**Dear Diary,**

As a child, I saved up for one of those fancy family members of yours with a lock, proudly wrote my name within the cover to claim ownership, scribbled in my first entry, and promptly lost the key.

I never understood how a diary could be ‘dear’ until recently, when I learned that I was losing my ability to write in one.

Losing my ability to do anything, really.

It’s amazing how much *touch* effects every move we make. Similarly to suffering through a cold and cursing ourselves for taking the days of breathing easily through our nose for granted.

It’s amazing how capable we are of gratitude in the twilight of too late.

I’ve always been overly empathetic, especially to the inanimate, but I’ve never related more to that forsaken childhood diary of mine: unwittingly fated to be locked away, full of innocent honesty, and wrapped in bindings that only hinder.

I’ll write until the static fills my veins and continue out of spite thereafter.

**Dear Diary, **

Did you know people filter their thoughts before transcribing them in their diaries?

I know, right?

They actually try to paint a pretty picture as if to impress some invisible figure reading their lies over their shoulder.

My only censorship will be culling out the cuss words constantly screaming through my mind.

You’re welcome.

For now.

Here’s another fun fact:

Did you know I burned myself today?

Like, really badly?

Me neither.

I hadn’t considered the plus side to losing my sense of touch until I noted the blistered skin with a detached utterance of, “Huh.”

Maybe I could become a superhero?

I wouldn’t need to be bulletproof, just have to make sure I’m up against all those adversaries in action movies that are completely inept at aiming at the main character (that would be me, by the way).

Captain Denial, they could call me.

‘Look at how the hypocrite lies to her diary!’ they’d cry out in awe.

‘Her optimism about her skin prison is completely unrealistic,’ critics would exclaim.

But what do they even know?

Their words are just like the breeze that is quickly becoming a memory, glancing off my skin entirely unnoticed, as though I were never really there.

**Dear Diary, **

I found your estranged family member in a box of my childhood things.

I couldn’t feel the lock break under my suddenly bloody fist, nor the tears reported on my cheeks as I read my only entry, written in bubbly rounded letters that I recall perfecting before committing to paper:

_Today I went to feel the rain on my skin like the song says. It stopped as soon as I went outside. _

_I was sad until I felt the sun on my face. _

_It tickled and made the garden sparkle._

_Today was a good day._

Just absolutely twisting the knife there, little me.

I may not ever have the chance to experience those sensations again, but at least I had that day preserved like a fossilized anamoly wherein I captured what it means to be alive.

Now, that moment I never could’ve predicted the importance of, will live in infamy under its new lock, along with the key to it that I unknowingly dropped at some point.

I may or may not have lied to my family about feeling it in my hand in the first place.

When I realized I’d lost it a second time in my life, I cried until I was too dehydrated for tears, and then laughed at the fact that was possible until I lost my breath.

Just two more things I wasn’t aware I could lose in such rapid succession.

I have a feeling (hah!) that I’ll be learning a lot about impossibilities from now on.

They say I’ll always be able to control my body, but unable to perceive outward sensations from now on, other than a staticky twinge from time to time.

Do I feel like an amorphous blob puppeted by invisible strings splayed from my brain, like a maypole, that somehow aid in doing my master’s bidding?

Oddly specific question, but yes. Yes I do.

Do I miss my vulnerability and find the amount I have always been harboring within myself to be overwhelming without outer stimuli, creating a discordant dissonance that now has my voice-to-text understand me better when I’m on the verge of tears because that’s what it’s used to hearing from me the most at this point?

Um. Are you… stalking me?

Do I wish I hadn’t taken what I’d considered a given for granted and continued to deign the sun on my face as a highlight of any singular day within my strings of mundane?

Depressing, but yes.

I may be numb, but I am humbled.

Trapped, but I am free.

I’m a consciousness in a body that I sometimes worry is an unwilling host to my malevolent possession, but I intend to go out and live like I’m at risk of being exorcised by an overzealous priest at any moment.

You are dear, diary.

And you’re coming with me.