ha-ha: A walled ditch or sunken obstacle, such as a hedge, serving especially as a barrier without impairing the view or scenic appeal.

I am reading a book in which the main character has a brain injury. He is unable to speak, to read, to write. Instead of this making me appreciate my worded-ness it makes me long for that silence, to be locked inside my head even more than I already am. I know I'd think the way I do now: thoughts composed into a letter to you, unsent as ever.

I am feeling defeated in so many ways and every day discovers another war I have lost. I am no longer able to fight off these feelings that I keep wasting on someone who does not want them. I am tired of holding back the anger created in me at such a waste. I am being pulled beneath the surface by all these battles that I have lost, all the battles I no longer feel willing to contemplate, much less fight. I am tired of the not-fight, too. The uncomfortable less-than-peace that has consumed so much of one last good thing.

I don't blame this on anyone but myself. I cut myself off, I cut myself out, I float out into the darkness and the loneliness and dive into the sadness like it was an old friend. And it is, isn't it? Sadness is better than the emptiness, loneliness is better than pretending, the darkness is better than the nothingness that presses in and threatens to swallow me rather than only surround me.

I live in the past, even here. My list is more and more reflective of the way everyone else has moved on. I pull in and shift to pronouns, looking for safety.

She stands in the shower with her face in the rushing water breathing carefully - shallow breaths through her mouth from just beyond the sting of the hot water. She thinks of the way her breath would come in shudders if she were crying now instead of using these piped tears. Her hair streams around her like water made only slightly more substantial. There is soap and steam and a single bulb shining on the other side of the curtain. She focuses her awareness back down to the dull needles of water pressing against her face and imagines, for once, nothing.