Sometimes you just… you hit a wall, you know? Like, it’s not even a big wall. Just a regular wall. And you’ve been walking for forty-eight years, practically. And suddenly, BAM. You’re on the floor. It happened to me last week. Thursday. Big pitch. Years on this case. YEARS. Getting ready all night, like you do. Parents called, kid called, husband… always something. But you push it down. You always do. That’s just… life. So I’m standing there, in the big conference room. All the bigwigs. Judge. Clients. Partners. The whole damn thing. And I’m talking, right? Clicking through the slides. And then… it was like the air just went out of my brain. I knew what I was supposed to say. KNEW it. But the actual words… gone. Like trying to grab smoke. The key points. The ones I’d rehearsed a thousand times. Just… not there. My mouth was moving. But nothing. I could feel my face. Like everyone was staring. And they WERE. You get that feeling, don’t you? When your insides just… go cold. Like you’re watching yourself from the ceiling. This old woman, talking gibberish. Or trying to. I just… froze. Someone cleared their throat. I could hear it. I wanted to just disappear. To melt into the expensive carpet. My associate, bless her heart, she picked it up. Smoothed it over. “As counsel was saying…” God. The humiliation. I just mumbled something about a long week. Which, true. But not the real truth. It's been bugging me ever since. Like a bad tooth. You keep poking it. Is this… the start? Is this what happens? All those late nights, all that stress, the never-ending treadmill… does it just eventually short-circuit you? I’m forty-eight. Not ancient. Not yet. But my mom, she started… little things. Losing her keys. Forgetting names. It wasn’t long after that… You just can’t help but connect the dots. Even if they’re not there. Yet. I mean, everyone forgets things, right? You walk into a room, forget why you’re there. Normal. But this felt different. Deeper. Like a rip in the fabric. Like something important broke. And I’m just supposed to… ignore it? Pretend it didn’t happen? Go back to billable hours and performance reviews. Like my brain isn’t actively betraying me. It's just… a lot to think about. At 2 AM.