I feel like such a fraud, you know? Like, my whole life, it’s just been this… performance. I’m almost 32 and I still don’t know who I am, really. It’s a classic case of identity diffusion, I think, but like, applied to my entire existence instead of just a phase. Everyone else seems to have it figured out, or at least they’re pretending better than I am. My parents, man. They’re amazing. TRULY amazing. They worked their butts off their whole lives. My dad was a welder, my mom worked in a factory — tough, physically demanding stuff. They always, ALWAYS wanted more for me. More opportunity, less struggle. And the way they talked about it, it was like a foregone conclusion I’d be a doctor, or at least something in STEM. Something SOLID. My dad would joke, "You'll heal us all one day, kiddo," and my mom would just beam. It wasn't pressure, not overtly, but it was just… the air we breathed, you know? The dream. And then I got into university, which was HUGE for them. Like, a monumental achievement for our whole family. They cashed out their retirement, every single penny of their life savings, to pay for my tuition. Private school. Because they believed in me THAT much. They sacrificed everything so I wouldn't have student debt, so I could just FOCUS. And I remember my dad, his hands all calloused, looking at the tuition bill and just saying, "It's an investment, sweet pea. Best one we'll ever make." And that's when it really hit me, the weight of it. I lasted two years in pre-med. TWO YEARS. I was MISERABLE. Like, clinically depressed, probably. I’d sit in organic chemistry lectures and just stare at the periodic table, feeling this intense, visceral dread. It wasn't just hard; it felt fundamentally WRONG. My brain just didn't work that way, or maybe my heart didn't. I kept thinking about the money, about their faces, about that "investment." The cognitive dissonance was through the roof. I ended up switching my major to fine arts. Art history, actually. It felt like a compromise, you know? Still academic, still white-collar-adjacent. I thought I could maybe work in a museum, or an auction house, something respectable but still connected to my real passion, which was drawing. I never told them about the major change until it was too late to switch back without losing credits. I wrote them a really long letter, trying to explain it. I remember mailing it and then just… waiting. When I finally called them, my mom just cried. Like, full-on, heartbroken sobs. My dad was quiet, which was worse. He said, "Are you going to be able to make a living, honey? Is this… responsible?" And I just mumbled something about internships and curatorial tracks and felt like the biggest piece of garbage on the planet. I felt like I'd just taken their life's work and flushed it down the toilet. I could just hear all those years of factory noises and welding sparks in his voice. Now I’m an analyst at a mid-tier marketing firm. It's… fine. I stare at spreadsheets all day, I write reports, I deal with office politics that are like, low-stakes but still draining. It pays the bills, it’s stable, it looks good on paper. When they ask what I do, I say "data insights" and they just nod, vaguely proud, I guess. They think I'm a SUCCESS. But when I get home, I just feel this emptiness, like a dull ache behind my ribs. My art supplies are still in a box in the closet. Haven't touched them in years. Sometimes, late at night, I just feel this overwhelming sense of shame. Like, I’ve committed a betrayal. Not maliciously, but still. I took their dream, their hard-earned money, their FAITH, and I turned it into… this. A perfectly adequate, perfectly uninspired existence. And I can’t tell them. I can’t ever tell them how much I hate it sometimes, how much I feel like I let them down. They'd never understand. They just want me to be happy, but I don't even know what that means anymore. Is this what happiness looks like? Because it feels a lot like quiet desperation. I just don't know what to do.