sometimes children's stories are written for the grown-ups...

I have a hard time understanding love...I know, I know, that sounds incredibly emo, but I just sometimes have a really hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of what it means...

I haven't always had the best examples of love in my life...haven't seen it as a successful entity. And heaven knows that I have never come close to having it fully myself (outside, of course to my wonderful friends and my family).

I put up a serious wall before I even get started in a relationship. I have not been in many, just because the few I have been in have taught me that I need to work far more on myself before I can give myself to another person.

I catch myself, when it comes to love, thinking that things should be far more cookie-cutter and pretty than they can actually ever be. Or, at the first sign of pain or hurt or messiness I throw in the towel. I don't want love to be difficult.

But I think it is in love, when you love, when you are truly loved, that you are most fully alive. You are most real.

And what is real?

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

I think I have been a person who breaks too easily. A person who was afraid of becoming worn. But it is indeed the true sign of love to see something that is a bit used...a bit broken in. The china dolls on the shelf never know the messy grubby hug of an exurburant child. The are lonely in their perfection.

I am not a china doll.

And I am not content with putting myself on a shelf out of reach. If being real means that I have to get a bit mussed up, then I will roll around in the dust bunnies a bit more.

If being loved (and truly truly loved) means that I have to hurt a little, then I'm bracing myself. Because I am ready to be the real me.

So here I am. Broken pieces and all.