greetings from the left coast

Six years into Azkaban, Sirius is precise at 300 words.

He knows his Shakespeare.

---

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes...

I can think the words but I can't feel them. I can recite Shakespeare to my heart's content, but there can be no joy in it, real or perceived. That's when they hover and feed, and I won't provide Dementors sustenance.

Thoughts are mine to have, but never emotion. Neither good nor bad; happy nor tragic. Thoughts must always be empty. Precise. Unemotional. Cold. Distant. I can't consider friends or loved ones, because they make me smile and in that instant when the corner of my lip curls up -- before I can beat it back, beat it away -- they're there at the cell door, and it starts all over again and that one bit of happiness is gone.

I long for chocolate. And after six years, death would be a welcome distraction.

But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

(I can't do it. I can't.)