​ It was my walking day, so I was walking with the crutch inside the wooden rail. I did one lap, handed the crutch to my nurse aid, turned (I usually walk with the crutch and turn while holding on to the bar), and started walking around the rail again. When was about to hand her the crutch to start turning, she told me to keep walking. I was puzzled by her instruction – I found it unusual – but kept walking. Then, she repeated it, and repeated it once again. And I kept going despite my bewilderment until I got to the wheelchair. Then, she told me to turn and sit down.
I asked her why she had told me to keep going. Because I’d said I wanted to move my walking to the dining room, she answered, and she wanted me to feel confident about taking that step.
The Sunday before, I had mentioned that I wanted to go back to walking from the dining room to the kitchen and back, as I’d been doing every Sunday before the side effects of the Fycompa started (I write about it in a previous chapter). But she’d said she thought I wasn’t ready yet. And she was right: no sooner had she finished her sentence than I’d realized I was still scared. What if I lost my balance? It had been a long time since I’d last walked with the crutch without the sense of safety I experienced thanks to the boundaries of the rail. Yet this time, a week later, I’d crossed the threshold of the rail and kept walking with the crutch without anybody’s help, and nothing had happened: I hadn’t fallen. I felt so happy. It was progress! A tiny progress, but progress no less.
This improvement seemed small but was actually huge. By crossing the threshold of the rail, I had crossed a boundary –  the boundary of my fears. And I had crossed another boundary: the boundary of self-criticism and high standards. According to my standards, the progress I’d made was inconsequential, but I was able to feel happy to have made it. My happiness meant that I could pay less attention to quantity and more to quality. It meant that I had crossed a barrier and would start walking forward.

​Each coming day is slightly shorter. And when a new day starts, I do my exercises, take turns reading, writing, and translating, and enjoy the ever-absent sun. After a while I get tired and need to rest. Once in bed, I struggle with tiredness; I look for something else to do: phoning friends, doing crosswords, drafting and revising poems, or typing the drafts into the computer.
Then, the light coming through the window has dimmed too much for crosswords or drafting, Eric gets dinner ready, and the three of us eat and chat. The ceiling light has been on for quite a while. When I’m done with my food, Eric starts making my meds. It’s time for the ritual that precedes sleep. And envisioning sleep brings fear with it, and I stay awake for hours in the middle of the night. Insomnia is the invisible evocation of death – no image comes along with evocation.
Increasingly shorter nights mean an increasingly quicker fear.