Warning: This post contains profanity because I am not having a good day. Proceed at your own peril.

Good evening, dear reader. I don’t know why or how if happened, but I slept most of the day away. I wasn’t up particularly late yesterday evening, but somehow I managed to sleep for close to eighteen hours. I wish that I could say it had been restful. Rather, it was filled with violent dreams; one of them had a very movie-like feel to it. But the common thread in all of them is that I could not keep the people I cared about safe.

I’m awake now, but I feel like not much has changed. Since waking, I have explicably had the song Make a Man Out of You from Disney’s Mulan stuck in my head. And this is the first time in years that a Disney tune has reduced me to tears. But the song won’t go away with its fucking reminder of all that I no longer am, and I cannot stop crying.

In my dreams, I was powerless and afraid, scheming ways to safety because I was too much of a coward to stand up an fight. But my schemes were always found out, and those I cared about always suffered for them. And now that I am awake, there is no one to fight, I have already lost. I have been reduced to an echo of what I once was. And my family will suffer for it. I’d like to look for a better paying job, so that I could take better care of them, but who’s going to hire a tongueless urchin who can barely communicate? No, I’m stuck where I am. And what if someone were to threaten them? What could I do? These days, I need a cane to walk and an extra ten minutes to get anywhere I’m going. I am in no condition to defend anyone.

Maybe I just need the chance.

Until next time, dear friends, take care of each other.

We must be swift as a coursing river
With all the force of a great typhoon
With all the strength as a raging fire
Mysterious as the dark side of the moon