Eleven.

There is this place I've been. A place to hide. Eleven years have come and gone and no one has found me. Until recently.

Taken away from me is my comfort.

This is good.

It is comfort that is responsible for all my shortcomings. Comfort begets, complacency, begets indolence, begets the fear of change which at the core is the fear of pain.

...so here I am. In my last days of a lengthy stay in this dollhouse I've made. Playing house for eleven good and bad years. Packing into boxes a 3rd of my lifespan, lackadaisically hand crafted to contour to all forms of comfort.

With every box packed and stored by the door waiting for the vulnerability of open air, with every cabinet emptied, with every picture taken off the wall, reality solidifies.
In 15 days this place (what's left of it.) will no longer be my home. Whats worse is In 15 days I wont be welcome here. A place I put so much of my time and effort into, from the biggest of issues to the minutiae of esthetics. I made it my life.

I gave too much to this place and in turn it tried to steal my life away. It tried to damage me mentally and physically. But I kept at it. And I did what I could for anyone who walked though my office doors because it was never about the business for me...It was always about the people.

But eleven years later a business man walks in and I walk out for the last time.

Enough was enough.

And when the dust settles all the effort I put forth for this place will be disregarded. They will drag my name through the mud. I am the scapegoat they so sorely need.

But I know what I've done here. And I know when I leave I take with me a part of it's soul. I am not about the bottom line. I am about the community that it effects.

But enough about the past. It does no good to speak of roads not traveled. The winds have shifted, as they have in the past but this time I am going with them.

I will go on to find wholeness. I leave the hollow in search of myself.

I crave discipline. I welcome new responsibility. I will redefine dedication. And my word will become more valuble than gold.

Being pushed from the nest will be the best thing that has ever happened to me. The pride of what this place once was is no more. Its ghost is buried under a landfil of redtape bureaucracy and unessesary paperwork.

I leave here and I dont have the slightest urge to look back.