Where no one knows you

Sooner or later you will sit at a table where no one knows you.

No one who knows who you are yesterday. No one watching you, waiting for the version they already accepted. Just a seat, a chair, and the simplest question in the world. Where do you want to begin.

You are used to the usual ones. The faces that already know how you laugh, what you order, when you are about to leave. And it's good. It's home. But it's also a weight you don't feel anymore because you've been carrying it forever.

Not that night. That night you are just the one who walked in.

You can tell yourself any way you want. Choose which story to give first, which to save for later, which to keep. No one will check if it's the same as always.

This is the gift of strangers. They don't ask you to be consistent. They ask you to be there.

And you will discover something.

That without the usual ones you don't fall. You walk differently. As if someone had taken something out of your pockets without telling you.

You will go home. The usual people will still be there. But you will be a little more grown up.