I’m sitting at my desk, surrounded by piles of my past—stuff, memories, grief, and ghosts.
Cameron died here.
This was his last home.
It was mine too—the place I escaped to.
The place I screamed into pillows and notebooks.
The place I built my healing lab from scratch.

This space held my silence and my rage. My breakdowns and breakthroughs.
This is where I found my voice.
My courage.
My truth.

And now it’s time to pack it all up.

Again.

This is the third dumpster. The third time I’ve downsized, purged, prepared for a fresh start.
But this time… there’s no plan.
No destination.
No next step waiting neatly on the other side.

Just me.
And the stuff.

The stuff I’ve avoided.
The Christmas decorations from a family that no longer exists.
The vacuum from a life I no longer clean.
The Brian memorabilia I’ve never thrown away—because what do you even do with the evidence of a love that became war?

I look around and ask myself:
Is it just junk?
Or is every single thing a timestamp from my old timelines?

Mia’s moving out. Starting her life.
And I’m here, frozen in the rubble of mine, whispering goodbye to a chapter that made me who I am… and broke me in ways I’m still stitching up.

This place…
This place is sacred ground.

Not because it was beautiful.
But because I survived it.

And I’m not taking all of it with me.

Some of it will be burned.
Some of it will be donated, transformed, or tossed.
Some of it will live on in memory, in story, in art.

But all of it…
Every shred of it…
Will be honored.

Because it was real.
Because it mattered.
Because I’m finally ready to release the weight of who I had to be… and make room for who I really am.