His name was Fido.

Years ago -- many, many years ago -- I crafted a simple story that was intended to describe an emotional crisis that I was in the midst of. An allegory, I suppose.

I did it because I've never been terribly good at opening up, at talking about what's going on inside of me.

So now, instead of just sitting down with someone over a beer and saying, "Shit, man, I've been kind of bummed out lately," I write 15 page stories about a culture looking for answers in anti-depressants, and about how -- once you start down that road -- oblivion of some kind is waiting for you at the end of it.

And at the end of the day, I still can't talk about my feelings.

I'd probably be in therapy right now if I thought it'd do any good. But good *would* it do? The whole basis of therapy is the give and take that the patient has with the therapist -- patient talks about feelings, therapist directs conversation to what the real problem might be. Rinse, repeat. But opening up isn't much of an option for me. I sit on my feelings, hold them inside, and one day they're going to just kind of rot and turn into a tumour or an ulcer or an ulcerated tumour. And I'll just keel over and die of repression.

Part of my problem right now, I suppose, is that I have a big gaping wound of free time in my schedule suddenly, with the production of the play finished. I'm sitting here at home far more often than I've been used to lately, staring at my computer screen, staring at the living room, staring at the cluttered storage rooms that should be tidied and turned into something other than bloody storage rooms.

Which is why I've been taking advantage of this blog thing a bit more often than usual this last week. Because I have time on my hands, and needing something to fill it with.

Should have my car back within three weeks. Will that leave me feeling any less isolated, knowing that I could hop behind the wheel and get the hell out of the house if the desire struck me? Or would I feel even more isolated knowing that, even if the desire struck me, I wouldn't?

The name of the character in the story I told years and years ago was Fido. Fido met some cows and the cows turned into giant cockroaches and tried to eat him, and Fido ran away.

It wasn't a very good story, but for some reason it's come slithering back into my brain again. For the life of me, I can't quite completely remember what the intended moral of the story is, and I don't really suppose it matters anymore. It was story meant to represent something I was going through more than a decade ago.

What matters to me know is what the story means today.

And as far as I can tell, it's either about a guy who is terrified of his environment. Or about a guy whose environment is terrifying.

Or maybe it's just about staying the fuck away from cows.