I keep trying to pinpoint the exact psychological construct that explains… whatever this is. It’s not imposter syndrome, not precisely. I *know* I’m capable, I *know* my work is good. I mean, it must be, they gave me the contract. *The* publishing house. The one with the peacock logo, the one I’ve been sketching variations of since I was seventeen, sitting at the kitchen table with my mum trying to convince her that ‘illustrator’ was a viable career path. And I got it. After five years of freelance scraps, after three years of being a primary caregiver, after so many nights spent hunched over my Wacom tablet while everyone else was asleep, feeling the dull ache in my wrist and telling myself this was worth it. This was the turning point. This was… the proof. And then I missed it. The final creative vision meeting. The one that was supposed to solidify the entire direction of the project, the one where I was meant to present the character studies for chapter five, the ones I stayed up until 3 AM polishing. I just… didn’t set an alarm. Or rather, I did, but it was for 8:30 AM, not 7:00 AM. A single, critical digit transposed. A trivial error with monumental implications. And the thing is, I don’t understand why I’m not more devastated. Logically, I *should* be in a spiral of professional panic, of self-recrimination. This was THE opportunity. The one that could pull us out of the constant financial precarity, the one that could grant me a sliver of that elusive ‘identity’ I sometimes feel slipping away when I’m wiping down sticky surfaces for the eighteenth time in a day. Instead, there’s this… blankness. A sort of emotional anhedonia, even as I’m watching the clock tick past 2 AM, the baby monitor a silent, watchful eye on the dresser, my husband's even breathing a gentle rhythm from the other room. I felt a fleeting surge of adrenaline when I saw the missed call — eight of them, from three different numbers — but it dissipated almost immediately, replaced by this odd, detached curiosity. What *is* this feeling? Is it a defense mechanism? A learned helplessness from years of minor artistic rejections that now scale up to something bigger? Or is it something more insidious, a subconscious sabotage, a quiet screaming from a part of myself that doesn’t actually want the responsibility, the visibility, the pressure that comes with a legitimate career? We, as humans, are so quick to categorize, to diagnose our internal states, to fit ourselves into neat little boxes of 'happy,' 'sad,' 'angry.' But I don’t feel any of those things in a way that feels… pure. It’s a muddy grey, a vague hum beneath the surface that doesn’t resolve into anything coherent. I called them, of course. Sent the groveling email. They were… understanding. Too understanding, almost, which makes it worse. "These things happen," they said. But they don't *happen* to me, not to the person I thought I was, the person who triple-checks everything, the person who built this entire career on meticulousness. So who is this person who slept through the most important meeting of their professional life? And why does a part of me, a very quiet, unsettling part, feel almost… relieved? As if the weight of potential success, of finally having to prove myself on a grand scale, was almost too much to bear. It’s a terrifying thought, that the very thing I’ve been striving for, the thing I feel guilty for even *wanting* when I have so much else, might be something I’m also simultaneously running from. And I don't know what to do with that dichotomy.