The quiet is the worst part, and it’s always loudest around 2 AM, when I can’t sleep because my mind just won’t shut off, and I’m just lying there, in this apartment that used to feel so full of life, and now it just feels… empty. And it feels empty because he’s gone, and I’m still here, and all that influence, all that power, all those decisions that shaped entire departments, entire policies, it just vanished. Poof. Gone. And I’m just staring at the ceiling, thinking about how he used to talk, how he used to fill every room with his voice, with his presence, and now there's nothing. Just the hum of the refrigerator, and sometimes the wind outside, and it's so quiet it screams. And I find myself getting so angry, just a simmering, boiling rage that I don't know where to put, because it’s not really at him, not really. But it’s at everything, and everyone, and mostly at myself. Because I let it all happen. I stood by and watched as he faded, as the man who was practically a titan in his field became just… a man in a quiet apartment. And I feel like a ghost in my own life, just moving through the motions, going to my pointless job, coming home to this pointless silence, and there’s no one to even talk about it with. My siblings, of course, are nowhere to be found, too busy with their own PERFECT lives, their own unburdened existences, while I’m here, holding the pieces, trying to pretend like I’m okay, but I’m not okay. I’m SO not okay. I remember one time, when I was still in college, and he came to visit, and he walked into the lecture hall, and you could just FEEL the change in the room. Everyone sat up straighter, everyone looked at him, and he just had this air, this gravitas, and I was so proud, so incredibly proud to be his child. And now… now I just remember sitting on the edge of his bed, spoon-feeding him mashed peas, and he didn’t even know who I was, not really, not in the moments that mattered. And I keep replaying that in my head, over and over, that shift, that absolute erosion of everything that made him HIM, and it makes my stomach hurt. And I hate that I’m becoming him in a way, or at least how I remember him at the very end. Not the dementia part, obviously, but the quiet, the isolation. I work in an office full of people, and I talk to them, I exchange pleasantries, but it’s all just… words. Just noise. They don’t see me, not really, and I don’t think I see them either. It’s like we’re all just performers in some terrible, never-ending play, and I’m just waiting for the curtain call, but it never comes. And I just keep smiling, and nodding, and pretending, and it’s EXHAUSTING. And the anger just keeps building, this pressure behind my eyes, this tightness in my chest. Because I put my life on hold, I did everything that was asked of me, and more, and for what? To watch the person who defined my entire existence become a shell, and then disappear? And now I’m just left with this void, and this apartment that smells faintly of disinfectant and old age, and the crushing weight of knowing that I’m completely alone in this. My friends, they’re all off getting married, having babies, living their ACTUAL lives, and I’m just here, stuck in amber. I try to read, sometimes, late at night, but the words just blur, and my mind just keeps circling back to the same things, the same memories, the same regrets. And I just think about all the things I didn’t say, all the things I should have done, all the times I should have pushed back against my siblings, who just DUMPED everything on me and then vanished into the ether. And I let them. I let them do it. And that’s what makes me the most furious, that I was so passive, so willing to be the good child, the responsible one, and now look where it got me. Here. Alone. And I just wonder if anyone else feels this way, if there’s anyone out there who just wants to SCREAM into the void, because everything feels so unfair, and so heavy, and so… pointless. And I just want to break something, anything, just to feel something other than this dull, aching emptiness and this relentless, burning anger. But I don’t, of course. I just lie here, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the sun to come up, and for another day of pretending to be okay to begin. And I know tomorrow will be exactly the same. And the day after that. And the day after that.