As long as I have been able to, I have written when I felt pain. The longer I wrote, the deeper I was able to delve into my own mind. As I began to question my world more, I began to write on a daily basis; developing a pattern in which I could healthily express myself. Eventually, I began to fall in love, and as love often does, it gave me a strength I could not have imagined I possessed. I had found a Muse. A woman with whom I found no faults I could not overlook. An individual I wanted to spend my life with. She became the reason I wrote. She was the fire that burned stronger than a million dreams. She began to encompass the entire scope of all that I could ever hope or dream. It was because of her that I gained the confidence I desperately needed to be myself. It was because of her I gained the knowledge to voice my wants and needs and become the man I sought to be. With my Muse I took the power she gave me and shared it with her. We basked together in the joy and hope of the free, swimming an ocean filled with dreams of a future that most likely will never come. The sentimentalist within me still holds an ember of that reality, a single passionate light that reminds me of a simple, beautiful time. My Muse has left me for another poet; my dreams have left me for another man. Now it is time I leave too. Leave the man I once was, the identity that fell in love with the girl of his dreams. It is time I seize control of the future I want, the one I need. I am my own man now. Thank-you for all that you have shown me, my once beautiful muse of 2013.