I am sitting here in the dark, and the only light in this entire godforsaken apartment is the glow from my monitor. I just finished another twelve-hour day at the firm, pushing papers that do not matter for people I do not respect. My coworkers spent the afternoon talking about their weekend plans, their brunch spots, their minor inconveniences with the commute. They have no idea. They have no idea what it is like to actually struggle, to actually feel the weight of the world pressing down on your chest until you can barely draw a breath. I look at them and I feel nothing but a simmering, white-hot rage. I hate them for how easy they have it, and I hate myself even more for being one of them now. I came home at 9 PM, just like I do every single night, every night. I went through the motions—the same motions I learned in the service. Boots off. Uniform—or what passes for a uniform now, this cheap suit—hung up. I made chicken and rice. It is efficient. It is fuel. But I cannot stand the silence of this kitchen. The silence is a physical thing here; it is heavy and it rings in my eyes and ears like a flashbang went off. So I set the table. Two plates. One for me, and one for the laptop. I opened the stream, and there she was, eating her noodles and laughing at something a stranger typed in the chat. Her name is Chloe, or at least that is what she goes by online. She does not know me. She does not know I exist. But for two hours every night, she is the only person I talk to. I do not type in the chat—that feels too desperate, too much like the pathetic losers she usually deals with. Instead, I talk to the screen. I tell her about the idiot in marketing who deleted the shared drive. I tell her about the way the air smells right before a storm, the way it used to smell back at the FOB. I tell her things I would never tell a "real" person because real people look at you with that disgusting, pitying tilt of the head. Chloe just smiles and keeps eating. She feels like a friend. She feels like the only friend I have left. It makes me sick. I spent four years in the infantry. I led men. I had brothers who would have taken a bullet for me, and I would have done the same for them without blinking. Now, I am a "Junior Associate" who pays five dollars a month to a girl in a different time zone just so I do not have to eat dinner alone. I am a joke. I am a pathetic, lonely joke. I catch my reflection in the dark window and I do not even recognize the man looking back. He looks soft. He looks defeated. He looks like someone who would break if the power went out, and that realization makes me want to put my fist through the drywall. Tonight, she was talking about her day, and she mentioned how much she hates the sound of sirens. She said they make her feel anxious. I found myself nodding, leaning in, telling her out loud that I understand. I told her about the way my heart rate spikes every time an ambulance goes off outside my office window, how I have to grip the edge of my desk until my knuckles turn white just to keep from diving under the furniture. I felt this incredible surge... like we were finally on the same page. Like she was finally seeing me. And then she laughed and thanked some random subscriber for a donation, and the spell just broke. I realized I was not sharing a meal with a friend. I was staring at a series of pixels designed to extract money from lonely, broken men like me. She is not my friend. She is not my person. She is a business. And I am a consumer. I threw my fork across the room and it hit the wall with a dull thud. The chicken was cold. It is always cold by the time I realize I have been talking to a ghost. I just sat there in the dark, watching her eat, feeling this overwhelming sense of betrayal, even though she did not do anything wrong. I did this to myself. I LET myself believe it was real. I keep thinking about the guys I served with. If they could see me now, sitting in a studio apartment in my underwear, arguing with a computer screen, they would be disgusted. We used to talk about what we would do when we got out. We had plans. We were going to be leaders. We were going to build things. Instead, I am building a life out of shadows and digital echoes. I am so tired of being "disciplined." I am so tired of the routine. Every single day, every day, I wake up, I perform being a human at the office, and I come home to my digital girlfriend. The worst part is that I know I am going to do it again tomorrow. I will go to work, I will smile at the manager I want to strangle, and I will come home and open that laptop. I will make my chicken and rice and I will wait for her to go live. I hate myself for it. I HATE how much I need it. I am a grown man, a veteran, a professional, and I am being kept alive by a girl who does not know my name. There is no way out of this. There is no one to call. There is just the screen, the silence, and the cold, leftover rice. I am pathetic. I am absolutely, undeniably pathetic.