It's taken me six months, but I finally gathered up the courage to return to a faraway land tonight, somewhere I had long dwelled, whose shores I had left behind on a sudden, whim-driven departure and thought to perhaps never see again. It was a place I had out-grown, I tried to convince myself, an island whose borders were drawn in age and society's demands and they limited me, shamed me. But as C. S. Lewis once wrote, "When I became a (wo)man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be grown-up," and as Bon Jovi sang, "Who says you can't go home?"

I returned to that long-ago "home" tonight.

And I willing admit that I had thought not to see recent posts on my Friends page, assumed that the world would have stuttered and stalled since the end of my stay, the end of that mythical island's days. Shame on me, for not knowing better. If there's one thing that time and tears and all these years spent here have taught me, it's that things never truly stop, but simply change, as I have. I am not the same person I was seven months ago, and I think I am the better for it.

I have been the better for knowing you.

When my beloved Atlantis finally started to die, when we knew that it was well and truly over, I wrote a letter explaining my soon-to-be absence, and what things I had left unfinished, unseen by any eyes but my own. I never posted it, and I'm glad of that. It means I have many more things to share with you.

I think I'm strong enough now to finish those lost stories, and begin the ones that were never begun. I don't know what I've lost over the months, or what I've gained, or even how these stories will change because of these things - but I'm willing to find out.

Ashita made, friends. Until tomorrow.