Is There a Doctor in the House

I was taken aback to find myself here, again. But I shouldn't be surprised. My motion isn't truly rearward. After all, writing never really left my blood to begin with. Tapping black characters onto a white background has always been my destiny. So, going back to it, after an unintended sabbatical, isn't really the shock of the century that my grandiose way of thinking portrays it to be.

Now that I'm where I belong, I'm moving up to the front of the bus; hell, I'm taking over the wheel and driving this baby. And I'm not fooling myself into the deluded thought that I've actually got a destination in mind, when the real deal is that I'm merely trying to leave my old self behind. I'd say, "running from my past'" but by now, even I know that that endeavor is doomed from the very start. What I'm attempting, once again, is to leave behind my previous way of thinking. The only problem with that is that it keeps breaking out of it's cage. You see, you have to store that monster somewhere. But no matter where, wether it be the basement of you mind or in the attic, the thing is still in your mind and therefore an ever present danger of escaping and wreaking havoc on your new perspective.

When that happens, it's always a mental battle. And that's where the writing comes in. Returning to the art of composing words and paragraphs doesn't mean I'm going backward in my treatment. I'm not going hindward. I'm going forward and figuratively falling into the arms of therapy. That's what writing is to me. It helps me. It doesn't quite put me on "normal" street. It doesn't even put me in the neighborhood. But expressing myself in words puts me in the right country and affords me the opportunity to calm down long enough to seek that street. I may never find it and rent a house there, but at least my search, through the pen and the keyboard, lets me enjoy the countryside and fills me with the hope of knowing that what I'm looking for might be just up around the bend.

It's not all a bed of tulips. It never is. "Such is life," as the French say in English. There are times when roars from the creature chained in the cellar reach the upper levels of me. But so long as I keep writing about it, I won't sleepwalk down there and unconsciously open the cage and let it out.