Diary Entry #1: The Fading Light

April 2nd

I woke up today and couldn’t tell if the sun had risen or if the clouds had simply swallowed the world whole.

There’s a fog over everything lately—not the kind that drapes the city streets, but one that clings to my vision, softening the edges of all I see. Last week, I dismissed it as exhaustion. I thought maybe I had been reading too much, staring at screens too long. But today, even with the curtains wide open, the world still looked… muted. Bleached of color. I squinted at my bookshelf and couldn’t read the spines. Letters blurred, swimming across their bindings like melting ink.

I went to Dr. Nilsen. She looked at my eyes, tested my pupils, ran some scans. There was a pause in her voice, a crack in her sentence when she said, “We’ll need more testing.” That’s doctor-speak for *we’re scared too but we won’t show it yet*.

As I write this, the lines on the page begin to vanish into the paper. I press harder with my pen just to see my words. My hand trembles. I never thought about how much I rely on seeing—to recognize a friend’s face in a crowd, to avoid the cracks in the pavement, to watch the storm clouds roll in before they drench the earth. How does one prepare to lose light? How does one brace for the dark?

I’m afraid. There’s no shame in writing that. I am afraid. But even fear loses its clarity when you can’t see it coming.

---

Diary Entry #2: Silence Like Snowfall

April 14th

There’s no more music.

The notes vanished, one by one, like birds startled from a tree. At first, I thought my radio was broken. I turned the volume up—nothing. The display blinked its blue LED assurance that everything was fine, but there was no sound. Just a low hum in my bones.

Then it was the subway—the roar of the train that should’ve filled the tunnels was nothing but a distant vibration underfoot. People’s mouths moved. Laughter flared in their eyes. I smiled with them even though I had no idea what the joke was.

It’s not total silence, not yet. There’s still something—a soft, dull roaring like an ocean pressed to my ears. But it’s inside me, not outside. As if my body is forgetting how to receive the world.

I visited Dr. Nilsen again. Her lips moved in concern. She gestured. She wrote things on paper. “Progressive degeneration,” she scribbled. “Not yet understood.”

I’ve stopped playing the piano. What’s the point when I can’t hear the keys? I used to listen to Debussy in the evenings, let the notes bathe the quiet. Now, all I have is the memory of what it should sound like, and even that is beginning to fray.

Silence isn’t peace. It’s exile.

---

Diary Entry #3: A Hunger Without a Name

April 28th

I can no longer taste strawberries. Or wine. Or the tang or bitterness of freshly brewed morning coffee. Everything is a texture now, a ghost of what used to be flavor.

I bit into an orange this morning. I watched the juice run down my fingers, felt the stickiness of it on my skin—but it could’ve been anything. A slice of apple. A chunk of potato. A clump of snow. My tongue no longer recognizes the world.

There is a grief in this I hadn’t anticipated. I didn’t realize how many memories were tied to taste. Mom’s peach pie. The cheap ramen I ate through college. The first time I kissed someone who still had mint on their lips. Now, it’s all memory—no present, no presence.

Dr. Nilsen doesn’t know why it’s happening. “We’ve ruled out the usual suspects,” she wrote. “This pattern is unusual—highly unusual.”

She calls it sequential sensory disassociation. That’s the clinical name. I call it erosion. Because that’s what it feels like. Not a clean break. Just… slow, relentless disappearance.

I keep cooking, though. Out of habit. Out of denial. I plate the food like I always have. I pretend I can still enjoy it. But I’m just feeding a body that no longer knows what it’s being given.

And still, no answers. Only more silence. Only more dimness. Only more loss.

---

Diary Entry #4: The World Has No Scent

May 8th

I miss the smell of rain.

I didn’t notice it right away. That’s the terrifying part—how easy it is to *not notice* something when it’s gone. But this morning, it poured for hours. The streets were slick with it, puddles gathered at the corners, and not once did I smell petrichor. Just air. Cold, sterile air.

I pressed my face into an old sweater. Nothing. I brewed a pot of cinnamon tea. Nothing. I lit a candle, stuck my nose inches from the flame. Nothing.

When I told Dr. Nilsen, she simply closed her eyes for a long moment. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. I could barely read her lips.

