When the mood overtakes me it crashes into me full force like an automobile accident, only instead of a shower of noise and carnage it makes me still and silent and lost.

I sit upright, twisting my hand into my robe, pulling it closer and tighter around myself. I think of my phone, imagine scrolling through its lists of numbers and names but there is no one there for me to call.

I like to believe I am generous with people who hurt me but the truth is that it is only with the ones who hurt me quickly that I can be forgiving. The ones who do it slowly cannot be trusted no matter what their intentions are. There are three of these at the moment, three band-aids being slowly ripped away and that puts people I would normally trust out of reach. I would be sad, or rather, my sadness would refer to this specifically, but the fact of it always strikes me as inevitable. It is as if some future version of myself has told me this would happen. It hurts but does not surprise. It is the moments like this that cause years to line up in front of me like a prison sentence, insurmountable by anything other than time. I will get through it as I have a hundred other times but each time brings me closer to being the person I don't want to become.

Trust comes more slowly now, I hold people at arms length and each year it becomes more natural to do so. I hate it about myself but that does not change it. Every day I more closely mirror the one characteristic that cost me most dearly when it appeared in another.

I close my eyes and lay back on the bed to try and sleep, knowing that this will become the largest thing in my life, knowing it will obliterate everything in its ascendancy, but unable to care very much as it happens.