I dropped my dad off at daycare today. Daycare. For adults. He’s 78, still sharp, just… slow. Physically. Can’t really be alone. But I gotta work, right? Two jobs actually. Mortgage ain’t gonna pay itself. Kids are gone now, college. House is so quiet it screams. My husband? He’s basically a roommate I occasionally make eye contact with over coffee. We used to be… something. Now we’re just two ships passing in the dark, too tired to even wave. So I drive my dad, who used to pick me up from school, used to teach me how to change a tire, to a place where they sing nursery rhymes and do crafts. Is that fucked up? I feel like a monster. He looked at me with those eyes. Like, *really* looked. Not angry, just… bewildered. Like he couldn’t quite grasp why I was leaving him there. And I just smiled, a fake smile that probably looked more like a grimace, and told him I’d be back later. “Have fun, Dad!” I said. Fun. Like it’s a goddamn playground. Meanwhile, I’m rushing to my first job, then my second, busted my ass all day, only to pick him up and do it all over again tomorrow. It’s like a terrible loop I can’t escape. I’m so tired. Bone tired. Sometimes I just wanna pull over, anywhere, and just… scream into a pillow. Or cry. Or both. The guilt is a heavy blanket, suffocating. He took care of me, his whole life. And now I’m… putting him in daycare. So I can earn money to keep a house I barely live in, with a man I barely know, while my kids are off living their best lives. Is this what it is? Is this the reward for doing everything right? Feels like a cosmic joke. And I’m the punchline.