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This time last year the trees were the same color. The air smelled the same. The sky was just as big.

But I was different.

I'm so much happier now.

But at the same time...

I'm so much sadder, too.

It's like...well, it’s as if my heart is...learning? And it's learning amazing things, great things, things that are beautiful and new and clean. But it’s also learning dark things. Things that hurt and sit like nightmares in my chest. And my heart’s trying to grow, to stretch to fit all of it, but it aches and I worry it will tear and I’ll be broken again. Old scars are so easy to open.

I want to know these things, the good/bad stinging sweet things, but another part of me (the weak-tiny- afraid part) wants to be a child again, to run and laugh and cry and know nothing except that I am loved and it will all be okay, no matter how many scraped knees happen. I want to reach up my arms to be held and whispered to.

But I know that I can’t go back. I can’t turn around and run back into the darkness. I have to keep moving forward, eyes blinded by the light, fingers trailing the wall, feeling my way blindly upwards. I have to keep looking into the sun until my eyes adjust and I can understand what it all means—everything I’ve learned. That I’m learning.

I want to be normal. I want to see it clearly, like everyone else, not out of my ripple-warped technicolor lens. Not with the little fireflies of words and pictures and metaphors fluttering close to my dusty-dead-green eyes. I want to be able to kiss him and be completely happy, no gargoyle clawing open my chest and slashing bright ribbons of doubt and self-loathing into my mind. I want to know it all, every little thing, every smile and sunrise and raindrop on the windowpane, and know it by itself, without my funny little artist head instantly creating stories and sentences and philosophies around it. To just know it as it is, and be happy.

I want to love myself.
I want to hurt myself.
I want to run away.
I want to stand and fight.
I want to know.