Okay so my 30-year reunion was last weekend. Thirty years. Think about that. I’ve been dreading it since the first email, like, almost a year ago. It became this, I don’t know, an EVENT in my mind, a data point. A moment where my face would be scrutinized. And not just my face, my *neck*. Anyone else get that? That weird hyperfocus on a specific body part that suddenly feels like it’s betraying you? Mine’s my neck. The lines. They’re… *pronounced*. I did the whole thing. I bought the dress, a really nice one, something that would skim, you know? Not cling. A good color. I even got my hair done. And then, the day of, I just… couldn’t. My husband, bless his heart, he kept saying, “You look great, honey, really.” And I just stared at myself in the bathroom mirror, under the brutal fluorescent light that ALWAYS seems to be on when you least want it, and all I could see were the creases. The ones that weren’t there for Susie, or Brenda, or even CARLA from senior year who always looked like she’d slept in a dumpster. They all look… taut. Smooth. Like they’ve been stretched and polished. Like someone took an eraser to the last decade and a half. And I know. I KNOW it’s the fillers. It’s gotta be. Every single one of them, they've got that slight puffiness, that subtle sheen. They’re all getting those little top-ups, those little micro-improvements that add up to a face that just doesn’t age the same way mine does. My face, it’s just… doing its thing. Gravity. Collagen decline. The usual biological progression. And I’m sitting there, on the couch, watching some stupid reality show while my husband went alone, and I’m just feeling this profound, visceral sense of… being left behind. Like my face didn’t get the memo, didn't get the update. It’s stupid, right? It’s just a reunion. It doesn’t MATTER. But it does. It does when you’re in the grocery store, and you see a woman your age, and her skin just GLOWS in a way yours hasn't in years. It does when you’re on Zoom calls for work and you catch your reflection and think, “Oh. Right. *That’s* what I look like now.” It’s not even vanity, not exactly. It’s more like a… a disconnect. The person in my head, the one who still feels twenty-something, doesn’t match the visual evidence. Anyone else feel this deep, unsettling chasm between their internal age and the one reflected back? Am I the only one who skipped a major life event because the mirror was a harsher judge than any former classmate could ever be? Because the thought of someone looking at me and thinking, "Wow, she really let herself go," was too much to bear. It's just... the thought of those comparisons. Of being the one who didn't.