Walking around, even on a bad day, I would see things I mean just the things that were in front of me. Peoples faces, the weather, traffic. The smell of petrol from the garage, the feeling of being rained on, completely ordinary things. And in that way even the bad days were good, because I felt them and remembered feeling them. There was something delicate about living like that like I was an instrument and the world touched me and reverberated inside me.After a couple of months, I started to miss days. Sometimes I would fall asleep without remembering to write anything, but then other nights Id open the book and not know what to write I wouldnt be able to think of anything at all. When I did make entries, they were increasingly verbal and abstract: song titles, or quotes from novels, or text messages from friends. By spring I couldnt keep it up anymore. I started to put the diary away for weeks at a time it was just a cheap black notebook I got at work and then eventually Id take it back out to look at the entries from the previous year. At that point, I found it impossible to imagine ever feeling again as I had apparently once felt about rain or flowers. It wasnt just that I failed to be delighted by sensory experiences it was that I didnt actually seem to have them anymore. I would walk to work or go out for groceries or whatever and by the time I came home again I wouldnt be able to remember seeing or hearing anything distinctive at all. I suppose I was seeing but not looking the visual world just came to me flat, like a catalogue of information. I never looked at things anymore, in the way I had before.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney