I have always thought that a year is really not all that long.

I label someone a fool if they think that their life will be the same a year from now.

So many things can happen in just 12 months, so many feelings can dissipate or cease in just 365 days. Things that seemed urgent to discover can fall away or become easier to understand with passing time.

Some will look at me and think me a pessimist.

It is just realism.

You do not know me.

If you don't recognize how my eyes take in every beat of the ocean, how I breathe in the wavy air, how my ears tune into to every sound around me then you do not know me.

If you don't recognize the progression of my understanding of dark days and constant betrayels and repeated rejection - each passing year - then you are blind or have never been next to me.

You live for the day. I live for the moment. You take the small things for granted. I hold the details tight in my grip. You hold on loosely and then let go. I hold on tight and rest as my heart pulsates with every passing day letting go of small bits at a time, fighting to let go just as easily as the world lets go of me.

You stab me and chew me up, then spit me out. The loose grip opens and I free fall down from the sky. The difference between me and you is I never close my eyes.

Opening my arms out wide, I now know I don't have wings that will make me fly.

Years ago I probably said I did. Hundreds of pages written back in all of my journals I probably thought my heart was invincible - even after destruction.

Once. Twice. Three maybe. If they all really count. But as years go by, that ignorance, that naivety sinks away.
As a mature woman you recognize you are not invincible. But as a woman I know where to draw the line. I know it does not show weakness to share these words.

You cannot say you ever really knew me if you don't know this side of me. And shame on anyone who has spent any kind of intimate moment with me and failed to learn my deepest and darkest thoughts. I never hid them but the weak and the selfish do not listen.

All people do is look. They don't search and the people who are awake today are becoming more scarce. I've been with and I've been without. I know what it's like to be held close and feel the warmth of somebody else and smell their scent. My days of feeling that have been equal to my days going without one touch and only smelling the scent of people passing on the side walk. Glancing up at the couples sharing their touch. Sometimes staring a few seconds too long.

Shallow and ignorant are the ones always and constantly looking for the next best thing.

Shame on all of you to waste your time just because you had one good year.