I don�t even know why I brought it to New York with me, but there it sits in the corner with it�s lid taped shut. It�s one-thirty in the morning, and I�m having a staring contest with a shoebox.

I�m pretty sure the shoebox is winning.

It�s not so much the fact that I can�t sleep, it�s that I can�t clear my head in those hours before my body eventually gives way. I sit in the dark, replaying all those lost moments, composing passages for the book I�ll never write. Commercial-free reruns form a misery marathon, and I�ve seen every episode a million times.

The story of me and her, sans laugh track.

Insomnia is the cruelest form of self-mutilation, inspiring endless hours of analytical folly. You find yourself rummaging through the tomes of all your disappointed losses, searching for the one key piece of evidence that might put things in order.

Define a pattern.

Suggest a solution.

Forgive the pain.

Eventually you fall asleep and wake the next morning, unresolved and unsorted. The grim details still spread out on the operating table waiting for a proper autopsy. Solve the puzzle and move on.

Before coming to New York, I spent a year in limbo at home, wandering through my house, randomly bumping into souvenirs of my failed relationship.

All these little trinkets marking the distance between us and me.

Ticket stubs. Tiny plastic horses. Scraps of wrapping paper.

One day I gathered up all the mementos collected along the way to find that the greatest and worst year of my life packed neatly away into a shoebox. Dreams and memories of her fill hours of my every day, yet there�s barely enough evidence to even prove that it ever existed.

All that I�ve got left of her is a shoebox.

A paper funeral urn filled with her uncremated ashes.

I don�t remember when it happened, but somewhere in the last year, I realized that I wasn�t sorting through all these thoughts in order to forgive her; it was in hopes that I might one day forgive myself. Until that point, I hadn�t accepted that I was punishing myself for allowing it all to happen.

Someone fell asleep on the watch and a little bit of happiness slipped in, a tiny speck of elation became part of my lexicon. For the first time in my short life, I knew how far up the highs actually go.

Up there, the air is cleaner, the view is more breathtaking, and you�ve got so much farther to fall when it all comes crashing down.

The contrast is what kills you.

Somewhere along the line, the fear becomes greater then the pain. It�s not that the pain goes away; it just takes a backseat to the nagging sense of permanence, the ominous presence of history that shadows every corner of the future. The unremitting fear that you will never heal, you will never be able to move on.

It will not be sorted.

It will not be solved.

You will not be forgiven.

And through it all, there is this shoebox in the corner.