Shadows are everywhere, and some even loom from unnamed graveyards.

I am inside the tart center of my former life. Three-hundred miles from my room. from my bed, from my adopted home...

I sit here among old things.

Old thoughts, old paintings and old memories. Pictures of dead relatives. Gifts from friends I no longer communicate with. Antique furniture, childhood drawings, adolescent writings.

All the maybe-futures that didn�t turn out to be. Each piece holds a story, each photo documents a memory.

I�m sick of old stories. I want to forget.

This place details and defines all the parts of me I�m trying to excise. It is an anchor that keeps me from new waters.

Here is what I was, not what I am. Behind these walls I become someone else. The clutter of history weighs me down and changes my behavior. Docile. Fearful. Regretful.

I don�t even sleep in my old room anymore because I can still feel her warmth between the sheets. I can smell her hair on my freshly laundered pillows, only because I will it to be there. I can hear her voice extolling the virtues of my love versus the pleasures of ice cream.

Sometimes pillow talk is just pillow talk.

All the memories of Us flood back in a tidal wave. The dark midnight whispers and my lips kiss, holding her till morning. The wandering hands, the physical unity, the comforting presence.

How her eyes smiled in the morning, like crescent moons shading caramel glow.

And thoughts of her bring memories of fights. Fights to break-ups...unanswered questions, assumed conclusions, bitter disappointments.

I've come to understand that I�m not mourning the loss of her heart. You can�t lose what you never had.

I don�t miss her...I miss me.

But all this isn�t about her, it�s about here.

Home should make you feel comfortable, but this place is suffocating. I�m ready to forget this me, I just need time away to burry the evidence.

Yesterday, I went fishing with a friend in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I don�t enjoy fishing, but I do enjoying being good company to good friends.

I caught a brown trout. It was the first fish I�ve caught in over twelve years.

You wonder why it�s been twelve years.

The answer is here, somewhere between the photos and the furniture.