On Sunday morning I went to the local market.The smell of wet vegetables, the chatter of vendors, the noise of bikes passing through narrow lanes — it was strangely grounding.
I was picking out tomatoes when an old man selling onions asked, "You live around here?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Married?" he asked casually, smiling.
"Yeah."
He laughed. "You must be a lucky man. A wife waiting at home makes a man's life worth it."
I just smiled back, but something inside me twisted.That simple assumption — that I was lucky, that home was warm — felt like a cruel joke.
On the way back I thought about how the world still saw me as that man — married, settled, safe.It made me realize how easy it is to wear a mask, and how nobody ever questions it.
When I got home, she was still asleep.I put the vegetables in the kitchen and went to the balcony with my coffee.The mask stayed on.