Sometimes it feels as though the past couple of months has been a bad dream. The sort I had as a child, when the shadows came alive and monsters were real and would eat me if I stepped out of bed and turned my back on the darkness. That awful, awful Blackness is over now. Or at least, it doesn't hurt as much. I'm feeling better. More able to process. Make sense of the new changes in my life.

There's a baby! She's so pretty, and so tiny, and the more I sit by her isolette the less I want to leave. I could spend hours just sitting there and staring at her. I could spend the rest of my life loving her. Now I have to grow strong again and be better than I ever was so I don't disappoint her. I know it's inevitable that someday she'll turn to me and hate me, and her trust and belief in me will end when she realizes that I'm just a human myself with the same faults and flaws as everyone else; but I want to delay that for as long as possible.

If it's a dream, I don't want to wake up. It's still not real to me. I think it will be soon enough, but I get so scared of the unknown. Am I ready for her?