i was at my parents house for dinner last night you know the usual sunday spread pot roast gravy the whole nine yards my dad kept telling the same story about when he started his construction business for the tenth time and mom just smiled that tight little smile she does like she’s trying to hold all the seams of our lives together with pure willpower and i just sat there watching them their hands gnarled with decades of work and worry and i kept seeing my own hands in theirs not just the shape of the knuckles or the way the veins stand out but the way they feel rough around the edges like they’ve seen too many late nights and too many bills that barely get paid and i just felt this COLD dread building in my gut like a stone settling deep inside me because i’m the architect i’m the one who went to college the one who got out of this town the one who’s supposed to be… more and they look at me with such pride sometimes it just chokes me it really does like i’ve done something amazing and all i’ve done is traded one kind of worry for another you know the kind where you spend every waking hour designing beautiful buildings for people who have more money than god while you’re still counting pennies to make sure rent gets paid on time and they’re so happy i’m doing well so happy that i’m not breaking my back like they did but then i look at them and i think about the name the family name that ends with me because i’m the only child and i don’t want kids i don’t even know if i could afford kids if i did and i just felt this surge of anger this hot bitterness that made my ears burn they don’t say anything of course not directly but i see it in their eyes sometimes that tiny flicker of disappointment when i talk about my work when i talk about my life when i talk about anything that doesn’t involve some future grandkid running around and i just want to scream sometimes to just shatter that perfectly constructed image they have of me of us because it’s not fair it’s just not fair to put that kind of weight on someone to expect them to carry on everything when they’re already barely keeping their head above water and i watched my dad carve another slice of meat and the whole room just felt heavy like the air itself was thick with all the things we weren’t saying all the expectations all the silent demands that felt like chains around my ankles and i just wanted to run out of there to just keep running until i couldn’t hear the echo of their hopes anymore