I have been performing competence for fourteen years

There is a version of me, in meetings, who knows what he is doing.

He sits very still. He uses phrases like "directionally yes" and "I want to push back gently here." He nods at the right cadence. He produces, on demand, a follow-up email with three bullet points and a deadline, in a tone of voice that suggests the bullet points were arrived at after long, calm consideration.

I do not know him. I cannot find him outside of conference rooms. He is the person the household needs me to be, between 9:30 and 6:00, in exchange for the rent and the groceries and the small luxury of writing this essay on a Sunday night.

This is, mostly, fine. The performance is, on its better days, a kindness — to the team that needs a steady person in the meeting, to the partner who needs the rent paid, to the version of me at twenty-three who would not have believed any of this was possible.

It is just that I have been doing it for fourteen years now, and there are moments, late in the day, when I am no longer sure which of us is the original.