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** Reflective Jim...

 And my god how did we survive,

The paper scars?

Oh, bless the stars.

You said you're sorry...

Lovedrug, Paper Scars

I won't pretend it didn't affect me.

Can't pretend.

She said the things I trusted, believed, acted on... brought back the life I knew I'd never misinterpreted.

And God, I wanted...

But, I'm somewhere else now, like she was then, and I understand a little bit of why she couldn't. Why she had to cling to what she knew of me before that moment in the parking lot...

Because there's Karen, and a life looming out in front of me that's not here. Not this. And why wouldn't I jump at the chance? Why wouldn't I go forward, instead of back? (Is it really going back if you're starting all over?)

Karen's good for me. The haircut, the job, the expanded horizons... sometimes it feels like she's smoking me out, but that's what we do in life, right? We grow. We change. This feeling I have, this not me feeling... it won't - it can't go on - lasting forever.

She's right. There's one too many people in Scranton, but I couldn't just say I'd move here with her. It felt thick on my tongue, like a lie.

And I can't explain why this morning, when Pam smiled my way, when I turned in my chair to crack jokes about Jan, when I waved as I walked out the door... I felt like I was leaving something behind. Something familiar, something necessary, something I couldn't move on without.

I'm on the 34th floor of a hotel in New York, looking out on a place that's alive and real and waiting for me. So, why can't I stop thinking about a tiny office in Scranton, with fluorescent lights and a desk facing the receptionist?