You know that feeling when you're sitting across from someone—your own child, even—and they're just… elsewhere. Not physically, of course, but their whole consciousness seems to have absented itself, absorbed by a screen, while you mechanically lift a forkful of what was once a warm meal. It’s a strange disassociation, this quiet solitude shared with another, a kind of relational deprivation that reminds me of those long, silent watches in the field, only this time the enemy isn't external. Sometimes you just wonder if the discipline required to endure so much, to compartmentalize the pain, simply leaves you ill-equipped for the subtle cruelties of civilian life.