I honestly don’t even know why I’m writing this, maybe because it’s 2 AM and I can’t sleep and if I don’t get it out I think I might just explode, you know? Like one of those old pressure cookers my mom used to have, the kind that would hiss and rattle before it finally let go. And I just feel like I’m always the one holding everything in, like I’m the lid on that pot. My mom, she’s… well, she’s not great. She needs a lot of help these days, more and more every week it seems. And I do it. I do all of it. Every morning before work at the stupid big box store where I stand on my feet for eight hours, pretending to care about whether someone finds the right shade of beige paint, I get her up, get her breakfast, her meds. Then after work, it’s back to her, dinner, getting her settled for the night. And my siblings? Oh, they visit. ONCE A YEAR. Christmas, usually. They bring presents for my kid, which is nice, I guess, but they act like they’re doing me a huge favor just showing their faces. Like this is a holiday for THEM. And they never even offer to help, not really. They just sit there, sipping their fancy coffee from the place down the street, telling me how good Mom looks, as if *I* didn’t just spend an hour trying to get her to eat something that wasn’t toast. The thing is, I used to have dreams. Big ones. I wanted to be an artist, you know? Painting, mostly. Abstract stuff, lots of color, big canvases. I even got into a really good art school for a year, but then… well, life happened. My kid, my mom getting sicker, the bills. Always the bills. And I just wonder sometimes, if I’d been… different. Stronger, maybe. Or more selfish. Would I have done things differently? Would I have told them to shove it, all of them, and just gone for it? Because now I look at my hands, rough from working at that store, and I remember them covered in paint, full of purpose. And now it’s just… beige. Everything is beige. And I know it’s wrong to feel this way, to resent them, to resent my own mom, but I do. I DO. And the worst part is, I think about it sometimes. Just packing a bag, getting in my beat-up car, and driving. Just driving until there’s nothing but open road and sky. And I know I’d never actually do it, I couldn’t, not with my kid, not with Mom. But the thought… the thought is there. And it feels like a dark little secret, like a tiny crack in the lid of that pressure cooker, letting out just a little bit of steam. But it doesn’t actually help, does it? It just makes me feel like I’m a terrible person for even thinking it. And I don’t know what to do with that feeling, with any of it, really. I just don’t know.