But sometimes it's the sunshine that frightens us more than the big black shadows.

We look at each other without saying anything, both of us smiling like idiots. I heart is so full I can’t believe it can possibly still beat without bursting right in front of me. My desire for him is so fierce I’m afraid to stand, because I know my knees will be too weak to hold me up, but there’s more than that. This great and bursting thing inside me is love.

I didn’t fall in love with James. Falling sounds like an accident. Falling hurts. I’d fallen in love with Michael, fallen hard like slipping off a cliff and hitting the rocks below. Falling in love was something I’d vowed never to do again. I chose to love James.

Scars are proof we can can survive

Knowing what you need doesn't always mean you know how to get it, though. I'd spent a long time hiding in my cave. No matter how much I might want to come out into the light, I knew it would hurt my eyes. I was a fool. A fool, but nevertheless too smart not to know I was the architect of my own demise, that it was time to put my past behind me. It was time to stop allowing the white elephants to stand unspoken of in my living room.

There are many things I don't know, but quite a few I do. I know you can't be lost if you know where you are. I know that life is full of precious and fragile things, and not all of them are pretty. I know that the sun follows the moon and makes days, one after another. Time passes. The world turns, and we turn with it, and though we can never go back to the beginning, sometimes, we can start again.

I had no words to give him. No explanation. I didn’t understand it, myself. It scared me, but then so do roller coasters, and I ride them anyway, too.