The worst part is that no one else understands. They still live in a world of aromas—fresh bread, pine trees, cologne on someone’s collar. I’m on the other side of a glass wall, watching them inhale a life I’ve been exiled from.

I never knew how closely smell and memory were tied until now. Without it, even my memories feel faded. I can remember my father’s cologne, but only intellectually. The actual scent, the *feeling* it used to conjure, has escaped me.

There’s a hollowness growing inside me. Like the world is emptying itself out one sense at a time, and I can do nothing but watch it drain.

---

Diary Entry #5: The Absence of Touch

May 21st

I dropped a glass this morning. Didn’t even realize it was slipping until I saw the shards scatter across the floor. I hadn't felt the weight shift in my hand. No cold. No smooth surface. Nothing.

It’s happening. The final betrayal.

At first, it was just numbness in my fingertips. A tingling when I typed or buttoned my shirt. But now, it’s spreading. My feet don’t feel the floor. My skin doesn’t register the breeze. I showered in scalding water and didn’t flinch.

Dr. Nilsen cried when I told her. She wept in that soft, silent way people do when they know hope has slipped through their fingers. She held my hand, or at least I think she did. I only saw it. Felt nothing.

How do you explain what it means to lose *touch*? It’s not just physical. It’s emotional. Connection lives there. In the squeeze of a friend’s hand. The brush of a lover’s thumb on your cheek. The heartbeat you feel when someone holds you close.

Now, I live in a vacuum. The world touches me, but I do not feel it. People hug me, but I might as well be marble. My body is no longer a place I inhabit. It is a shell.

And inside this shell, I am alone.

---

Diary Entry #6: Words Without Sound or Sight

May 23rd

I am dictating this.

That’s what the nurse told me to say. Her name is Mila. I can’t hear her, of course. But she taps letters into my palm with a special glove. One tap for A, two for B, and so on. We’ve made a system. It’s excruciatingly slow, but it’s something. I dictate, she types. I am grateful.

She said my friends wanted to visit. I said no. What’s the point? I can’t see them. I can’t hear them. I can’t feel their touch. Their presence would be like a shadow in a void. Would they sit beside me, hold my hand? Would they cry? Would I even know?

Sometimes, I feel the ghost of sound—phantoms of music, echoes of voices. I know they aren’t real. But they visit me like memories pretending to be present.

There’s a numbness that goes beyond the skin. It wraps around the soul.

And yet—I want to keep writing. As long as Mila is willing, I will continue to speak.

Even if I never feel the words pass my lips.

---

Diary Entry #7: I Remember Rain

May 27th

They say memory isn’t fixed. That it changes every time we recall it. Becomes less accurate, more impressionistic.

I wonder if that’s true, because I spend every day now walking the galleries of my mind. I remember rain. Not just the look of it, but how it sounded hitting the windows. The smell of petrichor. The warmth of tea afterward.

I remember laughter—real laughter. The kind that lives in your ribs and turns your cheeks red. I remember my mother’s hand on my forehead when I was sick. I remember music. My god, I remember music.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve begun to dream with my memories. Inventing the things I’ve lost. Gilding them. Making them more beautiful than they ever were. But what else do I have?

Mila brought in a journal of mine from ten years ago. I asked her to read it to me—tap it letter by letter into my hand. She spent hours on it.

I cried. Not because of what it said. But because I could still remember writing it.

---

Diary Entry #8: The Sensation of Nothing

June 1st

They tried to test my pain response today. They pinched me. Burned me a little. Scraped my arm with something sharp. I didn’t feel any of it.

And yet, I screamed.

Not because of the touch, but because I imagined what it used to be like to *feel*.

That’s the torment of all this—not being numb, but knowing you used to *not* be. The ghost of touch lingers in me. I remember the joy of a breeze, the chill of ice on my skin, the comfort of a blanket pulled tight. It is not the absence that hurts. It is the memory of presence.

Pain would be a gift now. Any pain. A paper cut. A stubbed toe. A raw throat. Anything to anchor me to a physical world.

I asked Mila to carve something on my arm. I know, I know—it’s mad. But I told her to write a word. Something to prove I’m still here. She refused, of course. But she did draw a smiley face with a marker.

I cannot feel it.

But I believe it’s there.

---

Diary Entry #9: The World Beneath Thought

June 4th

I’m beginning to forget what silence was.

