Well, here I am again. It’s… what, 2 AM? The barn owls are at it again outside my window, hooting like they’re trying to solve some great rural mystery, and I just can't sleep. My mind’s been circling back to that summer, decades ago now, when my cousin, Rose, got married. A big to-do, out in the valley, everyone from three counties over was invited. You know how it is in a small community – a wedding is practically a state holiday. And Rose… she was always the golden girl, the one everyone doted on, even when she was just a little thing with pigtails. I mean, I loved her, of course. Deeply. But there was always this… undercurrent, this pervasive expectation that you *had* to show up for Rose, and not just show up, but show up *right*. If that makes any sense. I’m rambling. It’s just, I keep wondering if anyone else has ever felt that peculiar pressure, that almost pathological need to demonstrate your affection in a way that’s… quantifiable? Is that the right word? I think it is. The thing is, I was just starting out then. Had a little shack on the edge of town, barely making ends meet selling eggs and the occasional knitted something-or-other. My entire vacation budget, a paltry sum I’d carefully squirrelled away for a week down at the lake, just a quiet little break to read and maybe fish, was maybe… fifty dollars? No, probably closer to forty. Not much, even then. But I felt this absolute compulsion, this *imperative*, to get Rose and her new husband something… grand. Something that would stand out among the usual casserole dishes and toasters. I saw this crystal vase, imported, at the fancy store in town – the one that always felt like stepping into another world, all hushed tones and gleaming surfaces. It was seventy-five dollars. SEVENTY-FIVE. Which was, you know, more than my entire vacation fund, and then some. But I bought it. On credit, even. A credit card was a new fangled thing then, and I knew I couldn’t really afford it. Not in any rational, financial sense. And I remember the sheer, almost dizzying relief when I handed it over, wrapped in layers of tissue paper and tied with a big satin bow. The way Rose’s eyes widened, her little gasp of delight. “Oh, it’s BEAUTIFUL!” she said, and her mother, my aunt, nodded approvingly, a silent confirmation that I had, for once, done good. I felt… exonerated, somehow. Like I had passed some unspoken test. For weeks after, I ate mostly beans and whatever I could forage from my garden, all my dreams of the lake evaporating like morning dew. I mean, I don’t even… whatever. It wasn't about the money, not really. Not then, not now. But I still sometimes wonder, am I the only one who’s ever let that… that fear of being perceived as ungrateful, or ungenerous, or somehow *less*, drive them to such irrational fiscal extremity? To spend beyond their means just to… to *prove* something, I suppose? Even when no one was explicitly asking for it? Just… does anyone else feel like that? That profound, almost clinical desire to avoid the judgment, even if it’s entirely imagined?