I had forgotten how lonely this apartment was. Or maybe I had just gotten used to it after so many weeks of staying in. It took months to get used to the last place after she left. But somehow, everything came back fresh in the solitude of this environment. The filth on the walls brought me back to the level of my beginnings. Something I had been fighting to grow away from the last six years. The little I could do of this place gave me corners to isolate the moving pictures that lately filled my time. Every attempt to escape this undignified lifestyle was a reminder of the failure I had become. Years of grief had turned me useless, a superfluous being, a presence waiting to die.

But I wanted to think of her. And on late, lonely nights while laying there, sleepless, the fabulation of her presence gave me comfort. And this lie that I kept reanimating every so often, helped me defy the reality that I was forever alone. The reality that this house was a trap. A trap that I had allowed myself to settle in by accepting to let pain and emotions determine the direction of my life.