the way sound travels in this room when it's empty… hollow like a held breath. heard a kid laughing outside and felt… EVERYTHING. joy, yeah, but also this gut-deep ache, like remembering a life i haven't lived yet. That phantom limb feeling…not just for what's gone, but for all the possible futures that shimmered and then didn't happen. It’s a strange kind of grief, less about loss and more about…potential energy dissipated into nothing. I try to remind myself that the present is still a kind of becoming, even if it doesn’t look like I imagined.