It's a big deal when you finally get the chance to do the one thing you want to do - need to do - more than anything. It can kind of scare the crap out of you.

The mistakes you make now count. Not for everything, and not forever. But they do matter, and they shape you.

I told you, everyone understands a quest.

Holding people away from you, and denying yourself love, that doesn't make you strong. if anything, it makes you weaker. Because you're doing it out of fear.

The health of the people I love is all that really matters in this world. Period.

This was how I was dealing with everyone and everything lately, taking the good when it came, and the bad the same way, knowing each would pass in its own time.

But as was so often the case, it was the one person missing who you thought about more than the ones who were right in front of you.