I've been cataloging these episodes of... internal dissonance, I suppose, and it’s always worse after I visit my parents and their house, which is spotless and smells like lemon polish, and I see the framed photos of me at various academic milestones, and I try to explain my current projects and they just nod, and I can almost hear the unstated question, the one about why I didn't pursue medicine after all that schooling, all those tutoring sessions, all the sacrifice they made, which was significant and involved a second mortgage and my dad working extra shifts at the plant, and my mom taking on more bookkeeping clients, and I remember her saying, "This degree is an investment, honey," and I agreed then, because it felt like a contract, a clear trajectory, but then the trajectory altered, and I'm here now, in my own meticulously organized suburban apartment, trying to make art, and it feels like a breach of contract, a material misrepresentation of my future. And I observe these feelings of intense... failure, and they manifest physically, a tightness in my chest, a low-grade headache that persists for days, and I attempt to analyze the etiology, the environmental triggers, and it's always the parental interactions, and the comparison to my cousins who are all in stable, lucrative fields – engineering, dentistry, finance – and they have their McMansions and their SUVs and their children already, and I have my student loan debt and my studio space and my imposter syndrome, and I keep thinking about the sheer amount of capital they invested, both financial and emotional, and I haven’t yielded the expected returns, and I can't quite articulate this to them, not without causing further distress, and so I just smile and say things are "progressing," and I mention a gallery showing that’s months away and probably won't even happen, and I change the subject to the new rose bushes they planted, which are thriving, unlike me, or at least my career, which feels like it's perpetually wilting. And sometimes I consider just... quitting, just applying for some corporate job, something stable with benefits and a commute I can complain about with the neighbors, something that would provide a tangible return on their investment and alleviate this constant internal pressure, and I picture their relief, their pride even, and I imagine the quiet satisfaction in my mom's voice when she tells her friends I'm working at a "firm" or "company" instead of a "studio," and I wonder if that relief would outweigh the hollowness I suspect I would feel, a profound sense of... misapplication of my own skills and desires, and it's a constant weighing, a calculation of emotional debits and credits, and I still haven't reached a conclusive balance.