I had spent years half-believing it.

I had learned to make myself smaller before anyone asked, to preempt the joke by agreeing with it, to apologize for taking up space at my own family’s table.

That is what thirty-two years of being the punchline does: it does not only make others laugh at you.

It teaches you to laugh at yourself, first, so the blow lands softer.

I had been doing it so long I had stopped noticing.