They spread across the room — my aunts, my cousins, wealthy strangers, all of them laughing, openly, at me.

“Look at you,” my father said, softer now, but the microphone caught every syllable and carried it to the walls.

“An absolute disaster.

Is it any wonder you’re alone.”

And for just a moment the humiliation did what it was built to do, and I was sixteen again — standing in our living room while this same man tore my college applications in half and told me I wasn’t clever enough to aim so high, wishing, the way you can only wish as a child, that the floor would simply open and take me.

The old shrinking rose up in me, automatic, muscle-deep.