People ask me all the time how I can be so depessed, hurt, and generally emo and still find the time to smile, to be kind and caring and all that fun stuff they say I am. I'll let you in on my secret.

I'm struggling to find happy things to write about. When I'm sad, I think about love. That's all I think about. I think about how much I love a certain person/food/object/activity, allowing myself to be completely engulfed in that feeling.

Until recently, I didn't understand that old, annoying proverb by that one Alfred Lord Tennyson fellow: 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

I thought, why would someone prefer to lose something he loves over not loving and being spared the heartache? Then I fell in love--and lost. Twice. It hurt, I cried, and I fell into a pit of weakness and vulnerability. My first love was a dog. My dog. My tubbykins. He was a fat, cranky, thieving, misbehaving potato of a creature, but he was mine. I loved that dog more than I've ever loved anything else in this world--more even than I loved my first [human] love. This dog had my heart, and I was more than devastated when he packed his bags and relocated to Sugarcandy Mountain. We had eight glorious years together. Eight years. It looks like a long time, but it seems like nothing to me. Not enough time at all.

to be continued...