The bottom line is, what defines you isn't how many times you crash, but the number of times you get back on the bike. As long as it's one more. you're all good.

It's okay to accept things from people. It doesn't make you weak or helpless.

As impossible, in fact, as keeping the moon... So I looked down the line at all my friends, knowing I would always remember this. And then I turned my gaze back up to the sky, and put my faith in that moon and its return.

But risk is just part of relationships. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.

closed my eyes and listened. It was like music I'd heard all my life, even more than "This Lullaby." All those keystrokes, all those letters, so many words. I brushed my fingers over the beads and watched as her image rippled, like it was on water, breaking apart gently and shimmering before becoming whole again.

What happened to goodbye?

Maybe that's what you got when you stood over your grief, facing it finally. A sense of its depths, its area, the distance across, and the way over or around it, whichever you chose in the end.