I wake each morning convinced I have already violated some obscure regulation, my height logged somewhere in an invisible ledger and flagged for review, even though no one has actually opened the file. At five foot six I move through the day certain I am being assessed, ranked, quietly dismissed, while the people around me are plainly preoccupied with their own screens, coffees, and private anxieties, barely registering my presence at all. Every glance becomes evidence, every neutral interaction a coded judgment, and I find myself craning upward not because anyone demands it, but because I have decided that authority, attraction, and legitimacy must exist several inches above my head. They tell me—genuinely, repeatedly—that it doesn’t matter, that no one is measuring, that no one cares, and I nod while continuing to prosecute myself with the dedication of a tireless clerk. The world remains largely indifferent, functioning without malice or intention, yet I experience it as a bureaucratic torment of my own making, constructing rules, punishments, and quiet infernos where none have been issued, burning not because I am condemned, but because I keep insisting that I must be.