I spent four hours today acting as a buffer between two twenty-year-olds who seem to think a marketing presentation is a theater of war. It is exhausting, this modern way of "discussing" things. In the service, we followed the chain of command—there was a clarity to the friction. Here, it is just a slow attrition of the spirit. I sat there in the library basement, my hands steady on my notebook, using every de-escalation tactic I learned in the seventies to keep them from sabotaging their own grades. I am old enough to be their grandfather, yet I felt like a sentry guarding a crumbling outpost. By the time I walked across the quad to my car, my situational awareness was shot. I could feel the old tightness in my chest—the kind of cognitive fatigue that usually follows a double watch. I did my duty. I smoothed the feathers. I ensured the "deliverables" were met. But the cost of maintaining that equilibrium is higher than it used to be. My brain feels like a radio tuned to static, just HISSING at me to find a dark corner and stay there. I am seventy-six years old and I am still trying to keep the peace for people who don't even see me. I have been home for two hours, sitting in my armchair with the lights off. Then the phone started its vibration on the end table. "Mother." She is ninety-eight now, and her voice is a thin thread that pulls at everything I have left. I watched the screen glow and fade, glow and fade. I know she just wants to tell me about the birds at her feeder or ask if I’ve eaten, but I could not reach for it. I simply COULD NOT. The thought of performing another five minutes of social cohesion made my stomach turn. It is a terrible thing to admit, but I felt a flicker of resentment toward her for needing me right then. I have spent my whole life being the one who stays calm, the one who mediates, the one who holds the line. I did it in the jungle and I did it today in a plastic chair surrounded by textbooks. I am so tired of being the objective observer. I just wanted to be invisible for one night. To not be the one who answers. Now it is 2am and the guilt has settled in, heavy as a rucksack. She won't be around forever—the actuarial tables are very clear on that point—and every missed call feels like a dereliction of duty. I keep thinking about how she looked at the station when I came home from my second tour, that specific expression of relief she wore. I owe her everything. But I am still sitting here in the dark, staring at the handset, paralyzed by the sheer effort it would take to say "Hello." I am just... I am spent. There is nothing left in the magazine.