I used to love the way words felt in my mouth, the way they clicked together like river stones, each one finding its perfect place. I remember sitting at the kitchen table as a kid, pretending to read the phone book just to sound out the strange names, the rhythm of them. My mom would laugh, tell me I had a silver tongue, that I could talk my way out of a paper bag. And I believed her, even when we were scraping by, even when the only paper bag I could get out of was the one I brought my lunch in. Now, though, it’s like my tongue has turned to lead. The words just won’t come. Not without a fight, anyway. This week, it was a caption for a stupid Instagram post about… I don’t even remember. Something bland, something beige. And I stared at the blinking cursor, feeling my stomach knot up, and for the life of me, I couldn’t string together five simple words. It was like watching a bucket drain, slow and relentless, until there was nothing left but dust. So I did it. I opened the chatbot. Typed in the prompt, something pathetic like, “creative captions for blah blah blah.” And it spat out five options. Five distinct voices, five clever angles, five ways to say absolutely nothing in a slightly more engaging way than I ever could. And I felt it then, a sharp, hot jab right behind my ribs. Not sadness, not really. Something more like a desperate, clawing anger. At myself, mostly. For letting it happen, for letting the well run dry. I picked one, tweaked a word or two, and sent it off. My manager probably thought, “Oh, good, she’s finally getting the hang of it.” But it felt like a betrayal. A small, quiet surrender. And for the rest of the day, every time I saw a new post pop up, every time I read a clever turn of phrase, it felt like a tiny cut. Like someone else was doing the living, doing the thinking, and I was just… echoing. Mimicking. What’s the point if a machine can do it better, faster, and for free? I’m supposed to be good at this. This is how I keep the lights on, how I pay the rent that’s always just a little too high. I can still hear my mom’s voice, telling me I had a gift. But what happens when the gift is gone, or borrowed, or just… outsourced? I’m twenty-six, and I feel like a hollowed-out seashell on a beach, picked clean by the tide. And I don't know if I can ever get those words back.