i think we all have our little secrets don’t we the things we keep tucked away even from ourselves sometimes until they just… float to the surface at three in the morning when the house is quiet and everyone else is asleep and you’re just left with your own head spinning i’ve been thinking a lot about a paper i published years ago decades really when i was still in the lab still chasing that impossible dream of something BIG of being known for something other than whose mom i was i remember the phone call the editor from a very fancy journal you know the kind that makes your stomach do flips just thinking about it he said it was brilliant ground breaking an elegant solution to a very stubborn problem and i remember feeling this surge of something almost like triumph but also this little pinprick of fear because i knew deep down i knew there was a tiny seam in the data a whisper of an anomaly that i had… smoothed over persuaded myself wasn't significant just an outlier a statistical fluke that didn't detract from the larger picture the beautiful picture i had painted for them and for myself it wasn't a lie not exactly it was more of an omission a selective focus a sort of persuasive interpretation and it worked it got published it got cited it got me tenure a certain respect that i hadn't had before that i CRAVED after years of feeling invisible in the domestic sphere of feeling like my brain was turning to mush with nursery rhymes and PTA meetings it was a lifeline a reaffirmation that i was still ME that i still had something valuable to contribute to the big wide world beyond the kitchen table but the fear never really left it just receded like a tide occasionally it would wash back in especially after i retired and had all this time on my hands the quiet the endless quiet sometimes it feels like a physical weight this constant worry that one day someone a young sharp mind fresh out of grad school will reread my paper will pull at that little loose thread i left will find the flaw the missed detail the thing i minimized and then what then the whole elaborate structure comes crashing down my legacy my carefully constructed identity everything exposed for what it was a house of cards built on a small strategic blind spot we all want to be seen as clever don't we as competent as having all the answers but sometimes the greatest trick we pull is convincing ourselves first and then everyone else that we are exactly who they think we are and now i just sit here with this weight this quiet dread that someday someone will see through the performance and then i'll really be left with nothing but the truth and i don't know if i'm ready for that no i don't think any of us are truly ready for that