It's probably stupid, and I know it’s just a wedding, but I can’t stop thinking about this. We were at my grand-niece's reception — a huge affair, hundreds of people — and I spent half the night actively avoiding eye contact with my mother-in-law. Not because we’ve had a fight, not even because she’s particularly difficult, but because I know, absolutely KNOW, that she sees me as a failure. Or at the very least, a disappointment. All because I never did... more. I stayed home, raised the kids, kept house. Which was *fine*, it was what we decided, what *I* decided too, at the time. But now, all these decades later, I still feel that prickle of shame when her gaze drifts my way. Like she's tallying up all the invisible lines on my CV that simply aren't there. And the thing is, I carry that feeling around like a secret weight. All the "what ifs." What if I’d pursued that degree? What if I’d tried harder for that little shop I always dreamed of? It's not a burning regret, not really. It’s more like a quiet hum beneath the surface of everything, this persistent questioning of the path not taken. And then I see my daughter, all bright and busy, juggling her career and her family, and I feel this complicated mix of pride and… something else. A kind of wistful envy, maybe? Like she's living the life I secretly yearned for, even when I was perfectly content with mine. It’s illogical, I know. Completely. But it’s there. Am I the only one who feels this way? This strange, almost generational guilt for wanting something beyond the 'good wife, good mother' mold, even when you chose it, even when you loved it? Like we, as women, are constantly being judged by some invisible metric that shifts with the decades, and we can never quite measure up to all of them at once. I should be past this, shouldn’t I? My hair is grey, my kids are grown, but that little voice, that feeling of not quite being enough in the eyes of someone else — it never seems to go away. Anyone else get this? Or is it just me, stuck in my own head at 2 am?