It’s strange. You’d think silence is the absence of sound. But I’ve discovered there are *levels* of absence. This is something beyond silence. Something closer to erasure.

I live in a cradle of nothing. No light, no noise, no scent, no taste, no warmth or cold. Just the breath of thought moving through a space where a person used to be.

It would be easy to give up. Let my mind rot. Let time pass without acknowledgment. But the act of remembering is now a rebellion. I recite poems in my head. I reimagine paintings I once loved. I hum tunes I can’t hear.

Mila brought me a book of Braille poetry. She presses each dot into my palm—slow, methodical. It’s grueling for her, I know. But when she finishes a line, I say it aloud in my mind, and for a moment—I live again.

---

### **Diary Entry #10: I Think, Therefore I Endure**

June 8th

There was a time when I believed I was made of senses. That to see, to hear, to touch was to be.

Now I know otherwise. I am thought. I am language without sound, imagination without vision. I am the spark behind the curtain.

Mila says I’ve inspired a team of researchers. “You’re not forgotten,” she tapped slowly. “You’re a mystery they’re trying to solve.”

I laughed at that, silently. A mystery. That used to be my favorite genre of book.

They still feed me, still keep my body alive. And so, I write. Or rather, I dictate. I still name the days, though time has become a suggestion.

I ask questions. Where does self go, when denied the world? What remains?

Maybe this is what it means to be soul.

---

Diary Entry #11: A Visit I Didn’t Feel

June 12th

My sister visited today.

Mila spelled it out, patiently, with the glove. “Her name is Clara. She held your hand for an hour. She was crying.”

I could not tell.

After she left, Mila described what she wore. The colors. The way she looked at me, as if trying to will me back into the world. I imagined Clara in my mind—curly auburn hair, crooked smile, always biting her lip when nervous.

I remembered the last time we fought. It was about something stupid—something about money or missed birthdays. I hope she knows I don’t care anymore. That I just want her to remember the good things.

I asked Mila to tell her that I love her. I hope she did. I hope she felt it.

Even if I couldn’t feel her.

---

Diary Entry #12: The Garden of Memory

June 15th

Today, I built a garden in my mind.

I walked through every flower I could remember. Lavender, tulips, wild violets from the field near my childhood home. I imagined their smells, their textures, their colors.

I sat beside a pond in my memory. I fed the koi that used to gather near the surface. I imagined the sun on my face. The warmth. The wind through my hair.

I know it wasn’t real. But I swear—somewhere, deep inside—I *felt* it. Or maybe I just wanted to feel it so badly that the line between imagining and experiencing blurred.

Mila says the brain is a powerful thing. That even when the body fails, the mind can bloom.

So I will keep building my garden.

Petal by petal. Step by step.

---

Diary Entry #13: The Shape of Love

June 19th

I asked Mila if anyone had said they loved me recently.

She paused. Then tapped: “Many have. Every day. Notes, letters, emails, messages from old friends. Strangers, too.”

It broke me, in the best way. I never thought silence could be so full.

She read me one today—from an old friend I hadn’t spoken to in years. He wrote about the time we went camping and got caught in the rain. He said he remembers how I made a joke that made them laugh so hard they cried. I don’t remember the joke. But I remember their faces glowing in the firelight.

Love, it seems, survives even the dark.

---

Diary Entry #14: The Choice

June 23rd

They offered me something today.

An experimental procedure—risky, dangerous, almost certainly futile. But there’s a chance, they say. A one-in-a-million possibility that some sensory pathways could be reactivated. Perhaps a flicker of touch. A glimpse of light.

I said no.

Why? Because this—this life, as small and narrow and trapped as it seems—is still a life. I have made peace with my limitations. I have found language in silence. I have found gardens in the dark.

I don’t need a miracle.

I need meaning.

And in that, I have everything.

---

Mila’s Diary – Entry #1: The First Tap

April 25th

They assigned me to Room 306 today. “Special case,” the head nurse said. “Requires patience.” She didn’t tell me how special. She didn’t prepare me.

When I entered, they were sitting upright, blindfolded, noise-canceling headphones over their ears. A feeding tube in place. Hands limp at their sides like they no longer belonged to them. I was told they’d lost nearly every sense already—except touch, barely. Their skin still responded, though faintly.

