I don't understand myself and the longer I live the less I'm really sure of. The circle of my knowledge tightens around me and there is more left to learn than I can possibly even acknowledge. Youth has a way of blinding you to the vastness of things and when I was young I understood my world and where to go. Away. But wherever you are, you're still you and as you age all the layers of skin slough off and leave you naked and vulnerable, exposed to a world both smaller and infinitely larger than you ever dared imagine, confronted simultaneously by both your own mortality and limitations. And yet... and yet... dreams never elude me. It is in the sifting of dreams and seizing hold of them that I still find my truest fulfillment.

I don't understand myself.

I don't know where I'm headed.

I don't know what the future looks like.

But I do understand what it is to love. To love deeply and passionately and comfortably and daringly and utterly in all ways imaginable. I understand somehow that just living is one of the greatest accomplishments and joys allowed us on this planet. Just breathing, just laughing, just loving. Just dreaming.

And so I bundle everything I don't know up inside me like a great tangle of knotted wool and as I walk into the unknown I slowly unravel pieces behind me. They make sense in retrospect. I don't need to know where I'm headed. I only need to know I'm on my way and I'm capable of love and daring.

Through this as through so many things your words have struck directly into the core of me and spiked my shadows with light. You think yourself a fledgling in things comprised of joy and light and, yes, innocence but always you have managed, with your beautiful words and your presence, to make me understand these deeply secreted pieces of myself with gentleness and honesty.

We are able to love others because we loved each other first and well.

We are able to love ourselves because we write.

And we write to live.