the empty space where the constant demand used to live, it’s not just a blank canvas, it’s a canvas that still shows the deep indentations of what was pressed against it for so long, the ghost of fingerprints everywhere and my vision, it still blurs sometimes, not from lack of sleep now, but from the sudden, sharp clarity of how much I missed, how much passed me by while I was bracing for the next emergency, the next phone call that would shatter whatever tiny moment I’d managed to carve out for myself, and the way my lower back still catches sometimes, a memory of all the lifting, all the turning, all the physical labor that went unseen and unspoken for so long, it just… reminds me that even when the direct pressure is gone, the body remembers the strain, it holds onto the echoes in a way my mind is trying to forget. it’s this strange mix of relief that burns like a cold fire and a profound sorrow for the person who used to just be, before duty became her only language. and then the small, unexpected catch in my throat, out of nowhere, in the middle of a perfectly normal errand, just a brief, SHARP tremor, a crack in the surface, and it’s gone, but it was there, and it felt like an ancient current rising up.