Fine Is a Lie I Told for Years

For years, if you asked me how I was doing, I said fine. Automatically. The word came out before the question even finished.

That's the thing about fine. It doesn't just hide your feelings. It hides your priorities. I made myself the lowest priority in my own life, then called it responsibility.

And my body kept the books on all of it. The body doesn't get depressed or philosophical about it, it just keeps a very honest ledger. Every hour I spent making myself nonexistent, it wrote down the number. And one day I climbed the stairs like an old man and understood that I was reading the bill.