Sometimes I wonder if I fucked everything up. The airport, watching my mother cry as I walked away. Her hands, calloused from cleaning other people's houses so I could have 'better.' She wanted a doctor, a lawyer. She got this: a daughter who trades on her face and body, who learns that the quickest way past a locked door isn't a key, it's knowing how to make the man holding it want to open it for you. I used to think ambition was clean. It's not. It's sticky with sweat and compromise. It's letting hands wander where they shouldn't because the casting director's assistant promised to 'put in a good word.' It's waking up next to someone you respect but don't desire, because their apartment has a doorman and yours has roaches. The guilt tastes like cheap champagne—sweet at first, then metallic. I'm not the girl they sacrificed for. I'm harder. I'm emptier. And some nights, that feels like the only victory I've actually earned.