At work, you’re expected to reply to Slack messages at 10 p.m. because “we’re a family.” Your boss talks about mental health awareness while denying your PTO. You smile. You cash the check. Half of it goes to health insurance you’re terrified to use because the deductible is a used Honda Civic.

You wake up to the hum of the AC fighting 95-degree humidity or the radiator clanking in a studio you pay $1,800 for because it has "exposed brick." The coffee is burnt, but you drink it black because the oat milk latte is $7. You scroll past a GoFundMe for your coworker’s appendix surgery.

The highway is a religion. You spend three hours of your life each day sandwiched between a lifted truck with a Punisher sticker and a Tesla whose driver is watching TikTok at 80 mph. Road rage is the only real meditation left. You flip someone off, then feel nothing.

Friday night you sit on a cracked curb drinking a tallboy. The sky is orange from wildfire smoke or sunset — doesn’t matter. A neighbor blasts reggaeton. Another screams at their kid. Sirens wail three blocks over. You think: this is it. The grind. The dream. The raw fucking nerve of it all.

That’s America. Glorious. Brutal. Unmedicated. And somehow, still moving.