You know that feeling when you’ve been lying so long it just feels like your skin? I’m fifty-eight years old and I’m sitting in a dark booth at Miller’s Prime, smelling that heavy, iron scent of charred beef and expensive bourbon. It’s Friday. It’s always Friday. You sit there with the team, and your boss, Bill—who thinks a salad is a personal insult to his ancestors—is holding court at the head of the table. You just nod and smile because that’s what you were trained to do. You don't make waves. You don't become the "fussy" one. You don't become the problem. Sometimes you look at your hands and wonder how the hell you got here. I spent twenty years in the service before I ever touched a stylus or a design program. You learn real quick in the military that being "different" is a death sentence for your reputation. You eat what they give you, you go where they tell you, and you keep your fucking mouth shut. Now I’m a "senior graphic designer," which is just a fancy way of saying I make things look pretty for people who don't actually care about art. But that discipline—that need to fit the mold and be a "team player"—it never goes away. It follows you into civilian life like a goddamn ghost. So every Friday, the "crew" goes for steaks. Bill looks at me and says, "Best ribeye in the city, right?" and I have to look him in the eye and say, "Absolutely, Bill." It’s a fucking performance. I order the steak medium-rare because that’s what "serious" people do. I sit there and I cut it into small pieces. I push the blood around the plate. I take a bite and I swallow it fast, trying not to think about the fact that I haven't eaten meat by choice in fifteen years. But you can't tell them that. Not if you want the good projects. Not if you want to be part of the "inner circle" before you age out of this industry entirely. It makes you feel sick. Not just in your gut, though god knows the indigestion is a nightmare. It’s the weight of the lie. You’re sitting there, laughing at some hackneyed joke about "rabbit food," and you realize you’ve spent your entire career being a ghost. You’ve traded your own values for a seat at a table you don't even like. I look at the younger kids in the office, the ones who demand special menus and don't give a shit if they're liked or if they're "difficult," and I’m half-jealous and half-pissed off. They didn't have a drill sergeant screaming in their ear that they were nothing but a gear in a machine. You start thinking about what you’re leaving behind. Is this it? Is this my legacy? A decade of Friday nights spent choking down expensive meat just so a man who doesn't even know my middle name thinks I'm "one of the guys"? It’s pathetic. I’m closing in on sixty and I’m still afraid of getting a bad performance review because I didn't want to eat a cow. I look at my portfolio and I see some decent work, but then I look in the mirror and I just see a coward. Someone who survived the desert and the motor pool just to be defeated by a fucking dinner menu. Last night was the worst one yet. Bill decided we should all share the "tomahawk" special. This massive, primitive hunk of bone and flesh right in the middle of the table. He carved it himself, grinning like he’d personally hunted the thing in the woods behind the parking lot. He put a piece on my plate—a real fatty, grisly bit—and said, "Eat up, you’ve earned it after that layout for the Henderson account." I ate it. I chewed and I chewed and I thought I was going to lose it right there on the white tablecloth. I just kept thinking... *just a few more years. Just get to the pension.* But you lose a piece of yourself every time you swallow a lie like that. You go home and you scrub the smell of smoke and grease out of your hair, but you can't scrub the feeling of being a fraud. It’s 2 AM and I’m staring at the ceiling, wondering why I’m still so goddamn scared of being seen for who I am. Is it the military? Is it just being an old broad in a young man’s game where you feel like you have to be "cool" to stay relevant? I don’t know. I just know that I’m tired. I’m so fucking tired of the acting. You’d think by this age you’d have developed some backbone, but maybe the backbone is the first thing they break when they're "making a soldier" out of you. Maybe I’ll go in on Monday and tell them. Maybe I’ll say, "Hey Bill, I’m a vegan, and I have been since the nineties." But I know I won’t. I’ll probably just check the menu for the next Friday and see if they have enough side dishes to hide the fact that I’m barely touching the main course. You just keep marching. That’s the problem with being trained to endure... you eventually forget how to do anything else. You just keep taking the hits and eating the shit until the clock finally runs out.