I remember this one time, oh god, it must have been... fifty years ago now, maybe more. I was a graduate student, just starting out, first-generation you know, first in my family to even think about anything beyond high school and the factory floor. I'd gotten this scholarship, full ride, to a fancy university in Boston and everything felt so new, so bright, so… out of reach sometimes. This particular evening, it was one of those formal dinners, all heavy silverware and linen napkins that felt too stiff to even touch. I was wearing this dress I'd saved up for, a real polyester nightmare now that I think about it, but then it felt like the most sophisticated thing I’d ever owned. Everyone else, they were talking about their gap years, their summers in Europe, all these exotic locations that sounded like something out of a book. One girl, she was describing her "semester abroad" in Florence, specifically the cost of her vintage Vespa and the charming little trattoria where her family had "connections." Another one, she was just back from a safari – a real safari, not like the cheap package tours you see advertised now – and was lamenting the "rustic" accommodations that still cost more than my annual rent. I just sat there, picking at a piece of chicken that tasted like nothing, trying to make myself invisible. My mind was just... cataloging. Like a diagnostic exercise. I was observing their ease, the way they spoke of these things as commonplace, almost mundane, while my own internal monologue was a frantic calculation of how many hours I'd have to work at my part-time library job to afford even a plane ticket, let alone a stay at a place where the "rustic" meant having to *walk* to your private pool. It wasn’t envy, not exactly. It was more like... a cognitive dissonance, a profound sense of displacement. Like I was an anthropologist observing a foreign tribe, except I was supposed to be *part* of the tribe, and I just couldn't crack the code of their existence. The sheer effortless *privilege* of it all, it was a physical weight, pressing down on my chest. I kept thinking about my dad, always smelling faintly of metal dust, working double shifts so I could have "opportunities." And here I was, having an opportunity to feel utterly alienated by the very people I was supposed to be learning from. I remember excusing myself early, mumbling something about a headache, and walking back through the cold night to my tiny, shared apartment. The streetlights made long, lonely shadows. I thought about calling my mom, just to hear her voice, but what would I even say? "Hi mom, I just attended a dinner where I realized how vast the chasm is between my upbringing and the people I'm supposed to be peers with, and it made me feel like an imposter"? No, you don't say that. You just… internalize it. And you carry it. All these years later, sometimes a stray word, a certain kind of expensive perfume, even just the way someone casually mentions a second home, and I'm right back in that dining hall, the clinking of crystal, the polite laughter, and that hollow, aching feeling in my gut. It never really leaves you, that feeling of being an outsider looking in, even when you've managed to build a whole life inside.