The draft on my screen isn’t a story. It’s a resume. It’s me begging the reader to think I’m smart, or sensitive, or whatever version of “good” is currently in style.
My phone screen lights up on the floor next to my knee.

It’s a text from Maya. “How’s the writing going? You’re going to crush this.”
I don’t reply. What am I supposed to say? “I’m currently paralyzing myself because I’ve spent twenty years building a personality out of other people’s expectations and now I don’t have a single authentic thought left”? No, I’ll probably just send a thumbs-up emoji tomorrow morning and pretend I was asleep.

I reach up, grab the edge of the counter, and pull myself up. My joints pop in the quiet. I look at the screen, highlight the entire second half of the document—four thousand words of carefully constructed, agonizingly polite prose—and I press backspace.

The screen goes mostly dark. The cursor is back at the top of an empty page.
It hurts a little, but it also feels like a fever breaking. My chest doesn’t feel quite as tight. I’m tired of trying to sound like a writer. I’m tired of the performance. If the next thing I write is stupid, or simple, or embarrassing, then so be it. At least it will actually belong to me.