For many of you, your blog is used for simple things like entertainment or a casual connection with others – mine is much different.

This space is an honest place for me – it’s where I bare my soul. I’m willing to share that with all of you because, for the most part, you are strangers. That is to say: you are not part of my daily, physical life.

I’ve opened up to myself on this space. I’ve provided honesty to my own soul, often when I needed it most. Many times I have revealed new things to myself here – revealed secrets I didn’t even know existed. I have connected with myself on a much higher level than ever in my past and…I have connected with others as well.

Some of my connections have been casual, but not all. A few have touched me deeply and one – more deeply than I would have thought possible. These connections constantly reverberate in me…sometimes not strong and other times like the crushing of planets.

I am deeply affected by the world, profoundly connected to life, ultimately sensitive to stimulus of all kinds. That’s why I disappeared from here for so long. Life has recently become too much for me and so…I withdrew into a tiny shell. I tried to hide myself.

But life can be like a wicked child and, like a child, poked and prodded at me and finally pried me from that shell. I have lain bare, naked, before life and held my eyes shut tight against the constant waves of humanity that washed over me, hoping to become like stone and sink into the earth; a fossil in the everlasting rock.

But the minutes pass into days and weeks, into months and still I lay bare.

I don’t say all these things looking for sympathy or advice, for I think there is none to offer and little that words can do…save for my own words, which now come with great trouble. Please…say nothing to this. Use the words that you would always use – inject some normality into this sphere. And stand by as I find my way back. Don’t help me…just watch with a smile and understand that I am doing what we must all do.

I am breathing, my blood is pumping, my senses are working, my nerves firing, my brain engaging, my heart aching and loving, my eyes trying to open and my lips straining to speak – I am living.