I’m up again, it’s 2:17 AM now, and the house is completely silent except for the faint hum of the air purifier. My son is sleeping soundly down the hall, and my wife is finally getting some rest after a particularly rough evening. And here I am, staring at the ceiling, replaying the entire afternoon’s playgroup in my head. Another Sunday, another three hours spent trying to decipher what exactly goes on in the heads of these men. I went in, again, with the genuine hope that maybe, just maybe, this time would be different. That we could talk about… anything real. Something beyond the optimal spread rate for Bermuda grass seed or the relative merits of specific power washers for a driveway. It starts innocently enough. Someone asks how the week was, and then it immediately veers into how their new ride-on mower made quick work of the back forty. Or a lengthy dissertation on the impending baseball season. Four separate conversations I counted, all orbiting the same two topics. And I’m sitting there, holding a lukewarm plastic cup of something that was probably coffee at some point, trying to contribute, trying to find a way in. I wanted to ask if anyone else just felt absolutely obliterated by the constant demands, the sleep deprivation that feels like a sustained interrogation tactic. Or the sheer, overwhelming terror that you’re going to mess up this tiny, innocent person in some irreversible way. But the moment never comes. The window for any genuine human interaction snaps shut faster than a tactical field pack. I spent six years hearing about things that mattered. Life and death, duty, the unvarnished grit of humanity under pressure. And now? Now I’m in a suburban cul-de-sac, surrounded by what feels like adults playing dress-up, pretending everything is fine while their kids chase each other with plastic shovels. The anger just builds. It’s a slow burn, not an explosion, but it’s there. A low thrum beneath my ribs, a constant reminder that I’m speaking a different language. I don’t understand how they do it. How they keep this up. Or maybe… maybe they just don't feel it at all. The thought scares me more than I care to admit, because what if that’s the secret? What if the path to suburban bliss is just… not feeling anything at all?