...so, uh through this whole little experience I picked up some old bad habits (INSERT HERE: Drugs), stopped some bad habits (INSERT HERE: Drinking heavily) - then round your partner, round and round - swapped bad habits.

I ponder this as I wake up this morning with my face buried in a suede seat cushion of my tv room couch that I'm kinda sleeping on - but more likely past out on several hours before. My three dogs - um, yeah, did I forget to mention I got two more since last year - why yes, I understand that's probably one dog away from me wearing black socks to my knees held to my plaid shorts with suspenders and standing in my front lawn screaming at the kids for coming on my lawn - oh how the mighty have fallen...so anyway, my dogs (Hope, Faith and Cody) are runnning in and out of the back door which I left open for some reason and I have the facial imprints of s-video cables that were laying under me with the now dog-eaten Tivo/DVR instructions ripped to shreds and littered around me. Nice.

Thank god I'm going to Los Angeles this weekend - I need to be drunk in a pretty hotel.

Where do we go - when we only manage to disappear inside of ourselves?

Deeper and deeper under layers of hardened skin, worn muscles and aching bones to a place beyond life-bearing organs, fierce-pumping blood to find refuge within our battered soul.

I've been missing for quite awhile now, removed and distant. My apologies to my friends that I've been distant too - my grief didn't allow room for friends, I should have tried harder to run the show myself.

Healing is of all things, a most unusual process. Maybe I thought I would never come back - maybe I thought I would have come back sooner than this. Perhaps the wounds have healed enough, perhaps the stitches have never correctly healed and the scars are more visible than I think.

I wanted to be able to say that I'm 100% - that I'm Jesus Lil Beam O' Sunshine, but then it dawned on me, I never really was. I was a beer-swilling, foul-mouth, sex-obsessed, overworked and overwrought, silly and tough, rough trade fag who drafted his issues in to a spreading tattoo and wrung his heart out in his dirt-stained hands for all to see.

But for some reason, it's here I'm most comfortable - the online shrinks office - playing with my wounds, giggling at my fumbles and running at break-neck speed into oncoming traffic.

I haven't written a word since that last terrible post - I guess I probably have a lot to get out.