I spend every single day pretending I’m someone else. It’s exhausting. I got this notebook in my head with every line I’m supposed to say. "Welcome in! Let me know if you need a size!" If I don't say it exactly like that I feel like I'm gonna throw up. I stare at people's eyeballs until mine start to water because that's what normal people do, right? They look each other in the eye. It feels like someone is poking me with a hot needle every time but I do it anyway. I have to. Because if I don't, I'm just the weirdo. The freak. Then I go home and it doesn't stop. My dad's eighty and he forgets who I am half the time and my daughter moved back in with the baby because her husband is a deadbeat. I’m the one who makes the appointments. I’m the one who cooks the dinners. I'm the one who cleans the mess and the accidents. I feel like a machine. Just a machine that people push buttons on. Does anyone else feel like they're just... gone? Like there's no "me" left inside this body? This woman came in the boutique today. Wealthy. Smelled like expensive soap and entitlement. She wanted this silk scarf and she was tapping her nails on the glass like it was a drum. Click click click. It was making my brain itch. I wanted to scream or jump out of my skin. But I put on the face. I looked right at her—dead in the eyes—and said my line. "That’s a beautiful choice, ma'am." My heart was beating so hard I thought she’d see it through my shirt. She just rolled her eyes because I wasn't moving fast enough. I’m trying so hard to be what they want and it’s still never enough. NEVER. I just want to sit in a dark room and not talk. For like a year. But I can't. I gotta get up at 6am to change my dad's sheets because he had another accident and then I gotta go back to that shop and smile at people who think I'm stupid. I’m not stupid. I’m just tired of the acting. It’s like a play that never ends and I forgot my script but I’m still on stage. Is that weird? To feel like you’re just a ghost in your own life?