I introduced myself out loud anyway, out of habit. Then I placed my hand on theirs.

No flinch.

I felt ridiculous. I’m trained in neurology, not helpless cases. But something in me stayed. I remembered a seminar about sensory communication—tap-based alphabets used in deafblind education. I tried a basic rhythm: one tap for A, two for B...

I tapped: H-E-L-L-O

To my shock, they moved their hand. Tapped back: S-L-O-W-E-R

And just like that, we spoke.

I cried in the hallway afterward. Not because I was sad. But because I realized someone was still in there trapped, but burning with language.

---

Mila’s Diary – Entry #2: The Ghost of Smell

May 9th

The doctors confirmed today that their sense of smell is gone. I didn’t need the report. I could tell from the way they asked, “Are there flowers in the room?” There were. A bouquet. I leaned it near them. Not a flicker.

I keep thinking about how little we appreciate our senses until they’re stripped away. How many times have I rushed past a bakery without inhaling the bread? Or washed my sheets and never noticed the lavender detergent?

They can't even smell me. I don’t know why that thought makes me sad, but it does. There’s no trace of another human left to them. Not scent, not sound, not sight. Just the press of my fingers into their palm.

We spent an hour today just spelling words. “Rain.” “Apple.” “Soft.” Words that evoke what they can no longer perceive.

And then, quietly, they tapped: S-M-E-L-L-M-E-M-O-R-Y

Memory is becoming our shared language now. The only thing we both still inhabit.

---

Mila’s Diary – Entry #3: The Word on Their Arm

May 28th

They asked me to carve a word into their skin today.

Not metaphorically—literally. “Just something I can know is there,” they tapped. I refused. Of course I did. I’m not allowed to harm a patient, and even if I were… it felt wrong. Too final.

Instead, I drew a smiley face on their forearm with permanent marker.

I watched them try to feel it, rubbing their arm over and over again. Nothing. Their expression didn’t change, but something about their stillness made me ache.

They looked like a statue now. Not stiff, exactly, but still in that deliberate, patient way. As if waiting for the world to return.

But it won’t. Not the way it was. And they know it.

When I left the room, I drew the same smiley face on my wrist.

Now, when I forget why I do this, I look down and remember: someone in there still *wants* to exist.

---

Mila’s Diary – Entry #4: Love Letters in Silence

June 13th

Clara came by yesterday.

She stood at the bedside, talking through her tears, not knowing they couldn’t hear a thing. She held their hand and cried, and I wanted so badly to give them that moment—translate it, transmit it.

When she left, I spent the next three hours tapping out her visit: what she said, how she looked, the way her eyes crumpled when she tried to smile.

They didn’t cry. But their lips moved, slowly: T-H-A-N-K-Y-O-U

I’ve started collecting the letters, the emails, the messages people send. So many people love them. Even strangers who read about the condition. I read them all—slowly, painfully—tapped letter by letter into their palm.

What must that be like? To feel love as code, to know it only by patient translation?

Still, they seem to feel it. Somehow, in the bone-deep dark they now inhabit, love still has weight.

So, I keep tapping.

---

Mila’s Diary – Entry #5: The Language That Remains

June 26th

I think they’re happier than me.

Not in a performative way. But in that quiet, deliberate peace they carry now. They said no to the experimental treatment. Said they’ve “found meaning in what remains.”

I wanted to argue. I wanted them to fight for more. But I see it now. There’s a kind of grace in letting go of the war and choosing to build instead of repair.

Every day, we talk. We tap out dreams, poems, philosophical questions. They ask me things like:

What color do you miss most?

If you could only keep one memory, which would it be?

Do you think silence has a shape?

I’ve never been challenged like this. Never been so intimate with someone I’ve never truly met. Their mind is vast, elegant, endless. I’ve stopped seeing them as broken. They’re a cathedral inside.

Tomorrow, I bring in a piece of art I made. It’s a sculpture—a tangled weave of copper wire that you can read with your hands. I’ll tap into their palm:

T-H-I-S-I-S-Y-O-U

---

Mila’s Diary – Entry #6: The Day the Room Bloomed

June 29th

I brought in the sculpture today.

