You know that feeling... that almost primal, deeply uncomfortable sensation when you realize the person you *thought* you were, the one you’ve been presenting to the world, just... isn’t quite right anymore? Or maybe it never was, and the illusion is finally fracturing under the weight of something so petty it makes you want to crawl out of your skin. I'm sort of experiencing that right now, I think. This whole stay-at-home parent thing, it strips away so much of your prior identity, doesn’t it? And then you’re left with this... this amorphous blob of needs and wants and guilt. Like, why am I even feeling this way about something that happened years ago? It’s absurd. It's the twins, I guess. My kids are 15 now. And they play — or, played — volleyball. Always together, you know? Always the "twins" on the team. But ever since they hit high school, it’s become... bifurcated. My daughter, the younger one by six minutes, she’s just been selected for the varsity starting lineup. And her sister? The older one, my firstborn? Practice squad. Again. For the third year. And I’m just... I feel this weird, gut-wrenching... jealousy? Not for myself, obviously, but for *her*. The one who didn't make it. And it's so confusing because I *should* be happy for both of them. Genuinely thrilled for the starter, supportive for the one on the practice squad. But instead, I’m sitting here, late at night, feeling this weird vicarious disappointment, almost a rage, on behalf of my practice-squad daughter. It's almost as if I'm reliving my own childhood disappointments through her, or something. My own failures to launch, maybe. It just feels like this insidious, pervasive thing, this comparison trap. Not just for them, but for me, looking at *them*. And then I feel SO incredibly guilty for feeling this way at all. I mean, my life is objectively... fine. Good, even. I have healthy kids, a comfortable home, a spouse who works hard. And yet, this almost melancholic bitterness just sort of... washes over me. Like a silent tide of what-ifs and perceived slights, not even my own, but somehow internalized. And I don't know what it means. Is it a symptom of my own unfulfilled potential? A sort of transference of my own ego onto my children? I don't know. It’s just... there. And it’s awful.