The silence tonight… it’s a peculiar thing. I’m sitting on the floor, some lukewarm pad thai from that new place down the street getting cold in front of me, and for the first time in… well, I don’t know how long, I just feel *still*. Not empty, not desolate, just… quiet. It made me remember. It brought back a very specific kind of quiet, the kind you only get after a deployment, after the adrenaline finally drains out and leaves you hollowed-out but strangely serene. Like the world outside your head has finally caught up with the quiet inside it. Anyone else ever feel that profound disjunction when returning to civilian life? That the world keeps moving at a different cadence than your own internal rhythm? It’s an odd sort of peace, I suppose, but also a profound solitude. I recall coming back after my second tour, sitting in my little apartment – borrowed furniture, borrowed life – just staring at a wall for what felt like hours. My roommate, bless his oblivious heart, asked if I was alright, and I just couldn't articulate the sheer exhaustion. Not just physical, though that was certainly present, but a deep, bone-weary fatigue of the soul. The constant hyper-vigilance, the perpetual assessment of threats… it doesn't just switch off like a light. It becomes embedded, a kind of existential baseline. And then, suddenly, you’re back amongst people who are complaining about traffic or the price of coffee, and you realize you’re speaking a fundamentally different language. Am I the only one who found that the most significant trauma wasn't the combat itself, but the slow, agonizing realization that you could no longer genuinely connect with the unaffected? That the chasm was simply too wide to bridge? Tonight, with the hum of the refrigerator being the loudest sound, I wonder if that feeling ever truly dissipates. The quiet is a comfort now, yes, but it also carries the echo of all those silences, all those moments of profound isolation even when surrounded by others. It’s a gentle sadness, I think, not a despair, but a quiet acknowledgment of what was irrevocably altered. It makes me wonder what those young people, these graduate students I see sometimes, will carry with them into their own futures. What kind of quiet will they eventually crave, or dread? And will they recognize it for what it is?