I Miss the Version of Me Who Used Perfume for No Reason

Dear Delyara, Today I walked past a woman in Target, and her perfume caught me off guard. It smelled warm and expensive and like she had remembered she was a person before she became a list of responsibilities. I stood there holding toilet paper and dog food and wanted to cry over a stranger’s perfume. Because I remembered myself. Not younger, exactly. Just less disappeared. There was a time I cared about how I entered a room. Not for men. Not for attention. For me. I liked feeling like I was inside my own body in a beautiful way. Now I mostly enter rooms already needed. That perfume stayed in the air for maybe three seconds. I’m still thinking about it.