*please don't look up, PLEASE don't look up....*

Have you ever been out and about, minding your own damn business, when out of nowhere—walking directly towards you—is someone you haven’t seen in a while? Someone you might have been avoiding at one point but it had been so long since you’d bumped into them that you were pretty sure that you never would so your guard was down and you didn’t even consider that maybe this day (of all days), when you hadn’t even bothered to put on mascara or make sure your sweatpants du jour weren’t the one’s with the hole in the crotch that was only noticeable when you were taking purposeful strides across the room kind of like you are right now, and your brain is all silently screaming “PLEASE don’t look up and notice me” and then (probably because you just wished they wouldn’t, because the universe is a bitch that way) they totally look RIGHT AT YOU and you try too look all surprised while you greet each other with forced cheeriness and exchange excited “Oh my God, it’s been so long! How ARE you?” greetings that lapse into an awkward silence that lingers on for a minute while neither one of you can figure out exactly what to say next?

This is totally like that.

I’ve been away for a while. I’ve got reasons (some of them really good ones and some of them like pages out of a “Mad Libs: The Excuses Edition!” activity book), but for the moment I won’t bore you with them (because hey, a girl’s gotta keep a little something back for future material, right?).

I will tell you, though, that I’ve tried going this fight alone. I’ve tried keeping my silence under the auspices of keeping my head, tried holding my thoughts and while I held my breath…and it doesn’t work for me.

I’ve started this entry about 30 times only to wuss out and walk away from the keyboard because at a time when I wasn’t really sure of anything what I DID know was this: If I was going to come back, then I was REALLY going to come back. I wasn’t going to say I was coming back only to crawl back under the covers and go back to sleep again. I wasn’t going to pull out my six-guns and aim them at the fat girl staring back at me from the mirror unless I was prepared to pull the trigger. I wasn’t going to do this all half-assed until I could be sure that I was ready to get off my whole ass and get back to work.

It took a long time, but I’m back.

Internet! I haven’t seen you in so long. How ARE you?