The psychologist’s hand was already hovering above the keyboard when she spoke.

“How has the past semester been for you?” she asked.

The boy gave a slow shrug.

“Girls! Get into position,” the father called out. “They’ll be here any second.”

The two sisters, eighteen and sixteen, raced down the stairs one after the other into the spacious, sunlit living room.

Sometimes it would feel so good to just give up.

Not quietly. Not slipping away. No.

A few years ago, I walked into an elegant lakeside restaurant. I wanted to buy a voucher there as a gift for my friend, and I thought I’d try the place first. Alone.

“Lili keeps driving me crazy with this thing about wanting red nail polish,” Martha grumbled. “Absolutely not. She’s thirteen. A kid that young doesn’t need nail polish.”

At some point in life, something shifts.

Before that, we only cry at movies.

After that… even at a detergent commercial.

An old acquaintance once said to me, many years ago:

You should bend down for every coin — because if you don’t, someone else will.

I’m object-dependent. As the saying goes, they don’t serve me—I serve them. On bended knee, head bowed.

The snowfall had completely stopped by the time we reached the harbour. A thin, even white layer covered the boats, made to shimmer by the moonlight.

They took every one of my successes from me.

The small ones and the big ones alike.