"You don't even let me read that journal for goshsakes. Now you're going to let a bunch of strangers take a look at your personal life? Are you thinking straight kitten?"
     "Jackie, I'm a bisexual, ployamorous, plushiephiliac; I don't think straight."

     We both laughed at that one.

     Seriously, why am I doing this?

     On the Net, you can be someone (or something) you aren't. You can laugh, dream, hope, cry, love, live, and experience life in ways that the real world forbids. That's the beauty of the Internet. That's its power. That's its weakness.

     "When you write, you speak for many souls."
          - Vincent A. Maeder

     This is just something I feel I need to do. I can't explain it more then that.

     Even as I pen this, my mind wonders back over the events that have transpired in the past few years; like a brook flowing down hill, it gains speed as it goes and I am powerless to stop it.

     I don't know why I'm writing this really. Maybe it's to prove to myself that the life I now lead is real and not some dream created by my heart and enacted by my mind. Maybe it's because I want there to be a record of what happened, so that others may know, so that they can avoid the mistakes I made and sidestep the paths I chose.

     The crisp white page, the smooth black ink, the weight of a pen between the fingertips, these things bring me comfort. They are my land in a chaotic world, a world of deep dark seas and uncharted waters. For the world is a cruel place, and it is only in writing that I find love.

     Yet, even as I write my heart offers counsel to my mind.

     "Beware those who would begin the inner quest in search of Light, for there are dangers here. Creatures lurk in the dark corners of the mind; creatures of the id who hide behind the mask of Ego. Dare you pass between the pillars of self-doubt and gaze into the mirror of self-knowledge?"

     I request more information, but that is all my heart chooses to offer now, or all it can offer now. And so I am patient, for patience is the trademark of a thief.

     Thoughts flow unbidden to my mind, even as the ink flows unbidden to the page.

     Here then is my story.