I brought you daffodils in a pretty string...

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

I find myself questioning my choices, and as I examine the people I allowed close to my heart, I wonder if perhaps I let my guard down too easily. It is not that I regret any of it, it's just that I can't help but shake the notion that I might be making a mistake. Maybe it was too much, too quickly, and all I need is the passing of time to create order amidst the chaos running amok in my heart. I have certainly come too far to let my self-destructive tendencies ruin everything I've built, yet not nearly far enough to simply give in to fear of being alone and abandoned, What I've learned is that I deserve to be valued - heck, I deserve to be adored, and if the people in my life don't believe the same, then perhaps it would be better to part ways while we still have the willpower to start over. I am not scared to stand as one, even though I can't quite pin-point the last time I did. I will survive, and I shall prosper. With or without you.