Sometimes when I'm feeling all deep and instrospective, like today, I look back over the last two years and think, "Was that a dream?"

Because it feels like I'm just waking up. I mean, truly. I feel like I spent the last 24 months in a coma... subconsciously aware of what was going on around me, but unable to take part in any of it. And that's a stretch for me, because I'm the kind of person who needs to get into the very heart of everything, to understand it, to appreciate it, to decide what to do with it. Instead, I've let my life just sort of "happen" and I've been on the periphery, wondering what's going on. What an odd sensation now, like cold water on my face, and I've finally snapped out of it. I'm in control again. I can make the decisions for myself that lethargy had stolen away. What's more, I have the desire to make those decisions instead of feeling some kind of awkward obligation towards them; instead of feeling like the future was just going to happen, and I had better figure out a way to make peace with it.

I'm glad I'm not getting married. I'm glad I'm not moving to an isolated community with no real purpose in being there (yet) except to keep company to a man who was in full pursuit of his dream. I'm glad I'm standing here, looking at the horizon of a future before me and able to think to myself, "Well? Which path will it be?" I'm glad I have so many options. I'm glad I have the opportunity to explore them. I'm glad I'm alive.

And I realize I fully mean that, now. The thing about being the kind of person who feels everything so deeply is that when pain comes, I can't put it in a nice little package in the closet and only peek in on it from time to time. It seizes me. It moves into every part of me with a paralysis and torture that makes me wonder about my chances of living through it. When I do, I'm amazed. Conversely, of course, is that when love comes, it too moves into every part of me, and I embrace it fully, without consideration for the way it may end up gutting me. And it's not like I have a choice, after all. I can't do anything half-assed. I can't love, or ache, or learn in mediocrity. I'm an all or nothing girl. Which is a drag, of course, because it means that sometimes I end up with my throat slit and bleed out all over the place. Sometimes, though, I end up on mountain tops, holding elation in both of my hands, well-earned.

Would I change it, if I could? Probably. I'd like to have a little more detachment from experience so that it wouldn't affect me so much. I'd like to be able to guard myself a little better. But I can't change those things, and I guess I have to find a way to make peace with that. I've learned though, that sometimes I can choose what I will and will not allow myself to come into contact with, and that's been tremendously empowering. I've decided that the things worth risking are the things worth the whole of me, and I don't believe that I'll be disappointed as long as I continue to be true to that.