It still surprises me how much brain space used to be dedicated to just… managing the chaos. Like a full-time job that paid in anxiety. The mental gymnastics I used to perform just to keep things from completely imploding... I actually believed that was normal. Now, the quiet is almost deafening, and I'm constantly afraid I'll forget how hard it was to get here, and slip. The bandwidth freed up is almost unsettling sometimes. I still catch myself bracing for impact, expecting the next crisis, and then… nothing. Just regular life. It's a good kind of weird, but weird nonetheless.