I can’t sleep. Again. It's almost 2am and I’m just staring at the ceiling, thinking about how I used to wake up at 4:30 without an alarm, every damn day, ready to hit the track. Now I wake up when Mom bangs on the wall because she thinks the neighbor is stealing her mail or whatever new delusion has taken root. It’s been five years since the knee went out, five years since the doctors told me I was done, and I still feel like I’m in some kind of purgatory, just waiting for the starting gun that’s never going to fire. I look at my hands sometimes, these hands that held trophies, signed contracts, built something out of nothing, and now they just change adult diapers and spoon-feed oatmeal. It’s fucking humiliating. The worst part is that everyone else just moved on. My siblings, god, they call once a week to ask if I’ve found a good assisted living place yet, like it’s some kind of easy fix. Like I haven’t spent every waking hour for the past three years trying to figure out how to keep Mom safe without draining every last penny I have left. My agent, bless his heart, sends me emails about “speaking engagements” and “ambassador roles” but it’s all just… empty. It’s not the roar of the crowd, not the sweat and the pain and the absolute pure rush of crossing that finish line first. That’s gone. And nothing, NOTHING, replaces it. I catch myself looking at old footage, my younger self, and it’s like I’m watching a completely different person, someone vibrant and alive, and I just feel this white-hot rage that he’s gone and I’m still here, a shell. Today, Mom had another episode, screaming about how I stole her car keys. I didn’t, obviously, I hid them because she tries to drive to the grocery store at midnight. But she looked at me with such hatred in her eyes, pure, unadulterated loathing, and I just stood there, letting it wash over me. I used to be able to deflect anything, insults from competitors, pressure from the media, but this? This just hollows me out. She called me a loser, said I was never good enough, and a part of me, a deep, dark part, agreed with her. Because what am I now? What am I without the sport, without the identity I spent thirty years building? Just a glorified nursemaid. I was at the hardware store yesterday, getting a new toilet seat because Mom somehow broke the old one, and I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt from my old team, my number on the back. He looked at me, glanced at my face, but didn’t recognize me. Not a flicker. It used to be that I couldn’t go anywhere without someone wanting an autograph or a picture, a handshake, whatever. Now I’m just… invisible. Just some middle-aged dude buying plumbing parts. It felt like a punch to the gut. I just wanted to scream, to grab him and shake him and tell him, "THAT WAS ME! I WAS HIM!" But what’s the point? He wouldn’t care. No one cares anymore. Sometimes I think about just… walking away. Packing a bag and just driving until I run out of road. But where would I go? What would I do? And then the guilt washes over me, because she’s my mother, even if she doesn’t know who I am half the time. And the thought of leaving her, even for a moment, feels like a betrayal. So I stay. I get up, I make her breakfast, I clean up the messes, I listen to the same stories a hundred times. And I hate it. I hate all of it. I hate what I’ve become. I hate what she’s become. And I hate that I don’t know how to stop the clock or rewind it or just make it all disappear.