I'd like to spend some time talking about therapy, because there's where I've been spending my time. Not out meeting people, not out getting into more screwed-up relationships I can't understand, and not out having fun and adventure, either. Home. Work. Therapy. That's my life in Chicagoland. It's not glamorous, but if you want glamour find someone else's journal to read. This is mine and I'm not going to appeal to you with snippets of some made-up love affair, or even a real love affair. It ain't going to happen. At least, I don't forsee it happening.

Trust me, if my love life magically changed you'd be the first people to hear about it. But it's not going to happen, because I'm in therapy trying to get my head screwed on straight before I go getting involved with people again. It seems the kindest thing I can do to them.

So where do I start? I haven't shared much about my past with you fair readers, and that's where I need to start. Don't expect deep, dark stuff. It's not that exciting a life. Don't expect much commentary, either, because I'm not in the mood.

I was always a dreamy kid. Head in the clouds, thinking up stories and adventures only I could see. That set me apart to begin with. Add to that the fact that I moved around a great deal, from one school to another, from the time I was 4 to the time I was thirteen. Lucky me I spent high school in the same place the whole time.

Now add to that I was always setting the curve on the tests, and you begin to see how much of an outsider I was. Always the new SMART kid. The new smart kid who was emotionally mushy. Yeah, I was picked on a lot. Ge figure. I couldn't have been picked on more if I'd painted a big target on my shirt that said, "Kick me."

I come from a broken home. Very broken. My father was a heroin addict who beat the hell out of my mom for a couple years before they finally split. They split when I was 3, just so you know, but my earliest memory is of him smacking my mom around something awful. My mother was pretty young - 19 - when she had me, and she needed someone to take care of her something awful. All she had, though, was my brother and I. I think this is one of the reasons I was always such an emotionally fragile kid, truth be told. Not that such a revelation is useful, now that I'm 31.

There, for your benefit, is my childhood summed up in three short paragraphs. Everything you need to know about that part of my life is contained within. Aren't you lucky?

Anyway, this was supposed to be about therapy . . .

So here I am, 31 years old, trying to dump some emotional baggage left over from some mildly screwed up childhood. And let me tell you that it's hard WORK. Don't let anyone tell you that therapy is easy. They're not trying. Changing your emotional outlook on the world is not easy. It took a lifetime to learn how to behave this way. No damn quack is going to wave a wand and make all the hurt disappear.

Belive me, I wish she could. It'd be a lot better and I'd be back in Portland with my friends where I belong.

So that's all I really wanted to say, at this time. Therapy is hard work, but I'm going at it with all my might, and, maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll be strong enough to return to Portland in the summer. Maybe. If I'm lucky.

You see, with all my blowing it off as, "emotional baggage left over from my childhood," it's pretty severe stuff. Ask anyone who knows me. Most of them would agree that I'm a pretty swell guy to be wround, but I have some major emotional issues to get over before I can be close to functional.

Wish me luck, voyeurs and voyeurettes. I'm going to need it.