When did we stop caring? When did what happens to us in our lives become water on our oiled raincoats? Why doesn't it matter to us anymore? Why don't we cry over the pain? Why don't we smile at the contentment? Instead, when we hurt someone we loved more than anything in the world, we shrug our shoulders saying, "what? life is life. you've just gotta get strong enough to face it. you can't bend every time the wind blows." Instead, when something that would have caused us to run to our safeplace, we shrug our shoulders saying, "what? life is life. i've gotten strong enough to face it. i won't bend every time the wind blows." we distance ourselves from...everything. we tell ourselves that we don't care because we shouldn't care. this is the way life is supposed to be, this is the way life is we tell ourselves. and before we know it we're standing alone. isn't this what we wanted? nothing and no one to care about? we didn't want the noise and disturbance that comes from being in a family that loves us. we didn't want the pain that comes the occasional friction with people who care about us and don't agree with how we're destroying our lives. we ran away from the chaos, the pain, the disagreements, the noise, the anguish, the sorrow, to a place we thought was safe. it was a place we thought we would thrive in. but here there is no peace for there is no chaos. There is no contentment for pain does not exist. There is no forgiveness for there are no arguments. There is no silence for the only noise here is silence. There is no happiness for who knows what happiness is when they have not expereienced anguish? There is no love for who can love who has not felt sorrow? it takes us awhile to realize we are the only ones drowning in our own misery. self-inflicted misery.

sometimes, most times, to have peace there needs to be a little strife first. to experience contentment, we have to hurt a little first. to gain forgiveness, we must err. to be silent is for us to stop making whatever rucaus we were making. to obtain happiness is to know that the anguish experienced now will end. to be able to love is think we have lost everything, everyone, and then realize that we were never in danger of losing them because they would never give up on us despite everything we had said or done.

we might have to accept our lives for what they are. but we never have to accept life as something we can't change. and never as something we don't have to care about.