You know when you’re just… going through the motions? Like, you wake up, you do the thing, you go to work, you come home, you feed the cats, you call your mom who complains about her hip again, you wonder if your kid even remembers your birthday anymore… and you just keep going. That’s been me. For a long time now. The kids are grown, out of the house. Which is good, of course. That’s what you want. But it leaves this kinda… HOLE. You spend all those years, you know, being everything to everyone. And then poof. Just you. So I got this job at the department store. Part-time. Just to get out. To feel like I’m doing something besides reorganizing the pantry again. And it’s fine. It’s just… it’s a lot. You’re on your feet all day, smiling at people who sometimes treat you like you’re invisible anyway. And the lights. The fluorescent lights. They show EVERYTHING. Every little… line. Every little red spot. Every time you stayed up too late watching bad TV instead of sleeping. Today, my lunch break. Thirty minutes. What did I do? I went straight to the employee bathroom. Not to eat. Oh no. To fix my face. My foundation, my concealer, all of it. Because some lady had asked me about a sweater earlier, and I just FELT her looking at my chin. Like there was this HUGE zit or something, even though I swear there wasn’t. But maybe there was. Maybe my glasses were blurry. So I sat there, hunched over the sink, putting on another layer. And another. You gotta look presentable, right? You gotta look like you HAVE IT TOGETHER. And then I look in the mirror. And it’s like… who is that? All that makeup. And for what? So someone buying a bath towel doesn’t think I’m… what? A mess? Unprofessional? Like I can’t even handle a tiny little red mark on my cheek. It’s crazy, I know. It's just a job. It's just makeup. But it feels like it’s about more than that. It feels like if I don’t keep up this perfect front, if I let even one tiny thing slip, then everything else will, too. My mom complaining, my kid forgetting, the HOLE getting bigger. It’s exhausting. It’s just… exhausting. And I don’t even know what I’m trying to hide anymore. Or from who.