So when I was last heard from, it was a little blurb on my aunt.  My cousins had her funeral service last week and money that is sent for her memorial will be going to the Parks and Recreation Department in Washington, D.C. to plant cherry blossom trees in her honor.  I can think of no better tribute. 

I was going to get a dog.  I thought that getting a dog would help to get me out of my head, out of my house.  It wouldn’t.  It was a nice thought and right up until I was going to get him, I kept telling myself it would fix me.  That all the little jagged broken pieces of me would slide cleaning back together if only I had this dog. 

A lot of pressure to put on a poor little puppy, especially since what is broken in me has been this way for a decade or more and will take a pry bar to get my head out of my ass, not a pooch. 

I keep thinking projects will help me.  Fix someone else, take care of someone else and I will not have to face myself.  If I move the furniture, clean the house, paint the walls, get rid of papers, knick-knacks and brick-a-brack from the past that gather dust it will make all the difference. 

My writing was so introspective a year and half a go, so many demons and secrets purged that I could not understand why this only gave me temporary relief from my usual ennui. 

I understand part of it is the fact that I can never surrender to any situation.  I can never just let go and believe that everything will work out the way it is supposed to.  Not really.  I try to, but in trying I struggle.  I want to control everything – from the event to my reaction to it – both the initial impact and the long-term effects. 

It is a misery I cause myself.  My thoughts are smooth, like river rocks.  Worn to a shiny gleam by my mind’s constant tumbling of them. 

It would be nice to give you a piece of myself that is not wrapped in over analytical self-abuse.  For all that I write here, there is the other 95% of me that stands outside under a clear blue sky, breathes deep and smells the sweet scent of trees budding and grass growing. 

The smell of life and my brain recognizes it, makes me smile.  I remember every other moment like this before it, every other first smell of spring.  Those memories fall behind my eyes like cards being shuffled, I have only to pluck one out of the deck, hold it close to me and experience it all over again. 

The sound of children laughing carried on the breeze.  They are blocks away, perhaps in the school playground or a back yard somewhere but the sounds drifts, warming the day more than the sun. 

I find the beauty, I find the humor in every moment, but I never lose the shadow.  Not for one moment.  It is always there, and my mind turns to it, focuses on it because it is in such stark contrast to everything else. 

I want to share my laughter, not my neurosis but to know me, is to know all the aspects of me, and I can only be known from a distance, as type across a screen because I am only vulnerable here, in print.