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I was in the middle of a supermarket last Tuesday — totally ordinary afternoon, looking for pasta — when it hit me out of nowhere.

A memory from 2019.

A work meeting where I tried to make a joke that landed completely wrong. Everyone went quiet. My manager smiled that polite smile that’s worse than nothing. I moved on, the meeting moved on, and I genuinely thought I’d forgotten about it.

Apparently not.

Standing there in aisle seven, holding a bag of penne, I felt my face go hot. My stomach did that thing. And for a solid thirty seconds I was fully back in that conference room, re-living every second of it frame by frame.

If you’ve never had this happen to you, I genuinely don’t know what to tell you. But if you have — and I suspect you have — then you know exactly what I mean. It’s not a gentle nudge from the past. It’s an ambush. Vivid, physical, and completely uninvited.

I started looking into why this happens.…