It’s like... I’ve been holding this in for so long and it just feels heavy, you know? Like I’m sitting here in my apartment and the city is quiet and I just keep thinking about how much of a liar I am. Everyone at the office thinks I’m this like, super together guy. I have the button-downs and the spreadsheet skills and I hit my KPIs and whatever but it’s all just... it’s a front. I think I’ve been performing since I was seventeen and I’m just so tired of it. I remember this one Thanksgiving. Everyone was at my aunt’s house. I could hear them in my head, you know? The clinking of the silverware, my cousins laughing about some inside joke I wasn't there for, the smell of the turkey and the stuffing. My mom kept texting me. 'Where are you?' 'Dinner is starting.' 'Your grandma is asking for you.' And I was just... I was in the back of this 24-hour gym that smelled like stale sweat and cleaning supplies. Just me and one other guy who looked like he hadn't slept in three days. I stayed in the locker room for forty-five minutes. I had this yellow sewing tape I stole from my mom’s craft drawer hidden in my gym bag. I was just standing there in front of the mirror, flexing until my shoulders burned, wrapping that tape around my bicep over and over and over. I needed it to be bigger. I needed the number to change. If it didn't change, then what was I even doing? Like, if I wasn't getting bigger then I was just a ghost. I mean I don't even — whatever. 14 and a half inches. 14 and three quarters. I’d pull it tighter. Then I’d loosen it to try and cheat the measurement. Cold sweat. The fluorescent lights making my skin look gray. The way my heart was thumping against my ribs like it wanted out. I missed the whole dinner. I missed the prayer and the turkey and the pie. I just stood there looking at my own arms in a mirror while my family wondered where I was. I told them I had a flat tire. I sat in the parking lot for an hour after the gym closed just so the timeline would make sense. It’s the lists I make in my head that kill me. Things I lost: the taste of my mom’s gravy, the conversation about my cousin’s new job, the feeling of being normal, three hours of my life I’ll never get back. Things I gained: a quarter inch of muscle that nobody even noticed, a secret that feels like lead in my stomach, and this constant, itchy need to check the mirror every time I pass one. And it hasn't stopped. That’s the thing. I’m 22 now and I have this "real job" and I sit in meetings and talk about Q4 projections but then I go to the bathroom and lock the stall and I’m literally doing it again. Not with the tape, usually, but just... checking. Grip my arm. See if the fingers meet. If they don't meet, I’m okay for ten minutes. If they do meet, I feel like I’m shrinking. I feel like I’m disappearing into the office carpet. My mom still talks about that Thanksgiving. She says she felt so bad that I was stuck on the side of the road in the cold. She saved me a plate and I ate it alone in the kitchen at midnight and it tasted like cardboard. I didn't even enjoy it because I was already calculating the macros and thinking I shouldn't have eaten the rolls. I mean, who does that? Who skips their family for a tape measure? I look at my coworkers and I wonder if they have these weird, dark holes in their lives too. I just want to feel like I’m enough without having to see it in a reflection. But the mirror is the only thing that tells the truth. Or the only thing I listen to. I don't know. It’s like I’m building this shell of a person—the guy who gets promoted, the guy who lifts heavy, the guy who has it all figured out—but inside it’s just that same seventeen year old kid staring at a yellow tape measure and wishing he was different. Wishing he was more. I should probably go to sleep. I have a 9am and my boss is already on my back about the New Jersey accounts. But I know I’m gonna go to the gym before work. I’m gonna stand in that same lighting and I’m gonna check. It’s like a loop. Just a long, stupid loop. You know? The gym. The mirror. The tape. The lies. The turkey. The office. The reflection. It’s all just... a lot. And I’m just tired of carrying it around. I’m just really, really tired.