We catch up over beers after your divorce

part 2

We haven’t seen each other other in a decade. I’m 35 and John’s 36. John is on a solo trip to Mexico where I live, a trip he had planned to do with his wife and step kids. At my favorite red-lit bar, we sip Victorias and scan the other—more searching for affirmation than searching for a bed to crawl into.

We feel awkward about aging. Not about crow’s feet and other bits of beauty industry propaganda, but about depression, anxiety, failures both real and imagined, and most of all, erosion. I wonder if he notices how much I have lost—confidence, power, goodness.