It was nothing fancy—twisted copper wire, a few dried petals, bits of textured fabric. I placed it gently in their lap, then slowly spelled out: T-H-I-S-I-S-Y-O-U

They held it. Ran their hands over it, even if they couldn’t feel it. I guided their fingers, one at a time, across every sharp bend and soft curve.

They smiled.

It was the first time in days.

I cried afterward. Quietly, in the supply closet. Because it hit me—I’ve never seen someone lose everything and still manage to give something back. They teach me, every day, what endurance looks like. Not strength in the heroic way. But strength in silence. In choosing stillness over despair.

Sometimes, I think about what would happen if they die. If they fade away, quietly, one day in that same bed. Will they leave as quietly as they stayed?

Or will the absence they leave behind be louder than anything I’ve ever heard?

---

Mila’s Diary – Entry #7: A New Alphabet

July 3rd

We’ve created our own shorthand now.

The tapping was too slow. Too heavy. So we made up symbols. Movements. A kind of tactile Morse Code. It’s ours. No one else would understand it.

Today, they “told” me a joke using only three taps, two swipes, and a squeeze of the finger. I burst out laughing. They smiled.

Communication without language. Connection without sound. It feels like we’re breaking rules of the universe—quietly rewriting what it means to be known.

There’s a beauty in it I never expected. Intimacy doesn’t require touch. It doesn’t even require understanding. It just needs willingness.

And they are willing. Every moment of every day.

---

Mila’s Diary – Entry #8: Their Garden

July 7th

They told me about their garden again.

They describe it with such precision—every flower, every imagined breeze, every koi flicking its tail beneath glassy water. I can see it now when I close my eyes. They’ve painted it inside me, even though I’ve never seen it with my own.

I asked if I could draw it. They tapped: D-R-A-W-I-T-F-O-R-Y-O-U-R-S-E-L-F

So I did. Charcoal and pastels, on a big piece of paper. I’m no artist, but when I showed them the finished piece, they asked to hold it. They traced the lines with their fingertips, slowly. And then tapped:

I-T-F-E-E-L-S-L-I-K-E-H-O-M-E

It was the first time I cried in front of them.

They didn’t know. Or maybe they did.

---

Mila’s Diary – Entry #9: Visitors

July 12th

More visitors lately.

They can’t see them. Can’t hear their voices. But I stay and describe everything. I whisper colors into their palm. I trace voices with rhythm. I turn emotion into pressure.

Today, someone brought in an old photograph. Them, as a child, smiling in a backyard, red popsicle in hand. The friend placed it in their lap. I described it in intricate detail.

Then, they asked me to burn it.

Not from anger. From peace. They said they no longer needed it.

I-R-E-M-E-M-B-E-R-I-T-A-L-R-E-A-D-Y

It’s stunning how memory outlasts matter. How the mind clings even when the body lets go.

---

Mila’s Diary – Entry #10: The Final Translation

July 16th

They said goodbye today.

Not in fear. Not in desperation. Just quiet resolve. They tapped it over and over:

I-A-M-R-E-A-D-Y

They dictated a final message. One I promised to preserve. They held my hand longer than usual. Tighter. Or maybe it was just my wish that made it feel that way.

I sat with them after. Hours passed. I watched their breathing slow, then grow still.

The doctors say it was peaceful. No pain. Just a gentle end.

But I felt it.

The quiet in the room was heavier than any silence I’ve ever known.

They’re gone.

But I still feel their garden growing in me.

---

Final Entry – From the Protagonist’s Point of View

(Dictated to Mila, July 16th)

If this is the end, let it be a soft one.

Not a tearing, not a sudden fall—but a gentle exhale. A closing of a book after the last word has been read, when the story lingers longer than the page.

I have lost everything the world once used to reach me.

Sight. Sound. Scent. Flavor. Touch.

But I have not lost myself.

I am not the senses that once defined me. I am the echo that remains. The shape of thoughts. The thread of meaning stitched between each memory.

Mila, you were my final mirror. You made me visible in a world that stopped seeing me. You gave me shape, when my body became a borderless place. Thank you.

To anyone who finds this: you are more than your body. More than your voice. More than the things the world can take.

You are what you choose to remember.

You are what you choose to make.

And you are still here.

Even in the dark, I found light.

Let that be enough.

Let that be everything.

— End