[...] I stared at the meaningless stream of cars going by, my brain as empty and silent as the house around me. Within me sadness had given way to hopelessness. And I mean genuine hopelessness, when faith had evaporated and the imagination is dead, when life seems to have come finally and irrevocably to a standstill.

the stillness inside me, the thanatoid silence frightening me into a last-ditch effort to stay alive