The thing about veneer was that sometimes it chipped off, and when it did, you didn’t always recognize what was beneath it. The people around you all thought the same thing, trying to figure out what happened to the nice, normal, sane person they used to know. Hard times could scrape you raw, like a glacier bulldozing the Earth flat. You couldn’t plan for what might be revealed in that raw, pink wound. Jim had lost his veneer and was adapting to that self he found beneath it. He only hoped the world could adapt with him.
