I found the interview suit behind the bedroom door last Sunday. Navy blue, single vent, still in the dry cleaning bag from 2019.
I unzipped it and held it up against myself in the mirror. The shoulders were too sharp now. The waist pulled in a place I don't pull in anymore.
That suit fit a woman who needed the job badly enough to smile through anything. She got the job. She kept the job. She's me, technically, but I don't recognize her posture in the photos.
I hung it back up and went to install the new shower curtain. The rings I'd ordered were bronze when I'd wanted nickel. I put them up anyway. It felt like the kind of thing that woman in the suit would never have allowed.
She would have returned them, waited a week, gotten it right. She had a system for being small and correct.
That afternoon I drove to see Salazar, my family's mechanic since I was nine. He asked how I was doing and I said 'honestly, terrible' instead of 'great, you?' He just nodded and said the brake pads would be ready Thursday.
Nobody corrected me. Nobody flinched. The car still ran.
I went home and stood in front of the mirror again, this time without the suit. Just me, in a t-shirt that had a small hole near the hem. I looked like someone I actually want to become.