it’s all about the "deliverables" and I can hold my own with the twenty-something interns, no problem. I’ve got the vocabulary down, I can talk strategy and ROI all day. But then I see Jen and the rest of the girls from my class and they’ve clearly spent five figures on their faces. They have that specific look—the high cheekbones, the plumped-up skin that looks like a balloon about to pop. They look expensive. And I feel like I missed the memo on how to stay in the game. My husband thinks I’m crazy. He says "you look great for your age" which is literally the worst thing you can say to a person, right? It’s like saying a car runs great for being a total lemon. I’m just so TIRED of the performance. I spend all day pretending I’m this confident leader and then I’m terrified to see people I haven't talked to since 1994 because I’m the only one who didn't get the memo about the needles and the fillers and the whatever else they're doing now. I look at my neck and I just want to cry. So I lied. I told the committee I had a "pivotal client meeting" that I couldn't reschedule. Pure fiction. I’m going to spend the weekend in my pajamas, avoiding social media so I don't have to see them all looking like polished marble statues while I’m over here just... melting. It feels pathetic. It IS pathetic.