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"Why, after so long?" you jocular consumers of my character streams ask. Like all truly wise answers, the response is simple and elegant. Paraphrasing a total stranger in AIM chat : "I was about to add you, but somehow didn't. You should really take your Livejournal off friends only - it keeps people from knowing you better." A wall I built over a year ago to provide security for my mental city-state really ended up creating an isolationist policy. My LJ has been a hybrid sort of Shangri-La that only a few intrepid travelers have reached.

For more than a year that armored codpiece of internet anonymity has theoretically prevented my emotional crotch from the swift and mercilessly wielded boots of people who know right where my sweetbreads are, and just how to strike them. A sort of mental cold war where fullscale assault means everyone is wiped out. The actual damage I might have incurred was nothing compared to the projected buildup and subsequent strike of my 'old' life against my 'new'. An arms race of half-inferred knowledge, armchair psychology, and none of the participants defining clear aims.

However in this reality the delineations of time are blurred, if at all existent. My laborious projections all led me to believe at the interface of past and present I would be dragged backwards - living a cycle of existence I tried to escape by segregating people I knew from those I have just begun knowing. When I began this social surgery I knew I would be excising healthy tissue along with the necrotic. Regrowth and reacquaintance with function takes time. I limped along on prosthetics and artificial maintenance, took babysteps to wean myself from the machinations of my own mind that allowed me to survive the operations, heal, and once again walk among all the people I know if I choose to do so. I crafted a sling of deliberate ignorance and a suspending cradle of disbelief that gently nurtured and protected the parts of my mind that were in chrysalis when I didn't even know it.

I've been out of the coccoon for a while, tender and juicy. I squirm when people poke me. I've learned how to deal with it, but I'm still soft. My mind created a thousand invisible swords and placed them in open for anyone to wield against me. Long ago in my childhood I remade myself as armor to battle stealthy assassins who never came. I've been fighting useless wars using imaginary threats as soldiers against myself to feel justified in my own paranoia. Now my goal is to see with true sight what is real. I've avoided real battles to play with my shadow armies because when you defeat yourself, the loss is meaningless. But when there's no threat of failure, victories are hollow.

So to all the challengers friend and foe alike who have swung and missed my ghost - my blade is at the ready.