Dear Francesca,

So many days have passed since I wrote you last. So many days that haze by.

I have sometimes hesitated writing to you because it always seems that I only speak of my health. Diagnosis after diagnosis, and what now for Hannah? I feel a bit guilty that there is so much wrong with me. I sometimes feel like I make too much of it. But it is limiting and filters away what is left of my days and nights.

I've lost my job due to health. Technically, I am still on leave until the end of the month, and then will "no longer be with the company." My health problems and the emotional toll of coping with them, the depression, had come to be too much. I feel as if I could fight either the physical battle or the mental one, but not both. And they feed off of each other like two hungry children grabbing for candy.

So, twenty-something and back home. I have my computer set up in my bedroom and I sit here typing this letter to you, the oscillating fan at my feet and the faint sunlight through the sheer white curtains. I have been going through things in drawers and boxes, clearing out to make room for my things still waiting for me in my apartment. I've discarded so many things it seems. I have pared down, chiselled away. I've been amazed at all the things I'd kept, papers and knicknacks. I have saved all of my letters and cards though. I can't bring myself to throw away words that someone else wrote to me.

I have been working on so many writing projects in these past few weeks. I am obsessed with writing. It keeps me off the streets. ;) I have also become obsessed with all things woman. Women authors, women musicians, women's issues in general. I think part of this fascination is a way to help me rebuild myself in the wake of so much loss.

Oh, Franney, I am so happy to be writing to you again. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed it.

Yours,
Hannah Iona