So much not to say, see.

On Sunday morning I found myself curled up next to Jeff and thinking, "When did this stop being home?"

What was it over the course of four years that did it? There are too many culprits to select just one: friends, cats, mortgage, jobs. All. Nothing. Everything in between.

…for one thing, which encompasses so many other things that it's hard to continue calling it just one thing: that, over the course of this year, I walked to the lip of an abyss, faced it, and came away alive, human, and still capable of reaching out to the people who cared about me.

So many things - that I got to have time with Dad before he died. Jeff - for making it bearable. For Jeremy, Suzan, and Colter, who among all my friends stand so high in my memory for being so much and giving so much when I had so little to give in return.

For the cat-feeders, and the voices on the end of the phone during all hours of the night. For those of you in different time zones or on different sleep schedules, who were around to see me during the ugliest parts of the healing process.

For my friends for understanding, not asking questions when they probably wanted to, and trusting that one of these days I'll wake up again and be me again...

Our heating system contains a timer. If I'm up past eleven p.m., which I often am these days, it's usually the chill in my toes that tell me of the drop in temperature. My hair—probably close to two feet long now—serves as a slight blanket of warmth around my ears and shoulders, but my naturally chilly toes (a feature, not a bug, my family assures me, though Jeff may disagree) require a bit of help in staying warm.

Last night I lay in bed, half-watching the softly-blue moonlight as it filtered through the slats of the miniblinds and settled over Edmund, who lay with me, snuggled in the covers of the guest bed. The light flowed, soft, indirect, over white whisker and orange stripe alike.I could not sleep. There was no point in tossing and turning in a bed shared with Jeff. He needed his sleep. Better to keep my insomnia to myself, and let at least one of us wake up rested in the morning.

On my way back down the stairs, I poked my head into the living room, where Brad was packing up his things. He looked up from his packing, undoubtedly expecting me to say something at least halfway interesting.

Instead: "Blue or purple?"

I held out my hands, indicating the newly-scrubbed nails that, up to a few minutes ago, had been painted royal blue. "Purple," he said, with that bemused, louder-than-words look that said I was being silly, and why in the world was I asking him such a question of a geekboy anyway?

Thirty minutes later, the nails were purple.

Such has been the weekend.

Is it silly of me to say that I 'miss' someone, when for the vast majority of the years we've known each other, we've been nothing more than screen-printed words and occasional phone calls to each other? I think not. I've missed Brad—enough to say it when I know that my saying it publicly will probably make him grimace in embarrassment.

Ever notice how much we crave understanding from others? It is one of the guiding forces behind our interactions with other people. Failing the ability to allow another to truly see through our eyes, we resort to words. When we talk, we take the best option available to us: we fence with words to (gently or forcefully) turn our conversation partner so that they see the world from a perspective as closely matching our own as possible.

Words aren't magic, though they sometimes might feel like it. For those of us unable to communicate through art or music, they're our best hope of closing the gap betweeen others and ourselves.Sometimes they just can't suffice.

That seems to be my theme for the year: words that just don't manage to say it all, despite my best attempts to make it so.

Two-forty-five. A raging case of insomnia if there ever was one, and oh, what a night to have it. The soothing cup of tea and my most recent read were both finished two hours ago. The ink that's flowed out of my pen for the last thirty minutes has formed itself into words centering mostly around the idea of 'forgiveness.'

After finishing up on code work for the night, I did something silly. Utterly stupid, in fact. Something that I know better than to do, and yet I did it anyway: I looked at the sites for other bits of journaling software.