2:00 a.m.

It's hard to let go of these ghosts.

The ghosts of the living haunt me and never more so than these late nights when I wonder why things are the way they are and why I feel so powerless to change them.

I chide myself for thinking that maybe today of all days would bring something different.  My brain knew better.  How foolish I feel for allowing myself to hope.  And yet, there's the bittersweet pleasure of being right in the end.  Always right but praying to be proven wrong.

How much longer, ghosts, will you haunt me?  How much longer will your presence fill me with regret and sorrow?  Will you ever recede fully from my thoughts as I must have from yours some time ago?

We are bound together in some unholy one-sided union that I call torture, my own personal hell.

Others call it friendship.