My life is filled with blank spaces. Voids. Wet puzzle pieces so warped that they could never fit back together, not even after drying out in the sun. Her pillow still smells like lavender kissed with vanilla and the halls echo with the memory of our children’s laughter. They don’t call me dad anymore. They don’t call me anything.

Mark and Jessica Westerfeld. It doesn’t have quite the same ring as Justin and Jessica Timberlake but for one reason or another she finds it much more fitting. She prefers that life out in the country away from the cameras better with him and our kids than she did when I tried to reimagine it to get her to stay.

The fame became too much for her. It became too much for me but I knew what I signed up for. Superstardom. I don’t believe she’d ever dreamt further than school plays.

I want to hate her for what she’s done but I can’t. She chose to live her life on a path that was not parallel to my own. We were supposed to be partners in crime until the day that we died but somewhere over the course of time that plan that we mapped out against the stars just faded away. She was my best friend. Jessica. Now she’s just a memory.

A faded ordinary romance. A waning career. A poor excuse left over of a man.

I’ve tried to drink it all away and find my soul at the bottom of the bottle. All it’s given me is a swimming head, patchwork of recollections, and public embarrassment and shame.

Rehabilitation is a word that keeps getting tossed around what is left of my camp. My mother doesn’t pick up my calls. I catch glimpses of her in photos with my kids, with my ex, and with “a good guy” that has taken my place.

Rehabilitation.

My next album is tentatively titled RECOVERY.