I get it now. I have to make good on my promise. To let her go. To really let her go. To let us both go.

It's the same thing that happens when I turn off a really good movie - one that I've lost myself to - which is that I'll be thrown back to my own reality and something hollow will settle in my chest. Sometimes, I'll watch a movie all over again just to recapture that feeling of being inside something real. Which, I know, doesn't make any sense.

I'm also starting to wonder something else. If maybe the point of this crazy quest I'm on wasn't to help me find Willem. Maybe it was to help me find someone else entirely.

I miss my father. I miss my grandfather. I miss my home. And I miss my mother. But the thing is, for almost three years, I managed not to miss any of them. And then I spent that one day with that one girl. One day ... It was like she gave me her whole self, and somehow as a result, I gave her more of myself than I even realized there was to give. But then she was gone. And only after I'd been filled up by her, by that day, did I understand how empty I really was.

The boogeyman sleeps on your side of the bad Whispers in my ear :"Better of Dead" Fills my dreams with sirens and lights of regret Kisses me gently when i wake up in a sweat "boo!

The clothes are packed off to Goodwill I said my good-byes up on the hill The house is empty, the furniture sold Soon your smell will decay to mold Don't know why I bother calling, ain't nobody answering Don't know why I bother singing, ain't nobody listening "Disconnect" Collateral Damage, Track 10

You know, I thought about that a lot these last couple of years," She says in a choked voice. "About who was there for you. Who held your hand while you grieved for all that you'd lost?