Where are you going, where have you been?

This post has been a long-time coming. This I know. But I haven't had it in me--it being the words, the effort, the interest...any of it.

I have excuses. Plenty of them.

I'm busy. I know...we all are. But seriously, from 5 AM until 10 PM or later, I don't stop. When I'm not working, I'm taking care of my kids; when I'm not taking care of my kids, I'm working. Not that I'm complaining--at least not about all of it. My kids are my greatest adventure, and for the first time in years, I'm (mostly) enjoying my job. But still, can-barely-come-up-for-air, non-stop, crazy busy.

I'm reading. Like, real books. Books not written in rhyming iambic pentameter with characters named "Sam" or "Thing 1." Books for work, yes. But still...I'm (mostly) enjoying work, so I'm (mostly) enjoying what I have to read. And I have the excuse that I have to do it.

I am making myself sane again. I have been off anti-depressants for over a month without wanting to escape to Mexico under an assumed name or imbibing an unreasonable amount of alcohol. I have only thought of the "s" word once since quitting the pills. I have found a doctor who knows how to treat me, and my symptoms, and who doesn't make me diagnose my own thyroid problem (yep, add that to your PCOS and smoke it). I am figuring things out and becoming a person I like again, that maybe my family can like again. Or at least that we like some of the time.

I am doning my superhero cape and saving the world one helpless kitten at a time.

Okay, maybe not a cape or kittens. But the rest is true.

So there hasn't been room or time for posting. I've been okay with that. I'm focusing on the here, the now, the tangible. It's good for me. It's what I need now.

I also know that part of putting myself back together is writing. When I think back over the last thirty-and-then-some years, it has been my constant, the part of me that was always there lurking in the corners. The thing I could always turn to. When I'm angry I write letters that I never send, I wrote every night that I traveled through Europe, I even used to write bad poetry now and then.

But I don't know if that writing space is here anymore. I held on to this place for over a year because I desperately needed it. Good writing, bad writing, dull or interesting, comments or no comments, it was an outlet I needed, a part of me I needed to recapture. Maybe it still will be. But right now, I don't know. I don't know if it's the forum I need, if it's authentic and true and me.

I am pressing the pause button for now. Even if just for a small moment in the grand scheme of all life's moments. I am pressing pause here. Until I decided what to press next.

And I'm rejoining the circus that waits for me away from here. The carousel rides, lion-taming, and three-ring madness I have lazed my way through for too long. I am buying a ticket to experience it all.

My joy circus.

That's where I'll be until I know where I'm going next.