My thoughts sometimes get away from my mind and run loose like a frightened rabbit. What if she walked through the door? said a thought untamed by the cruel confines of reality. This and similar thoughts arise unprovoked, so there isn’t a way to protect myself from them. Those thoughts crush me, and the pain they bring only reinforces the idea that I will never be whole again, and this life— the act of simply surviving— is irretrievably broken, and I don’t know how much longer I can maintain the distance between it and the inevitable end.