I spent eight hours today watching hands. Hundreds of them, some cracked from the cold and others dripping with expensive leather, all reaching for the same glittery ornaments and overpriced candles. By noon, the air in the market felt like it had been breathed too many times, thick with the smell of damp coats and burnt sugar. My knees have this way of singing a high, sharp note after the sixth hour, a sound only I can hear, like a radiator that won't shut off. It’s not a big deal, I guess, just the price of standing in one spot while the rest of the world rushes past you. But does everyone else feel like they’re disappearing behind the counter? Like you’re just a pair of eyes and a "Have a nice day" machine? I looked at my reflection in the glass of a display case and for a second, I didn't see me. I saw my mother. Same tired slump in the shoulders, same way the hair thins out at the temples. She worked until she was sixty-eight and all she had to show for it was a collection of ceramic birds and a bad back. I’m sixty-one now. I’ve spent more time counting other people’s change than I have counting my own blessings, if that’s what you call them. Sometimes I think my whole life is just a series of receipts that nobody kept. Is that weird? To feel like you’re just a ghost waiting for the clock to run out? Then I get home and the apartment is already vibrating. My roommate, she’s barely twenty-five and she has this light in her that hasn't been dimmed by forty years of "NEXT IN LINE." She’s humming, moving around the kitchen, setting out bowls of chips like she’s building something important. "You’re coming, right? It’s gonna be HUGE," she said, and her eyes were so wide and hopeful. I just nodded. I told her I’d be there in a minute. This is stupid but I felt like I was lying to a kid. I went into my room and shut the door and now I’m just sitting here in the dark, listening to the bass thump through the walls like a second heartbeat I don't want. The thought of going out there, of putting on a face and trying to swim through all that young, loud energy... it feels like trying to run underwater. I can hear the ice clinking in the drinks and the shrieks of laughter, and it sounds like static. It hurts my teeth. I’m just a grey shadow in a room full of neon.