I had this moment today, just... a flash. My grandma was over, you know, for coffee and her usual spiel about my life choices, and she paused in front of the hallway mirror. Not even really looking, just... existing. And then she saw them. This new cluster of lines around her eyes, etched a little deeper than yesterday, I guess. And her face just went utterly blank. Not sad, not angry, just… pure, unadulterated dread. A cold dread, like someone had just told her the war was coming and she had no way to hide. And it just hit me then, a gut punch, that I'm going to feel that. That utter, helpless terror of watching your own body betray you, of seeing the inevitable march of time just... *take* things. And I felt this surge of pure, ugly anger. Not at her, not at the wrinkles, but at the sheer unfairness of it all. This body, this shell I’ve pushed through so much, seen so much ugliness in, forced through so many impossible situations — it's going to fail me, too. It’s going to just... crumple. All that discipline, all that pushing it past its limits, all the times I thought I broke it and it still held on, just for it to decay from the inside out. Is that what it all amounts to? Just a slow, agonizing slide into something unrecognizable? It’s infuriating. It feels like a cosmic joke, some cruel trick played on us all. I just kept thinking about the drills, the sheer force of will it took to keep moving when every fiber of your being was screaming to stop, to give up. And for what? So I can someday look in a mirror and feel that same cold, absolute horror? It makes me want to just... scream. Or punch something. The civilian world, civilian problems — they feel so soft sometimes, so… ignorable. But this? This is real. This is unavoidable. And I don’t know how to fight something that’s already won. Does everyone feel this? That burning resentment when you realize you're just a ticking clock? Because I feel like I'm going to burst.