. . . but it's try my best to concentrate on writing to you, or ring a hospital because I'm scared to be alone with myself and I don't want to do that, I don't want mum to know I feel like this, she doesn't deserve that, and I'd feel so ashamed of upsetting her, I'm trying not to move, and to just write to you until I'm too exhausted to even cry, and apart from mum you're the only person I trust and feel vaguely close to when writing, or at all, it has always been like that. Thankyou for ever reading what I write. it doesn't sound like me and I hate admitting to feeling like this and so far haven't, but I'm scared of myself sometimes, I just feel worse and worse, and I want someone to talk to so badly but mum's asleep, she gets so tired and she has work in the morning, I don't want to worry her anymore, and anyway even if there was anyone I can't talk, not as I'd like to. All I can do is cry, and I just feel indescribably awful, I can't sleep, I feel sick when I try to eat, my head and face ache and I don't even know what I'm trying to say now. I just don't know what to do about anything anymore, since I was at university I'm just not the same - something happened to me, I can't think how else to describe it, it feels like a part of my brain was shut off and I can still only just remember what it was like to have it there, and so I feel its loss, the space it left reminds me it's there constantly, because I know I shouldn't be left so cold. Everyday things used to actually make me feel, well, happy sometimes - or at least free of whatever holds me right now - I used to go running, and not cry at the song I was listening to, my legs wouldn't ache, I wasn't so tired, and everything around me would feel meaningful and affirming somehow, despite everything - the things about me felt like they had a purpose, the burned-out shell of summer would rest like something on the landscape, like a vessel for euphoria, and I would feel so lucky to have arteries and skin and blood that worked. Now I just always feel so dulled and drained, like I'm never going to be the same person again, and I know I am incredibly lucky, and thankfulness will never waste away, but it is just the answer to a calculation: there is no emotion to come with it. Or rather, a lot of what used to bring on the emotion has lost its touch, and that scares me, because it always felt like something to cling to. Maybe I just grew up, maybe it is just the next step in not getting inexplicably excited about Christmas and the fact that it is Friday, but is it supposed to be like this? Is this what being an adult is like? It's hard to think that that gratitude is just something childish - if I'd known I would have paid more attention. Maybe that's exactly why I shouldn't have known. The sorrow of imminent loss lays waste to what should be appreciated. It's a lot like life, at times. A feeling that does often come is sorrow, and unfairness and guilt for those who aren't lucky, who don't have limbs and things that work, who don't have the things I do - and not just, I don't think, because I do have them and for some stupid reason seem to have lost the power to do much with them, though I do loathe myself for that on nights like these. It's something insurmountable and with infinite triggers in all directions: a moth trapped in a bus is a symbol for a family who lost someone at sea, someone walking home alone and wondering how exactly to tell their wife they were just diagnosed with a brain tumour, a blind man who just gets on with it and never complains, an octopus who died on the sand, unable to reach the waves and whose brain was a mass of impulse and memory to the last flicker. At times like these everything magnifies strength and the sadness of its necessity, and it's sometimes exhausting to go out, or to stay in. Life is colossally sad, and it sounds childish to ask just what one can say to the fact that everyone you know will die, and ultimately there is no answer. I just think of the people I love, and just those who are loved by anyone at all, and the answer is as raw in its blankness as gunshot and grief. It's a kick when I'm down, it leaves me with no energy sometimes, but still I'm so jumpy, because what was once there has been twisted into something that, when I feel like this, makes me not want to leave the room because I'm scared of the things I imagine, I know they're not there and never were but they rush past like trains and I prickle with sweat and the memory of what it was like to be small and in the company of ... this. I need the bathroom, but I can't go right now, because of things that can only be dreamed. There are some things that dreams never seem to feature - like seasons, like laughter. The air at this time of year feels as if it is just arrived, or that the things in it have just arrived. Something is new, and the light at this time of year spindles legs and shadows the corners of lips in a way that makes you feel in awe of every crack, line and hair follicle. They are things that the people themselves aren't aware of, and like the kindness that some people have and some just don't, they ride the crest of different lights and times, only to glimmer every so often, and remind me that some things never go away, we are just dragged from and around them by the things that take us in hand and mind and show us them from different angles - and maybe I've seen kindness from both sides. I think we all do at some point.

Tomorrow will be like any other, and already the street is that ominous, cold grey of early day now; the colour that will later pale into the quietly garish, yet oddly honeyed tones of midday sun on tarmac and leaves, the colour of shame on waking - shame that half the day has passed in sleep, the shame of existence, on some days. I dread that, I dread the shame of my own birth and the small failures that filter through its clumsy efforts like krill, but most of all I dread the passing of time. I dread the one inevitability I have access to. I take comfort in being as absurd as anyone and everyone else. My head is hollow and acheing and my throat raw enough now that I feel able to trust myself to move, and to fall away with nothing in my mind but the dull noise left in the wake and void of feeling as I did when I began to write, three and a half hours ago. Thankyou to anyone who reads this, it helps, oddly, to know that people do. Take care, look after those you love, because they are inexpressibly precious (you don't need to be told) . . . and enjoy every sandwich, as a much-missed man once said.

xXx