You know that feeling when the engine dies in your old truck and the silence is so sudden it actually hurts your ears? Like the world just sucked all the air out of the room. That’s what it’s like now. Fifty years old, been a stay-at-home dad since the big layoff ten years back, which honestly felt like a relief at the time. No more scrambling for paychecks, just making sure the kid was alright. And he needed… a lot. Every day was a fire drill, a constant hum of needing to be somewhere, do something, fix something. The house, always a mess, always something sticky or broken or a new sensory fort built in the living room. It was exhausting, yeah, but it was *full*. And now? Now it’s just… clean. You can see the dust motes dancing in the sunbeams through windows that aren’t smeared with peanut butter. The quiet is deafening, like when the neighbor’s barking dog finally shuts up after three hours and you realize how tense you were. I sweep the kitchen floor, and it stays swept. I wipe down the counters, and they stay wiped. No little sticky handprints, no stray crumbs, no half-eaten pieces of toast on the couch. It’s almost clinical, like a showroom. My wife, she says it’s good, says I deserve the rest. But what am I resting *from*? The thing that gave me purpose? It's like I’ve been training for a marathon my whole life and the finish line just vanished, leaving me standing in an empty field, my muscles screaming for a race that isn't happening. Sometimes I just walk from room to room, touching things. The smooth, cool surface of the dining room table where we used to do crafts, now just… a table. His bedroom, stripped bare, no more glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling or mismatched socks under the bed. They say he’s doing great at the adult facility, thriving even. And I believe it. But it leaves this hollow space inside you, a weird echo where all the noise used to be. It should hurt more, shouldn’t it? This emptiness. But mostly, it just feels… flat. Like an old soda left out overnight. All the fizz gone. What do you even *do* with that? Just stare at it?