sometimes the quiet is worse than the screaming because the quiet is when you have to face all the things you're desperately trying to outrun the to-do list the should-haves the could-have-beens the constant low-grade hum of anxiety that's become background noise and i think maybe that's why i keep the tv on even when i'm not watching it because silence is a reckoning and i'm just not ready to pay the bill yet. the dishes piling up feel like a monument to failure. Chris doesn't see it that way, of course. He just sees dishes. i think i resent him a little for that simple seeing sometimes. like he's missing the whole goddamn point of everything. maybe I'm missing the point. or maybe there isn't one and we're all just filling the void with laundry and goldfish crackers and pretending we know what we're doing until the kids are old enough to leave and then what.