I have not written here for a very long time and I miss you.  Much has happened since our paths last crossed.  I have moved forward and I have slipped backward.  I have felt incredible strength of will and I have teetered on the brink—sometimes all in the same day.  In many ways, I have come full circle.

I forge ahead, yet there is always in the back of my mind, a hesitancy, as if I am walking across a thin layer of ice—never really trusting that it will not crack under my feet.  I am not the person I was before and it has taken some getting used to—especially for the people who love me. I am random and restless.  I fear standing still and I am trying to restore my belief in happy endings.

I am back in Goshen, living on Third Street in a cottage that reminds me of a place in a Jane Austen story.  I live with Megan and CoCo right across the street from the house that held for me such joy and such anguish.  I could not live there again but that doesn't mean that I look at it with a sense of despair.  I view this house with fondness.  It is a monument to so many things.

I don’t linger too long on what occurred inside the room above the alley.  When I pass, I am not haunted by the memory of what went on there.  Mainly I hear echoes of laughter floating from the windows.  It is like a delicate thread that mends my heart one tiny stitch at a time.

I had to come back here—to face my demons.  It is the epicenter of everything that has defined me and I realized that I could not truly move forward until I went back. 

I am happy here, starting yet another chapter in my life.  I hope my life will have many chapters each more interesting than the next.

One day, I challenged God to a duel and as usual, He showed up with the better weapons and a deadly aim. I told him that if he opened the doors, I would walk through them.  The result was quick and stunning.  I feel like Alice in Wonderland--growing, shrinking, joyful, curious, confused, frustrated and most of all intrigued—trying to make sense of a world that often makes no sense at all.  God, I love an adventure.  If I sat still I think I would die.