It's been a while, but I made it back. Sort of.

It's been a while since I last wrote on here. Hard to tell exactly how long, but I'd guess at almost a year. But in my defence, I've had a lot to deal with.

One of those things being some kind of mental funk, and I'm still to understand how that happened. And the other, more recently, being the death of my mother. The former, I seem to have dealt with one way or another. I don't know how, but it seems the bad days are becoming fewer and fewer, which gives me some hope. I'm trying to get back into the creative trenches I was once upon a time found to be wallowing in, but it's not as easy as I had thought. I'm getting there though, and the artwork and the short stories are coming back.

One day at a time.

It's like starting over again. Only, I forgot where I was when I left everything behind, and I don't remember where I put everything now I'm making my way back. So I'm starting out again ... forging new alliances wherever they can be found.

The death of my mother was a bad day though. I carried a lot of guilt with me for a long time, I blamed myself, and I was sure there was something I could (should) have done that would have prevented her passing. As it turned out though, there wasn't a lot I could have done. But I didn't find that out until the coroners report some time later.

That's not to say the guilt isn't still there, because it is. It just burns that little bit cooler.

I've dealt with death before. My father died twenty-some years ago, but this was something different. I didn't really know my father, not really. He was more or less just a guy I knew who sometimes remembered my birthday and seldom Christmases. He was my dad though, and that, to a kid, meant something.

Still, what I felt when mum died was something else. Nothing at all like I felt when my dad died. Man, that kind of pain almost tore me apart. She was my best friend, and with the absence of a husband (bah the stepfather ... what an abusive, manipulative wanker he proved himself to be) I stepped up and did what I had to do: I took care of mum. I took care of her when she was ill. I did the daily chores, the doctors appointments, and the food shopping. I did for her as she had always done for me, And when she went it left a giant sized hole in my life.

I didn't know how to cope, and still don't. But things are getting better, that's about all I can say.

Nonetheless, it's weird. Not just death, but the things that trickle out afterwards. The stuff you find when you're pouring through someone's belongings. What I found out after my mothers passing makes me wish I'd known a lot more while she was here. But I suppose she never though it was my place to know or, maybe, for her to burden me with such knowledge. I don't know.

Anyway, I'm working my way through it all, and I'm trying to reconnect with everybody I may have left behind. So if you're one of those people or if you're looking to broaden your social circle, look me up again, send me a message and say hi. I promise I won't bite.

Who knows we may even iron out a few wrinkles along the way - things that ought to have been dealt with a long time back.