You know that feeling when you're sitting in a bar that smells like cheap gin and collective desperation, looking at a man who hasn’t even read your profile? You spent forty bucks on an Uber because the trains are a mess and you’re exhausted from three back-to-back freelance edits, and he’s just… there. Every single day, every day, you do this dance where you pretend you don’t want anything because wanting is the ultimate sin. That’s how we were raised, right? You don’t ask for the last piece of fruit, you don’t ask for a raise, and you definitely don’t ask for someone to actually give a damn about you. It’s the voice in the back of your head that sounds exactly like your auntie telling you that you’re being “too loud” or “too much.” (Usually when you’re just literally existing). You go on these dates and you feel this burning RAGE because you have to play the cool girl who doesn't mind that he’s forty minutes late. You sit there and you smile and you swallow the anger until it tastes like copper in your mouth. You’re a professional. You’re a success. You moved to the big city to be free, but you’re just as locked up as you were back home, just with more expensive rent and no health insurance.