Last summer was a down period for this blog. It was a weird time wherein I had too many feelings to know how to wrap my arms around them and unload them into this space designed, primarily, as a receptacle for my abundant feelings.

In October, I started to make my way back here in part because the absence thing created a feeling that entire months of my life were erased or empty. There was a void. Things were incomplete.

Here I sit, a year later, feeling infinitely more whole and complete as a human being and determined to make sure I make some notation of that. Here is the record. Here is the acknowledgment that things are wonderful, for however long this lasts.

If the silence and isolation taught me anything it was how incredibly valuable this moment is. I’m not one for trying to draw comparisons between emotional experiences — I hate the idea that one terrible thing should somehow render you immune to any number of “merely bad” experiences. Sometimes things just suck, for whatever reason, and you’re allowed to be upset about that, no matter what other varieties of suck you have known in your life.

Still, the radical shift from epic suck to I love my life right now from one year to the next is kind of incredible. This comparison is inherently different, of course, because I’m using the emotional comparisons to intensify and further validate a feeling, rather than invalidate a feeling, as if feelings are driven by some cohesive logic, an absurd concept if ever there was one.

I’m remembering where and how I was a year ago and acknowledging that everything has changed, entirely for the better.

That’s all there really is to say. I’m sitting in a lovely apartment in Paris on a Sunday afternoon, with one of my best friends. Let the record show that things are good. Things are really, really good.