Everybody is mid-fix on something. Yours just happens to be visible.

Braces, a cast, a stutter you are working on, a grade you are pulling up: the repairs that show get treated as if they were the only ones in the room. Everybody around you is partway through fixing something too. Theirs is in a notebook, or a counsellor’s office, or a conversation at home nobody will ever hear about.

Next time you feel like the only unfinished person at the table, look around and assume the opposite. It helps to say your own repair out loud once, plainly, without apology. Most people answer that honesty with some of their own.