Does anyone else feel like they’re literally two different people who both hate each other? It’s 2:14 AM and I’m sitting in my car in the driveway because if I go inside I have to be "The Son" and "The Nurse" and "The Provider" and I just… I can’t move my hands off the steering wheel. I just finished a fourteen-hour shift at the firm drafting an injunction that essentially allows a multi-billion dollar REIT to steamroll a low-income housing development. I’m good at it. I’m surgical. I use language like "dispositive motions" and "precedent-setting litigation" to mask the fact that I am essentially a high-priced mercenary for people who wouldn't look at me if I was on fire. Am I the only one who looks at the statutes every day and realizes it’s all a fucking lie? It’s not a "justice system." It’s an inventory management system for capital. I spend my mornings ensuring the wealthy stay shielded by layers of LLCs and offshore trusts—legal fictions we’ve all agreed to pretend are real. Then I spend my nights looking at my dad’s Medicare statements and realizing that thirty years of his hard work means absolutely nothing because the "system" I uphold all day is currently cannibalizing his entire existence. It’s a systemic feedback loop designed to strip-mine the middle class until there’s nothing left but the bones. I walked into his room tonight and he had thrown his dinner on the floor. Mashed peas everywhere. He didn't recognize me. He looked at me with this... this vacuous stare and asked when his "real lawyer" was coming to help him with the house. I’m a Senior Associate at one of the top firms in the country and I’m kneeling on a stained carpet scrubbing peas out of the rug while he screams that I’m a stranger trying to rob him. The irony is so thick I can taste it. I protect assets for a living. I ensure the continuity of generational wealth. And here I am, watching my own father’s mind undergo a total structural collapse while I can’t even get a social worker to return a goddamn phone call. My sister called from her yoga retreat today to ask if I’d "looked into" different facilities yet. As if I have a spare second between the billable hour requirements and changing adult diapers. She thinks because I make the "big partner money" that I have it easy. She doesn’t see the cognitive dissonance. She doesn't see me sitting in a deposition at 10 AM, debating the nuances of "force majeure" clauses, while I’m secretly checking my Ring camera to make sure Dad hasn't wandered out the front door again. I am a highly functioning machine in a suit, but internally? I’m experiencing a total system failure. It’s like my personality has been replaced by a series of checklists and contingency plans. Does anyone else feel like their "self" is just… gone? I don’t have hobbies. I don't have a partner. I have a caseload and a patient. My identity has been completely subsumed by the needs of people who don't actually know who I am. To my clients, I’m a tool. To my dad, I’m a ghost or a threat. To the firm, I’m a profit center. I keep waiting for the "milestones" everyone talked about in law school. The house, the family, the "making it." Instead, I’ve reached this weird plateau of high-income exhaustion where I’m just waiting for something to break. Probably me. I had this moment today during a meeting with a client—a guy who inherited more money than I’ll see in ten lifetimes—where he was complaining about "excessive regulation." I almost laughed. I almost lost it right there in the glass-walled conference room. I wanted to tell him that the only reason he’s not in a cage is because people like me spent three hundred hours finding the specific loopholes that make his "irregularities" look like "clerical oversights." The law isn't a moral code; it’s a user manual for the rich. And I’m the lead technician. It’s fucking disgusting. And then I come home to this. The smell of antiseptic and old age. I had to lift him into the shower because he’d had an accident. He’s heavy. Dead weight. My back clicked and I just stayed there, bent over the tub, crying while the water ran. He didn't even notice. He was humming some song from the seventies. I’m thirty-two years old and I feel ninety. I feel like I’ve been living in a hyper-vigilant state for so long that my nervous system has forgotten how to shut down. Is this what the rest of my life is? Just managing the decline? My boss sent me an email at 11:30 PM asking for a "deep dive" into a new liability shield. He used the word "urgent." Everything is urgent. My dad’s UTI is urgent. The firm’s billables are urgent. The REIT’s expansion is urgent. My own fucking life is a footnote in a brief that no one is going to read. I’m staring at my laptop screen and the letters are just blurring into black lines. I keep thinking about what would happen if I just… stopped. If I didn't file the motion. If I didn't refill the meds. The world wouldn't end, right? The rich would stay rich and the sick would stay sick. Am I the only one who feels this violent urge to just burn the whole thing down? I don't even mean the firm. I mean the WHOLE structure. The laws, the expectations, the "good son" bullshit. I spend all day sharpening the knives for the people at the top and then I come home and use those same knives to cut my own heart out so I can stay "professional" enough to keep the insurance active. It’s a fucking TRAP. I am trapped in a cage of my own high-performance making. I want to scream but I’m too tired to draw the breath. I’m still in the car. It’s 2:40 now. I can see the light on in his bedroom window. He’s probably awake. He’s probably confused. I have to go in. I have to put on the face. I have to be the one who handles it. Because if I don't, who will? But seriously—how do you people DO this? How do you pretend the world isn't a rigged game while you’re the one dealing the cards?